Scranton School Board Personnel & Policy Committee Meetings July 29th, 2020

001down hi heather good to see you in person sort of hi miss dempsey nice to meet you in person as well oh sorry my sound is weird how are you i'm well how are you good thank you gotta figure out what's going on here there we go what's up hi everybody jenny do you think we have all of our participants i'm looking for katherine i saw her earlier and i don't know what happened um i see roe i don't see mr mckander is here mrs welby's here this is gianni i don't see yet this is mctiernan's not here i see he's not here well i suppose we could wait for her thank you paul [Music] there's captain hi jim hello everybody katie i think we're waiting on mr malloy and mrs yani okay jenny i

002i see mr malloy in indies he's under his wife's name okay or do i need to send him another link oh i think he's coming through now can you hear me we can hear you maybe i'll change my name we thought you were in drag jimmy all right i think missy's on her way i'm here oh okay and i think there i am john had a problem with the link also so he might be coming through okay thank you looks like sharon's got her poker face on [Laughter] jim that's me i'm just standing real still at least i gave you all a break from the pony [Music] your audi appears to be typing something so it appears that he is on the attendee side okay yes mr del prix there we go there we go

003perfect okay apparently i'm here now apparently i apologize i'm sorry i don't know i didn't have a link for some reason well it's 603 i'm pretty proud of us this evening so we did well uh i will call the meeting of the policy and personnel committee meetings to order please stand for the pledge of 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 going to bdmc here this evening for mrs dempsey and ms cruz so mrs dempsey may i ask you to introduce our guest yes um everyone this is heather massart she is with psba and she's going to give us a little information about um an equity policy 832 the equity action plan um and i

004just want to start off by saying you know this is um this is an important policy it is very time consuming but i know heather's going to touch on on all of those various points so um heather take it away thank you sure and i do have a few slides is everyone okay if i share slides would that be all right with you absolutely yes thank you all right can you see my screen all right yes wonderful thank you so much well thank you again my name is heather massart i'm the director of policy services at the pennsylvania school boards association i have had the pleasure of working with scranton school districts policies for 18 years at various levels in various times as they've gone over through a whole policy review process and you've re-adopted

005that manual and now with your current program where you just adopt and revise policies as needed so i was asked to come and talk to you a little bit about our 832 educational equity policy and we sent that out a few weeks ago and it's completely an optional policy for school boards to consider so one of the first things that we ask school boards to consider when they're looking at this policy is why why is equity work important to you and not just you as individual school directors but to your school district to your students to your staff to your community so that's something that as we walk through and as you start to think about equity in your district should always be at the forefront of your mind is is why so one of

006the first things that we recommend school districts do and i'm going to talk a little bit about sort of the process for equity but a key thing that we did at psba was defining what equity is because equity is not the same thing as non-discrimination it's not the same thing as equality equity is a little bit different and so at psba we define equity as the just and fair distribution of resources based upon each individual students needs and equitable resources include things like funding programs policies initiatives and supports that are designed to target each student's unique background and context so that all students have equal access to a high quality education so this is our definition for equity and it doesn't fit every district in every community it's our definition for equity so one of

007the things that we encourage districts to do before they would even consider an equity policy would be to come up with a definition for what equity looks like in scranton school district this is what we call our accu equity system continuum and there are a lot of resources and i've sent links to miss dempsey and miss gilmartin so that they can share them with you when you start to do this work about some of our equity resources that are available on our website and we look at equity when we talk to school districts around the state as sort of a continuum and in some districts people don't quite understand what equity is and that's a very very normal place to start and they confuse equity with equality or sometimes they confuse equity with anti-racism or

008really understanding what does equity mean and what would that look like for schools so some districts really are still trying to grapple with what does equity look like in our district some districts see equity as a topic and they set up committees on equity and we talk about curriculum and personnel and policy and equities over there to the side somewhere so for some of our districts they're starting to talk about equity and understand it but it's just one portion of what the district does and then the last two categories equity as a recommendation and equity as the foundation is where a district is starting to think about how does everything we do work through an equity lens how does equity and making sure that all students are provided with the resources they need to succeed

009work in terms of curriculum how does it impact our personnel and our staffing what might be different in our policies or our administrative regulations so trying to learn and discuss with each other about where your district might sit on this continuum is also an important piece of discovering equity for your district and how this is going to look so let's talk about policy for a moment and your administrative team and your policy committee does a great job generally with keeping your policies updated they are right on top of things that's been a really important focus for your board i know over the past few years and you've done a fantastic job so in terms of the board's role a lot of boards assume well a policy is the next logical step you know we're the

010board that's what we do we adopt policy and i highly advocate for that that's what i do 24 7 sometimes it feels like so policy is often the logical next step but there are some policies where we encourage districts to pause and say there might be some groundwork that you should consider doing before you adopt the policy so i'm fully supportive of course of anyone adopting a policy but the equity policy just to reiterate it is optional and this is one that will take some ground work because equity policies are not the same thing as non-discrimination policies you have policies on non-discrimination and unlawful harassment in fact they're going to be updated very soon for all the new title ix regulations that are coming out um but those are your non-discrimination policies and they're not

011the same thing as equity and equity policies are not the same as an action plan for how you're going to complete this work and engage with your staff and community equity policies are also not the same from district to district so if you look at the sample policy that psba sent out it has a lot of optional language and a lot of notes that say consider this determine whether or not this is how your board wants to address this situation do you want to do an equity audit do you want to focus on professional development we fully expect and hope that as districts look at an educational equity policy or an action plan to get there they are really tailoring it to the resources that they have and the needs of their student community so

012in terms of equity policies there are actually currently only five districts in the state who have an adopted equity policy and that's pittsburgh public schools state college area school district dairy township allentown and upper dublin school district i know cheltenham and springford which are also down near the philly region are in the process and there are several others who are starting to look at this and have these discussions just like you're having here this evening so this doesn't include districts that might have done policies on transgender students or gender identity or tailored some of their policies to have an equity lens some of that work i know you have done and you've done a fantastic job working with mr audi and your administration to do those things but in equity policy itself is a little

013bit more overarching and that's why it does take significantly more work so this is sort of a graphic that we designed that really shows you what equity as a foundation looks like and it's really the foundation of how you make decisions and think about things as a board as an administration how you align your teachers and your staff and your different district resources if you decide that this is this is our focus and we want to make sure our students have equity in the resources and the education that they receive so that's sort of just a helpful tool and again that's one of the tools and one of the things that you can find on the website as you start to unravel this for your own school board so before you start an equity policy

014this is what we see as the ideal steps for an action plan and there's several steps here as you'll notice and the first pieces that really will be most helpful is identifying and understanding what your district's demographics are you know what what are the demographics in your community um by race by ethnicity by national origin what does your community look like what are the needs of your community and really analyzing that data and that's a step that's really essential to figuring out what do we need in terms of equity what might that look like for our district where do we feel that we fall short is it in the areas of curriculum is it in the areas of hiring and teacher training and professional development is it in the areas of community engagement and maybe

015we're engaging at a really high level certain families and groups but others are just not attending those meetings and we need to figure out why and how to pull them in so doing that that gathering and analysis is really what most districts would think of as an audit and there are several equity audit tools available one of the primary ones that's included in some of the resources i provided is from the mid-atlantic equity consortium they do have a free tool that's something that i highly recommend would be at the level of the district administration to pull some of that data because they already have a lot of this data things in terms of student absences student disciplinary referral referrals you know teacher hiring those sorts of areas are data that you already collect and they

016can sort of fill in some of those gaps and bring that information to the board or a committee however you decide you want to tackle this and really doing that audit is is a step that you can take without a huge financial burden you know it's a time commitment and a staffing commitment but it's not necessarily an additional cost i have learned that pde is also working on a free equity audit tool i don't know when that will be coming out but i hope soon i think everything that's happened with our current pandemic situation probably set that back a little bit and they were jumping to try to help schools with digital resources and equity and distance learning but i know that they are working on an equity audit tool as well so that would

017be another resource to consider once they release that and really the audit is what helps you prioritize what is our work what are our next steps do we need to focus on curriculum changes do we need to focus on professional development do we want to work on how do we do some diversity in our hiring practices and and then have a conversation with the solicitor about how does that work what are the types of things that we can do and what are the pitfalls that we should be aware of so the audit is really a helpful step as you think about this work and then the next steps are really about embedding that training and that professional development at the board level at the administrative level and at the staff level and thinking about what

018is it that each group will need and that's something that often does come with an additional cost but there are some free resources out there one of the resources i send is pittsburgh public schools especially if you as leadership as board and administrative leaders want to just learn more as you start this work and process pittsburgh public schools keeps an ongoing list of free professional development opportunities whether they're online speeches or online courses that are from colleges and universities in pennsylvania they keep that regularly on their website for their staff to access and it's up on the public website so that's one area that you can look at and surely you know your district has leadership that might have some connections and certainly we would be happy to provide connections if there are certain things

019that you're looking for we have a fantastic director of school equity services at psba who's also a great resource for you in the office we're both the heathers so she's known as the other heather i'm heather one and she's heather too or vice versa so if you are looking for additional resources certainly i can connect you with dr heather bennett as well but these are really the steps that you would be looking at in terms of an equity action plan and you'll notice that the very last step is really developing the full out plan or policy to incorporate equity so there are a lot of pieces in there you want to do the audit you want to do some professional development you want to look at what all you already have and these are some

020of the areas again that as you look at equity and audit that you might be focusing on so again what are your demographics what sort of achievement opportunities do you have and how do those impact the different groups and demographics of students that you have and really we encourage people to look at intersectionality so not just looking at race and gender but how do those two overlap and are there areas where we have lower student achievement or more school climate concerns for areas where those demographics intersect and overlap one another and then another huge huge piece of doing this work is really communicating bringing your community into this and i know you've taken some time and really reached out to building some of your community groups over the years and really having that family communication

021so that is going to be a fantastic support for you as you move forward with this work and maybe working through some of those community groups you've already set up to find out what's important to them what is the information and the data that they see do they see that student achievement opportunities are a problem in terms of equity are they concerned about professional development for staff what what is their experience are they concerned that maybe there's not enough members of the community coming to those sorts of events and committee meetings so those are additional areas that will be really important to look at as you lay out how are we going to move forward with this work so finally we do have a lot of equity resources and again i can send those to

022you in whatever form you need there's a lot on our psba website there's even more if you log into the mypsba.org there's an entire toolkit as well as some of these graphics and things that might be helpful for you to explain these areas if you do sit down and meet with your community groups and do this work the mid-atlantic equity consortium and i did provide a link to that previously but that's a great resource as well as staying connected and reaching out to pde to find out where they are with their audit tool might be helpful and again looking at that professional development for yourselves for your staff and for your leadership team so what questions can i answer for you hi heather my name's missy mctearn and i'm the superintendent here it's nice to

023meet you and thank you for joining us uh you did a wonderful job uh explaining this how and i'm not sure if if you'll be able to answer this or but you know a big piece of title one funding is equity um so how does this and at the elementary level you know the the way that the money is dispersed and all of that um so how does that tie into this because that part i believe you know we have a pretty good handle on on that and does that tie right into this policy i think it can i mean it's it's really how your title one's funds get spent within you know the allotment and the box that they're put in is really up to the district so i think there are certainly districts

024who use some of those funds for things particularly like the community engagement especially if you're running some of some of that engagement through your title one parent and family engagement process and those committees i i'm not aware of any districts who only use title one funding to do things like an equity audit or professional development it's sort of that when they when they passed essa and they embedded a lot of this equity language they really tried to use it as that foundation equity is the foundation but within that you do have specific requirements for how you fulfill title 1 how you serve english learners how you serve homeless students so the hope is that you would in all of those things look at and think about equity but i'm not aware of like like i

025said specific funds or specific ways to use those funds just for this other than that parent and family engagement piece because it so clearly goes hands in hand and and quite possibly some professional development thank you it sounds and again heather i i think you made a great point um this seems to be and and you can tell me if i'm right or wrong but seems to be a project and it's not something you know it sounds to me like the district needs to put together a plan and then follow the plan with the different pieces that you provided to us today in fulfilling this normally a policy comes we we have a first read a second read and then we pass it this is obviously a task that will take some time am i

026correct in saying that right you are absolutely correct this is not a policy that's a compliance tool policy which many of your policies are and that's what you're used to this is a policy that you don't want to have as compliance you don't want auditors checking you against this if you haven't had an opportunity to do any of the groundwork you don't want your community holding you accountable to an educational equity policy if you haven't had the opportunity to plan set up professional development talk to your staff and your community about it so those are things that are pitfalls if you rush into this too quickly and i can tell you cheltenham township school district for example they've been working on their educational equity policy for three years so they started with the audit they

027started with an action plan and they worked through all of the steps and pieces and put it in where they could fund it because they do have limited funding in their district as well and some some significant challenges as well so they've been doing this very slowly in pieces and rolling that out and last year they were at the step where they had drafted a lot of language and have taken it to the community and now they're in the phase of finalizing their policy but it's for sure a project it's for sure a plan and a step-by-step process that won't happen overnight thank you i appreciate it heather i do thank you i'm really glad you clarified that heather because one of the things that uh mrs dempsey and miss cruz and i were talking

028about when we were setting the agenda for this meeting was the timeline so many of the districts outlined in the information you shared and this is absolutely not a quick or simple endeavor but you know one that's very important to get started on and lay some groundwork absolutely absolutely yes of course heather i just have a question the um the equity audit do you recommend involving the community almost um having committee having a committee member having a committee made up of members from the community the board administration business partners things like that to try and drive the audit or is this is this something that rests solely on the shoulders of admin or the board that's a great question in my opinion i think it would be more than one step to that audit process

029and i think the first piece should involve the administration first give them the chance to look at what data do we already have and where would we gather that from and then maybe at that point bring that back to the board and say here's what you know what we have and what we know we can do and then consider adding maybe more people to that committee to say okay now how would we gather additional information or what information might we be missing that we should add to gathering for this audit but i do think it's worthwhile to give the administration some time to see what do we already have and where our holes before we get a bigger picture involved to then start filling in the gaps okay thank you sure hi heather it's jim

030malloy thanks a lot um can you hear me okay yes thank you uh so i can't think of a simpler way to put this you said something about free did you not did i hear something about free the equity audit tool from the mid-atlantic equity consortium that is a free resource it is on their website it's basically a document that can be downloaded and then tweaked by the school district for collecting areas of data and also the tool that pde is in the process of developing to my understanding that will also be a free tool thank you sure and heather that is included in some of the information you sent to mrs dempsey and to me correct correct and it's also if you go to the psba website or if you go to my psba

031either part you will see in the equity resources there there's several links and one of them is to that consortium you can find that link to their website and look at the tool so i can certainly absolutely share that with the rest of you we just didn't want to overwhelm everybody with half a dozen links for it's a lot it's a lot at first um miss master with the districts that have implemented the um the this plan um have they seen the results that they were looking for um when they chose to implement this that's a great question the only districts who have policies their policies are very different i would say that pittsburgh public schools has probably been doing this work the longest and if you go to their website and just search for

032equity you'll see that they have had significant growth particularly in the area of professional development which was one of their areas of focus some of the other districts hasn't been that long allentown really took a financial focus to this and some of the other districts who are still in the process and don't have a policy such as erie they also took a very financial look at equity and how to embed that and they're really just starting those processes so i don't know that they've gotten real far with seeing what the outcome is for those one other really great resource to look at although they don't have a policy they've put together a very solid plan and they are starting to populate outcomes is bethlehem area school district and if you go to bethlehem area school

033district's website you can find their equity action plan on their website and they are filling in those gaps like i said it's been a process for them they started with uh with the administration what do we know what can we gather and then they moved out to the community and now they're starting to fill in those gaps but they have not adopted a policy yet they're not to that phase thank you sure great questions anybody else have anything this was wonderful heather and i i think you have consensus here probably our first step is to say to mrs mctiernan let us know what a realistic timeline is here you know this is not work that i think you just say one day here we are we're going to start it but you know in the

034overall planning where could we put something like this to begin to gather those demographics and take those first steps with the administration and then move on to a community piece of it and i think in the meantime it's up to all of us to i will share out that information and i think it's up to all of us to learn about what some of the other districts are doing and you know i know you are always a wonderful resource ps the psba website is but but you yourself and i know dr bennett also would be happy to answer any questions we may have absolutely and also mr ottie he's uh you know always your go-to in terms of any legal implications so do make sure you use him as a resource as well wonderful don't

035say that thank you i want to take a moment and thank you as well for this presentation i think it's outstanding and i will say that psba maybe a year or two ago started rolling out the equity and they were doing they've been doing presentations to all of the solicitors across the state on equity and it's it's a it's really something that i think this district needs to um embrace so thank you well thank you and let us know how we can help thanks so much for your time this evening everyone thank you thank you thank you very much thank you so much heather thank you very much on to our next agenda item which i think we've we've sort of addressed in our first agenda item but a discussion of the demographics that we

036might need to undertake this work which i think we just know we've defined as our next step in all of this is there anything anyone wants to bring forward on that matter is this are you relating to your own data or i'm sorry the sro data is that what you were referencing that's something that that we did share i know there were some questions i think director hume had been touched with mr castra vinci about some data gathering you know that certainly if there's anything you want to discuss at this point or if the information that was shared satisfied your questions that's perfectly fine as well bro you may be needed you want me to just briefly background why i asked for that information i think i think these are very fraught times and and

037as usual we go off and do our research and one of the things that struck me in the nationwide research was that very often within school districts with the without any intent of conscious bias or anything else uh sometimes minority students face either more frequent more severe consequences for similar actions than other students um i have first-hand experience of that my beautiful blue-eyed blonde twin granddaughters went to a school in atlanta that was 85 minority and they got away with murder and for similar actions they were very aware that their their friends often suffered more severe consequences that kind of alerted me to this i think with the data going back thank you very much for it um mr castrovinci uh was very salutary and was interesting to look at um without a balance of

038how many actual the break the racial breakdown i don't think statistically we can infer anything from that breakdown of sro information nor should we i think what i was interested in getting the information for was to maybe give a shout out and say let's just put it in our consciousness and let's just put it in our thoughts that potentially things that some students are given a that really wasn't a good idea johnny other students get a harsher response for and it's more i just wanted to to put it in people's minds that maybe we can look at ourselves and look at our procedures going forward to make sure that if we do have disciplinary actions in the school there is there is an awareness that sometimes there can be an unconscious bias in the way

039different situations are handled um i don't think for a moment there was any anything significant in that data i just thought it was a way of saying let's keep that one in mind thank you ro and i i certainly think this conversation is an appropriate time to be broaching a subject like that and and like you said just keeping those issues top of mind rather than you know in a proactive way whether rather than in a reactive way so thank you published communications um director dempsey i am putting this to you but i'm not sure that you even are fully aware of the the conversation uh that jani i apologize i i am a little bit hijacking your meeting at the moment um mrs yani brought back uh brought forward a comment about translating documents

040that we yeah it was um in reference to we had have issued and i know missy that's something that often does take place so i just said to mrs yani rather than a one-off you know let's ask to have this document translated could we understand what the process is or if we need to define a process for doing that sort of thing i mean i know there is certainly a time associated with something like that so i don't i don't want to ignore that and i also don't want to be naive to the fact that translating into one or two languages uh doesn't doesn't address all of our students needs so if you can speak to that a little bit or if that's information you need to return later that's fine as well no i

041think right now we definitely could do a better job of that we do have translators but i it's not all when we put something out especially lately when we're trying to get something out immediately i can't say that we're doing that in all of the different languages i think our principles do a really good job of that but please know that we're limited to only the translators that we have so um by no means are we reaching and again i'm going to say the last time it was 58 different languages uh we're not even you know if anything uh something may be translated and for the most part is in spanish um you know we've so basically yes we can do a better job of that um but like i said within the school buildings

042i believe they're doing a pretty good job of that overall the communications that we've been putting out on social media we have not been doing a good job so i guess my question to you is what is the expectation and then i think that's you know the board would have to and then we would have to see if we have the resources to do what is the board's expectation looking forward for example to next week when we're going to release the august 3rd meeting the reopening plan it would seem to me that it would be quite crucial for that to be available in at least spanish um if i mean i don't know that nepali is is is there but it would seem to me that something as major as that we would possibly need

043to have right so part of the problem as we know is we have limited staff so we would have to pay somebody in the summer to do that um but that document right now the health and safety plan document and again the last i looked it was almost 50 pages so i i i just don't i agree with you i just don't know that we have those all of those resources to one get get that done before next week um because we're still trying to do the document in english right now to finish that um so i don't know that we have that i don't and i don't want us i don't want to say that something will be done and it won't so to say that the healthy safety plan will be done in

044spanish by we are trying our goal is to have that up for public review prior to the august 3rd meeting so to say that will be in spanish prior to the august 3rd meeting i don't think that's possible now over time is that something that you know we can ask somebody within that department to work on angry back you can chime in when you need she oversees that department i'm sure we can um so i guess that's what i'm saying if the expectation is to have it out immediately when we have the the document out um i don't think we can right now now if it's a simple last question yes but this this big document that we're putting out along with the academic addendum part of it with the two proposals um so i

045i think i answered your question i i don't think we can do that just purely to see if it were feasible um i just feel concerned that a lot of our parents of children who are going to be most affected by this may feel excluded from it but we do what we do we do what we can and often times um good evening everyone oftentimes the district utilizes these interpreters um and they translate and will continue to translate those important documents and one call messages that go out um you know so every time that principals have been asked to send a one-call message the translators have been um asked to send that message out as well in in the language that's spoken most commonly in that school so that has been happening right along um

046and as as ms mccarron said as soon as we have some time a lot of the paper documents are also translated there also is someone that works in central registration over the summer um that will be more than able uh to have the time to translate these documents as well thank you i just don't know when when it's done and it's approved you know the window with which she has to to translate it but there is somebody available at least to translate it um because she is working over the summer catherine just asked a very good question in the chat which was on my mind too are there community resources that might be able to support this work if it is not really in i just didn't want to over talk anybody but i don't

047want to speak um organizations either but i don't know if it was neighbor works or something other sorts that have classes um that they offer so maybe because this would help the community members for them to all um understand i just wanna wondering if um i feel like there's probably someone out there who'd be willing to assist us with us to make sure that all the community has the information in a way they can read and understand and the other question i have i mean i'm absolutely certain that when you are dealing with language translation there is no replacement for a human being but are there any online tools that could be a stop gap or does that create layer of confusion well i i think and again i don't want to speak for that

048department but i know we have tried to use programs and things have come out not right not correct which is a fear because if i'm looking at it i won't be able to tell whether it's correct or not correct and so the fear of what is actually being put out and then if i'm going to sign my name to it and i don't know what it says and i don't have somebody that speaks that language that can verify what it says i'm not comfortable with that yeah i can understand that so i i think what we're saying is we'd certainly like to look into community resources if that's an option i think at this point we are putting this responsibility on the principles to try to accommodate their individual population and from a district standpoint

049perhaps we need to establish a list of things that we you know that from the administration that are district-wide that you know these are the reasons why something gets translated maybe we need to look at what are the four boxes that get ticked that say it's necessary to translate this at least in spanish i i think when i received the the ask from the community part of it was regarding um the pickup of lunches meals and maybe what you're saying now superintendent mcteeran is that there's calls going out in spanish that i wasn't aware of that are reaching the community from the principles uh my my understanding now there was a couple calls that i had put out in one call that was put out in spanish um that particular that that i do know

050um miss greebeck do you know if any calls particular i i know that there are certain schools that have a high population of spanish speaking that the principals do a really nice job they reach out to the esl department and they hook them up with the translator and then it's all pre-recorded so the translator listens to the version in english and then it translated translates it in the uh language mode spoken so that when the principal sends the one call out um it does go out in language most spoken so the principals have already met with um the esl coordinator and they are very well familiar with reaching out to her if there's something that needs to go out in another language so uh director yani to answer your question yes we do it but

051can we do better absolutely so we we can definitely do better but yes it has been done and it does happen some of the important when we were um in march when school was being dismissed uh many of those messages were going out in spanish so that that community knew that we wouldn't be in school so they were my my social media posts i can tell you when i put them out or when i'm asked to put them out and it's pretty rushed they're not so and and it's just the fact that we don't have the resources that are on hand right away that can get that out no excuse we just need to do better right okay and that's that's something we can work on then because that is what i'm hearing from our

052community is that they'd like to see that so now that we know that we can work on that i'm i'm good with that answer i was like it sounds like that could be part of your equity um absolutely right that's why director gilmartin thought it was appropriate to kind of bring it up for this meeting so that's good wonderful okay we will add it to the list there's a couple of uh suggestions on the q a bar that i'm seeing about google translate and so forth we've had some experience with that i would shy away from comfortable with that i would shy away from google translate just in my limited knowledge of spanish it does not do a great job that's a good thought though simple senses does a great job yes agreed great thank

053you very much uh director cruz [Music] hi i'm sorry i was um clarifying um we just recently purchased and i know you just already moved on but we purchased a program called boost lingo with title funds and it is a translating service so that's why i was i'm sorry that seems promising very good and what's the name of it it's called boost lingo okay thank you okay and i'm sorry are we on to a different topic now yes yeah um about the title one updates all right um i came prepared to speak about just whatever questions you guys have and we i sent you a memo in your board packets just describing title 1 allocations and i'm not really sure what exactly the question is tonight other than explaining that each you know all of

054the allocations are sent out to by building and that is done based on the data that comes from the pims pims acs report that's done in october of the previous year so that is um what i sent you in the one and then i also was prepared to talk about what the title one funding is paying for this year yes please okay so the title one budget this year is our preliminary allocation is four point eight four five eight six four million and out of that amount of money there is just about 3.5 million that is set aside into um into multiple district initiatives one of them is for homeless students this funding helps to pay for homeless uniforms and also transportation and for foster student transportation we have a set aside for professional development

055we have a set aside that pays for some central administrative staff and then we have a set-aside that pays for parent and family engagement activities in all of our title one schools okay and then also a portion of that is also um salary and benefit differentials this part's a little bit confusing to explain oh and also for preschool for for teachers and paraprofessionals for preschool all goes on that side the other part of the staffing is we are 19.3 reading specialists in the district we have six math positions and we have two guidance constants and we have one assistant principal and then we have um one we have um three different people who are are partially paid for ell peras the money is going back into classroom to support reading and math and well-rounded education

056what's up doll can i ask you a couple questions absolutely hi michelle hi how are you um so the i have a vague understanding of a 0.5 math interventionist and a 1.7 reading specialist um can you explain that a little bit i mean i know is it based on hours or is it like based on you spend one point seven of your day there or it it it could be the the latter but it's it's not usually it is um based most of the time if you are like a point four in one building it means two days and another building it means three days um so normally it is something like that um i think then yeah that explains so it basically just tells you how many days you might be spending and you're

057kind of splitting your time between multiple buildings essentially and it could also be that there isn't um there could be there aren't a cases where there are reading specialists who are full-time in a building but they are only split funded so it means they are let's say 0.7 paid out of title 1 and 0.3 paid from another source uh you move the general fund okay and then um follow-up questions i'm sorry it doesn't necessarily mean the job is different they could still just be right okay cool um so then follow-up to that the split between the buildings is that just based on the number of title one students or is it also tied into pssa scores and who would need uh more assistance in reading versus math you know that kind of a thing or

058is it or is it just based on title one population um that's a good question and it's a little bit of both so your first part of that would be um the money is based on the amount of low-income students in the in the school and so when you say title one population that's a little bit of a misnomer because people in their minds think title one poverty which is sort of true but not entirely so um when i do it i sent you guys in that memo i sent you a chart and it ranks the schools based on their income levels and in that chart so let's just say i put in 100 students at one school and 80 of them are low income well that's an 80 poverty school it doesn't mean those

05980 percent of kids are being pulled out of the classroom for any kind of service it just means that those the students who are generating funds and then um now that we are school-wide all students are title one students so it doesn't matter you you cannot be identified as being title one in that fashion so that um any student can receive some kind of service does that make sense absolutely so it really has nothing to do with title one in that regard because we're all title ones so you can split services as needed maybe based on pssa testing or yeah and there could be different kinds of services so when we say service that might look like a position but it could also look like buying computers okay and so now johnny who is maybe

060does very well on his pssas can use those computers as well as someone else so it's it's not just on that it also means that when there's one person in the building and they can't physically service pulling out more than let's say 40 students or 50 students then um the child who's in between on the scores can also receive some kind of service maybe it's pushing or pull out or whatever so it's every child can be serviced okay so last question i promise so this the the reduction in preschool that the the title one dollars that had been associated to those preschool programs they have kind of filtered into i know there was two math positions posted but it has it added um or i don't know i don't want to say added positions but

061um has it been redistributed to current positions to make class sizes bigger or did it incorporate multiple things and not just people like did it add electron yeah all of the all the above yes there were as you stated a few new positions or new positions if you want to create them that way um there were also um it is also set aside for people to spend um money on things like supplies or or supportive materials and then it is also um each individual school does their own needs assessment as you stated based on scores and and data student data and whatever they point to needing many times that is math and reading also um anything that really supports a well-rounded education so um for example guidance counselors are important as health things like that

062so every school has a little bit of a different need okay thank you you kind of have to look at it as individual schools yeah that makes sense yeah thank you okay does anybody else have a thought are there any other questions i think that was a really helpful explanation thank you molly okay and i i think that leads very nicely into our conversation about a review of the job posting and exit process um dr finan and i actually wound up having a conversation about this much by accident we were on another matter completely um but i in again in speaking with miss cruz and mrs dempsey and we also uh prepared mr castrovinci with the information we were looking discussed this evening i think we just want to understand how the process works from

063vacant position to hearing on a personnel report for the board's approval so i would i think dr finan has some thoughts on this i know mr castrovinci has some thoughts on this but i i think the board would just based on some questions i'm getting i'm hearing that you are all you all are getting i think it would be really helpful just to understand what's out there what's you know are we interviewing for this are we anticipating to fill this position is this simply a situation where we host until we find that candidate with these myriad qualifications to fill this very specific role i i need some help in defining what this looks like and how we can access this information in a way that isn't overwhelming or interfering in the hiring process but just

064lets us know the steps along the way sure so i can handle that good evening everyone uh so basically when um hr is alerted that um there will be a vacancy and that's normally through a resignation retirement um you know those kinds of things uh you know we always check to make sure we need the job filled um you know we just don't assume the job needs to be filled so we you know usually check with um the supervisors to see whether or not that specific position just vacated needs to be filled if it does we post it per contract uh teachers specifically have the right to bid on positions and um regardless of qualifications or any other criteria the the position is awarded to the most senior bidder so then um what would happen

065in a situation like that we then would post the the most senior bidders position and so it's kind of like a domino effect effect and which it does take a lot of time during the summer to kind of keep track of all that and and bodies tend to get moved around pretty um you know uh there's a large movement of path where there could but once we get once we get down to there's no bids a position has been posted and all positions are posted to the scranton school district website the to the employment opportunities page generally over the summer we'll do anywhere from a five to seven day posting because we do need to keep trying to fill positions so we're fully staffed for the start of the school year um so we will

066post when the posting comes down we follow the administrative regulation that's in place i mean that's our guiding tool and basically interviews are held we're doing some interviews now via zoom because of you know the current pandemic um some interviews are being held in person and obviously in those cases where social distancing and things of that nature taking necessary precautions um the principles and the um the directors of the specific departments for which the position was posted are involved in the interviews and um recommendations to me based on the those interviews um the positions then the recommended candidates then after you know collecting paperwork um will show up on your board agenda the personnel agenda and i know we started probably several months ago including the name of the the individual that's being replaced so

067as a board you can see oh we we're hiring this person who had replaced this person and you probably can trace it back in some cases if it was due to the opening was due to a resignation you'll see that person's name as a resignation either on that agenda or maybe a prior agenda sometimes in a bid situation you won't see that because that person is still employed in the district um so that's you know that's basically this this short and sweet of it as far as uh the the job posting and interview process if if anyone has any specific questions on that i'd be happy to answer them um yes i do mr castor vinci so when a per so when a job posting okay so a job was posted and then people sent

068in their resume cover letter references all that stuff and then you look the first first step is to review all of that who they are in through paper and then once you figure out who you want you send that to the people who are on the interview board to interview them well actually actually no um director cruz the first thing that has to happen is if something opens it has to be posted and for internal applicants i'm sorry i couldn't hear director cruz my computer froze up or something okay i apologize uh mr castrovinci she was asking the process but when a position opens um within the district we have to first post internally right somebody who's already employed wants it okay well we don't you don't have an internal mechanism basically we put it

069on our website so it is open to anyone that has access to our internet you know to our website okay if if someone applies and we don't seek to interview them do they get uh some kind of notification you know like you got your resume or we're not gonna be interviewing you or they just don't hear back no we we wouldn't have the the really the wherewithal to communicate with that number of people that apply and if we wanted updates to say there was an open position kind of like the student service coordinator position that we just interviewed how can we like is there a way for us to know how many people applied and how many people were interviewed that information could be provided to the book can you provide that to us um

070after the meeting possibly sure thank you i'm curious i'm curious that um with something that you said there mr castrovici saying that the most [Music] position is that regardless of qualifications so i didn't i can't hear i can't hear director hume so i'm not sure i think she said she was curious that the um most senior position received the most senior bidder received receive the position without potential qualifications or something along those lines like whether or not right so if i'm a teacher and i possess and let's say an ell certificate and an ell position was posted in another school and i bid on it and i'm the most senior person i get that position no ques no you know no questions asked no interview no nothing does it work that way for act 93

071as well no no but but you would have to have some relevant qualification in the field to be them and and all you would need to possess is i just have nightmares all you would need to possess in that case is a teach the appropriate teaching certification okay so i guess to answer your question director human i'm not sure if this is your question but it sounds like it if there was somebody that wanted to move into a new position that was posted and they had seniority there was no way that we as the administration could stop that person from moving into that position as long as they had the qualification or the certification that was required yeah and that could be necessarily without the experience they could for instance have zero years of experience

072although they have the certification they have less years of experience than perhaps somebody else who did it i guess i guess i'm concerned a little bit about um about um that system it's new to me yeah yes it's it's the system that is in place correct it's an unusual provision for a professional position it certainly seems unusual to me mr aldi for the job postings that are in the public um are they normally do you have to send a resume and by mail or can you email like how is it set up i haven't seen one in a while well we we started uh looking at a an electronic system that a lot of districts use but once the pandemic hit that all came to a crashing halt so the current system that we have

073we accept um application materials electronically via email um you know we still get a couple via us mail and when we see do we timestamp them by any chance you know like when we received it uh we i i don't believe so i don't take possession of them my secretary does i don't i don't i'd have to check if she timestamps them i mean if they come via email it's pretty simple because it's a title but we you know we do we do accept them with as long as they're received within the posting time frame if they fall outside of the posting time frame they're not accepted okay somebody mentioned to me the other day something called the list and i'm not sure what that was but it seemed to have a kind of mythic

074quality um well i i'd be happy to speak to that previous to um previous to us uh redoing the administrative regulation there was what's called a list and every year there was the orals and there was interviews that would take place for numbers and numbers of positions uh and it was a very expensive process and there was a lot of people involved in that um and what that is no longer we we do not use that process now now we what we do is hire as needed so and our administrators principal of the building are involved um previous to this i i can i can tell you i was a principal in this district for many many years and as an administrator in my own dish in my own building i had no say or

075wasn't part of the process of hiring a teacher that was going to work for me i don't feel that that's right so um right now what we have is which if you look around in in the district surrounding us it's common practice so when a position is needed then we fill as needed and we don't have um the best way i'm going to say it is i want number one on the list um and we have a list that would have 47 people on it and what would happen over the years is those people would take jobs nobody would contact us we'd go we'd have to go through the list before we we would uh be able to offer somebody else a job so the process now is what you would think is normal is

076uh when there's a job opening we we interview and we hire the number one candidate if that candidate is interested in coming to scranton and for the hiring panel too for some of these positions um you know i know one board member is on it it's a floating position you know it's a few principals teachers and stuff like that is there a way that's for the uh that's not for the teachers right right right for that process is there a way possibly we can reach out to maybe some of the colleges to see if we can get uh maybe some professors or somebody from the u someone from mary would be interested to be sitting on on the panel i think it worked out well when we did interviews with abilities and ground which could

077be like we use kachari and stuff like that um i just feel like maybe having some outside community members like in the college and stuff like that might be you know an asset to use and see if they'd be willing to help with the process with with the process for because that we did use they were involved in the teacher uh interviews and they're no longer um are you saying for both process or are you just looking for the administrators which is an ar right now um because we have talked and this might be a good time to bring it up mr audi um right now um on the on our ar that was created before any of us um were were in charge here um we have certain individuals on that you know we

078have we have talked to you know mr audi's on our interview panel right now so you know is that necessary so i guess my question is back to the board is if it's the board's wishes to add additional people on our panel because we are looking to redo our ar and we know that that's a policy that it's an internal policy that the administrators control so um adding a professor you know to a to a principal's interview i'm just going to speak for me i don't think it's necessary but if that's what the board's wishes are and the majority of the board wishes that then we will need to know that um because we're going to be redoing that um in ar soon we can kill two birds with one stone i am a college

079professor at marywood so yeah we killed two birds one song i will say if in response to that um superintendent mccann i have expressed to you that my opinion that i don't know why the the solicitor sits on the panel frankly i could understand maybe being there to make sure it's run properly but i don't know why i would just have any say in judging candidates when it's an issue that i might not even be familiar with so um i do think there needs to be some changes and um i i think at least one of them should be that i should not participate in at least the ranking of the candidates you want me present to make sure that the process goes correctly and people don't say or do things that are on that'll

080get us in trouble that's one thing and i understand that's legitimate but for me to participate makes little sense to me so yes thank you mr roddy yes we did have that discussion and i appreciate you speaking up and i i think that mr castrovinci as as director of hr can certainly probably speak to the legalities in an interview correctly yeah i've been involved in in dozens of interviews in my career career dating back couple decades so yeah i i've been well schooled in the art of conducting interviews but again it comes down to the board wishes it's not that i don't i don't feel like you know there's anything wrong with you know attorney audi sitting in but if we can save in any way on on not paying him to sit in on

081those interviews on his time then that would be a way we could save um some additional money when i think mr castrovinci can handle that fine i i'm perfectly acceptable with that that's that was actually of my initiative to suggest what not knowing why i was being asked to participate in these right that makes sense i i think what might be helpful in looking at the administrative regulation missy is perhaps a provision that says bringing in someone with specific expertise when necessary no i may not be in the hiring of principles by educational experts but it may in however there could be a time when i mean what if we get a stem academy and we're hiring a principal there and we want to bring in a neurosurgeon or something you know i'm just saying

082don't even make sense right now but you know i think if we opened up the door for a scenario like uh coming in to talk about the other position you know that could be that could be helpful i i agree with you and again when we talk about principles i think we're all capable of of interviewing and picking a principle because that's all of our background right yeah you brought up a great point about the charity and yes we needed them because we needed their expertise so you're exactly right so if there's a if there's a defined area where we are not uh don't have the background in that area then we absolutely need to bring somebody in and that could be part of the ar absolutely yeah those are great points and that's definitely

083very helpful to us are there any other questions dr fein and i don't want to to put you on the spot but do you want to touch it all on the conversation we had about that like position what did john you've reminded the word that we were using before it i said inventory i know that's wrong position control it's called position control and actually uh mr castrovinci mentioned it we were very close to looking at an electronic system that would allow us to track from the application process all the way through the the completion of the process and filling the position and that would be uh what we talked about which is called position control there are several systems i'm very familiar with two of them i've used them in the past and hopefully when

084we can back get back to some normalcy we will once again look at doing that i know it would be very helpful to mr castrovinci and his department as well as um the business department so um as soon as we can we will um one very popular one is called apple track and it traces from the beginning of the process to all the um background checks and all the credentials it comprises that in one file and then that that we would use actually it follows the person through the entire time they're employed in the district it's a wonderful system we just haven't gotten there they're not terribly expensive i i think we will be able to afford it hopefully at the time and there are some good systems to put in place there's a lot

085of work that will go in to get all the processes in place before it can be fully operational but that's a goal that we have mr castrovinci did you want to say anything i know i'm familiar with apple track we actually use it at the consulting company i work at um it's really excellent no i mean i i'm familiar with it um from both applying on it and also um you know seeing the presentation as using it as an administrator and it would be great would be a ton of time saved in the hr office with you know passing papers around back and forth um but it's a very a very efficient system and i agree i didn't think it was very costly but that's a goal yep we've identified a lot of those this

086evening thank you but i just to recap i i think at any time any of us are able to visit the website and see what job postings are up there but if i'm understanding everyone correctly we would just like somewhat regular whether it's weekly bi-weekly in the packet leading up to our our voting meeting you know whatever you think is appropriate missy uh mr castrovinci just a recap of where we stand with all of these and as director mcandrew said number of applicants a number of those interviewed if we can just get that information on a somewhat regular basis i think that would be helpful okay okay very good now uh the um exit process we did ms cruz do you want to touch on that briefly on the conversation we had with mr castrovinci

087you are either muted or somewhat frustrated yeah yeah i'm muted okay there i am um so um immediately following um our last meeting in june um where we furloughed um the six um behavior behavioral texts at monticello we started receiving emails from um teachers there as well um and different people associated um you know just saying like how could you do this during a pandemic um and so we were just wondering what is the process of um once people are furloughed or terminated what resources are given to them in terms of like do they retain their benefits for a short period of time and then are they directed to where they could find a similar position or or just trying to trying to make this this very you know unfortunate situation so much somewhat softer

088for them because we assume this is going to continue to happen yeah i can i can give you some information and obviously if there's any questions i'll i'd be happy to answer them so when the administration when the board approves the furloughing of positions and and we know which people are going to be impacted they're notified they're um promptly they're given information about how to apply for unemployment compensation when you apply for unemployment compensation you automatically get hooked up with i think it's called careerlink which you know is the job um site and some services to try to find re-employment as far as health benefits you know we try to keep them um in place for as long as we we can contractually um we we cannot you know keep them in place if the

089you know the employee is not due then so the con what what's nice about what could what we should try to look for with our contract is uniformity because in going through this i found that there's there's some contracts that um maybe if if you were furloughed your benefits ended june 30th but in another situation in another contract your benefits may last another month or two so you know it makes it difficult for you know the hr office and also the business office to implement contracts when there's different start and end dates and there's there's no uniformity so that's something hopefully we could try to correct as we go you know we go through this process um so are there any questions about um the furloughing process and exiting yeah yes are um furloughed employees

090are they notified um through a phone call or through like a written letter um you know the pandemic has has made it difficult what what we normally like to do is face-to-face meetings and talk to people but in this situation it was very difficult so in some situations um it was a hand-delivered letter and it was explained to them in in other cases it was a phone call but the best best situation is if we can is face to face yeah do we have and then how long how long do they keep their own how many weeks do they have unemployment come do they get like a severance package or just the unemployment compensation lawyers we don't offer severance packages but um they can apply for unemployment if you're furloughed generally you're going to qualify

091okay thank you yes um sorry if i'm being repetitive do we have an actual exit interview format whereby people are asked [Music] for us or any of that kind of information gathering you froze up when you i i apologize i didn't i didn't hear director hill sorry do we have a an exit in exit protocol whereby there is a questionnaire they fill in or an interview whereby we get feedback about their impressions of the organization and the way they're left i'm i just ask i have no idea if we do or don't yeah we today we have not implemented that kind of a system but we do have what we call an exit interview and we we meet with employees and we go through um any kind of any kind of you know personal day

092payment they would get sick day payment health benefits that kind of thing i was thinking more of um both for their benefit but also gathering information about us sometimes the person on the way out could be franker about work and don't work than others sure yeah there's and there can be a lot of a lot of uh information gleaned from those kinds of interviews mr mr castrovinci once a person is notified i know it's tough now with the um with the pandemic but are they like for instance if they have a desk within for their job or or if they have access to um databases are they given like like are they given like well you have like 20 minutes to leave your office or you're given this time to leave your office or click

093like something like that well i don't think we've we've had run into that situation yet but but typically yeah we would work with an employee and allow them time to you know get their belongings but i don't i don't believe we've run into that situation yet okay thank you mr mr castrovinci in the um in the furlough process are our potential furloughs or departments notified before it's presented to the board and voted on or is it kind of they find out about it as we're voting they find out about it after the board votes so if they're watching they learn that that they're they could potentially be furloughed there's no like employer in the recent situations that that's how it occurred is there a way to give them a heads up that i say like

094maybe a week or two in advance i i think this is a good opportunity for my apology for this situation i i take complete responsibility for the fact that the special ed plan should have come through or the monticello plan rather we had reviewed the special ed plan prior to that which i think did lead to some of my confusion that absolutely should have come through a committee meeting or at the very least a work session and it was totally an oversight on my part i don't think it was anybody's effort to to do anything quickly not take it through the the proper process i i really do believe it was probably a pandemic related symptom i i think we'll keep discovering those but i i mean i i certainly do want to take responsibility

095i absolutely should have thought that that shouldn't have gone on the agenda in that way and i i am very sorry i don't think that would the normal course of action i was going to say that that answers my question so potentially this would have come up during a work session or a committee meeting prior to a board meeting so it would have kind of been out there as public knowledge and i i think to me to mr castrovinci's point earlier it may not have come down to the particular individuals but it it would have been at least the concept coming out there and you know i think that is the the very challenging nature of what we do here because of course there are plans that come before us and it has to happen

096in a public meeting which is the right way to do this business but it also gets a lot of information out there in perhaps not the most tactful and compassionate way well mr aldi you can correct me if i'm wrong but i think normally the board as katie is saying the board would vote on eliminating positions yes you're you're right right mr kester typically the normal procedure would be that the board would authorize the administration to look into the need to furlough or if the if the administration comes to the board they would have that authorization and that would be public and then typically what normally happens i could tell you in other districts is that um once you get through the bumping process and you know you you you then have to determine who

097it is exactly that will be going they're usually told they're usually you know the hr director or someone will usually go in and talk to them and then it will be um taken to the board usually very shortly thereafter because um that's just frankly um the way that it goes employers the history has been you don't want to play an employee who has a grudge or is upset necessarily staying at that workplace for a long time thereafter i don't mean to be harsh about it but that is we have to worry about all those matters in this kind of new world that we live in so that's typically the way that's done and the question that happened that was posed earlier if someone does have access to data um usually the very minute that they're

098told that access is taken away from them because at that point anything could happen so that's usually the way it's done it's not a pretty world but you try to give them as much notice as you can um realistically and then obviously once they're once the board takes its action whatever contractual provisions that they're entitled to such as buyout of sick leave whatever it is then they would get that as well and um they would get their cover notice for their purchasing of the insurance at the rate that the discounted rate that the district pays thank you thank you for that mr adi that's actually why i asked mr castrovinci about that because i known a different um companies where once a person was let go they were given a certain amount of time to

099take their personal belongings in order to prevent them from tampering with or deleting company data and those sorts of things you know so thank you thank you mr castrovinci you're welcome uh mrs dempsey policies policy so i don't um i sent out an email just to see if anyone was intrigued or had any questions regarding some of our upcoming second reads so policy 146.1 it's our new policy regarding our trauma-informed approach in the classroom so it's addressing the effects of trauma to meet academic behavioral and professional needs of students and staff so um you know as long as there aren't any questions on that i just wanted to touch on each of them individually gender identity policy 253 this is again a new board policy outlining our belief that a school culture that supports student

100achievement respects the values of all students and fosters understanding of gender identity and expression within the school community is a safe learning environment um and then the last policy policy 304 i sent everyone attachments uh mr castrovinci can maybe speak to them a little bit but it was more of an update to the employment and district staff where some of the attachments that were used um the rubric and stuff the kind of the hard copies that were used regarding personnel and hiring are just being pulled out of that administrative regulation i believe so john i don't know if you really want to touch on any of those if anybody has any questions i guess would kind of be a way to start that conversation if anyone is concerned i think there's four ars that we're

101pulling out of three or ar 304 and they're they're basically just like internal administrative you know record keeping documents that we really just simply use email anymore to communicate the recommended candidate you know to communicate who was interviewed to you know communicate those kinds of things you know they're just forms that we didn't feel we needed to pass papers around anymore like this agreed do have one quick question because those are administrative regulations do we need to vote on that or is that simply within the purview of administration make that change right normally we do not vote on um right and rate of regulations you don't need to vote on an administrative regulation 304 then can come off the agenda for next week or whenever this is on the agenda later at a time whenever

102yeah the attachments attachments could be standalone administrative regulations they could be also attachments to policies but 304 the true blue powers right yeah i think the changes too policy 304 was being adjusted to remove the three more ars i believe oh well language that refers to them is that what you're saying i they were attachments on bert correct me if i'm wrong but they were attachments on the 304 policy and the attachments were listed as ars which some ars are and some ars are documents that stand alone but some of them are attachments to policies that's the only change there's no voltage change in 304 but 304 is a policy right right but we but but bert what they're asking is there's no change in the language in the policy 304 so we do not

103need to vote on this because all is we all we are changing is the ar so there's there doesn't need to be a vote unless there nee and i guess i guess i'll ask mr audi do we need to vote to eliminate an ar that's in a policy that's an attachment to an a two-way policy no right i mean i'm i'm saying no administrative regulation right that's attached to a right as opposed to a board policy which of course needs to be voted on right so the elimination of that ar attachment in the policy does not have to be voted on that's correct right okay very good okay thank you very much um before we adjourn i do have just a few quick uh we've been referring to them as housekeeping i uh you all

104received in your email two letters one pat do you want to quickly describe the esser funding and the recommendation from hasbro and well perhaps you can mrs yani were in touch with pat that letter certainly uh yes katie uh sharing your board packet um the final a final ruling on the calculation of public technical services uh has been issued last month or this month stating that the total non-public enrollment not just title and eligible student enrollment should be determined the non-public equitable share initial estimates provided by pde utilize non-public title enrollment similar to how the ssd total cares funding was allocated to calculate the non-public share um those estimates with title one eligible being the factor had a non-public share about 2.78 or a hundred and ten thousand six hundred eighty five dollars under the

105new ruling the equitable share on total enrollment uh would increase to approximately thirteen point five percent or five hundred and thirty seven thousand five hundred one dollars an increase to the ssd of approximately 427 thousand the department of ed is accepting uh public comment on the ruling for 30 days and i believe that closes on july 31st uh i what i sent the board in its packet was a comment issued by pennsylvania association school business officials um in opposition of the ruling and supporting the allocation of those dollars based on the title one enrollment and they provided a template for school districts to to submit as well um for their input and to post to the to the department of ed's website me sorry pad am i correct that the administration is submitting comment and

106uh mrs dempsey and mrs yanni you felt that it was important for the board to back that up as well uh yes we've we've uh you know we've completed the the template um from the administration and just wanted to make the board aware in case there was any concerns so mrs dempsey adjusted that to reflect that it was coming from the board and as long as we have consensus i can circle back around with you all as we've done before for signatures and yeah i just wanted to it's it's not necessarily required of our our school board but i did think that it you know as much public comment we can as that we can submit um in our favor and in the favor of all public schools um you know this is a disproportionate

107amount of dollars getting sent to non-pubs and so you know i i'm here because i believe our children earn that money and deserve that money and so i felt that maybe if we could as a board of directors send one on behalf of um of our group in support of admin in our district we appreciate that and yes it is it is uh disheartening to think that all of the non-pub children would qualify but that isn't fair um when it's not the same for ours so thank you for that support and yes any anything that we can voice in response to that and anybody who's listening um that wants to voice that too uh we'd appreciate that and can i also say um mrs gilmartin had also sent me through um the action network that

108anyone that's watching this can also um send a form letter to their representatives to kind of voice their own concerns um you know senator casey etc will receive it and um you can kind of vote voice your own concern individually if um if you wish through the action network right and if or mr laffy if you could just for anybody who's listening kind of put it into layman's terms for the public um what the effects what the loss would be to our school um i think that's what i want to make clear the ruling increased the allocation from and ten thousand six eighty five again these are approximate uh to five hundred and thirty seven thousand five hundred one dollars or four hundred twenty six thousand eight hundred and sixteen dollars okay thank you and

109and just like pat yeah and pat had said these are not additional funds that they're pulling from these were the original cares esser dollars that were intended for our district that this interim final rule is now kind of backtracking and adjusting and then taking that money that we had kind of assumed we were getting and shifting it um elsewhere and and we were lucky that we didn't spend it right right we're very happy to decide yeah well yes so so we need to fight to keep something that we thought we were getting already correct right and i will tell you having worked in uh title one um programs about 50 years ago this is a very slippery slope it has begun a trend that is uh taking money away from public ed and giving it

110to private private schools that has never happened in the past and it is a very slippery slope so i applaud you for standing up public education because our students need it so thank you and thank everyone who's on the call who wishes to contact our uh congressional representatives in washington it makes a difference so thank you missy are you aware maybe pat you know is there any information on our website on our facebook page about where people can contact i don't believe that there is right now we can try to um there's information we can share yeah that the information that you have we can get to and put it on the web page and then our correspondence is a follow-up to the information or the the letter that mayor cognetti has penned in collaboration

111with a task force of education and medical leaders um and some public officials in the community missy and i participate in those bi-weekly meetings they have penned a letter advocating for five million dollars of additional funding from governor wolf and uh in in speaking with some people who know how these things work it was suggested that we would send a follow-up letter obviously acknowledging this very kind gesture on the part of the mayor and this task force but also highlighting a few other things that are a bit unique to scranton so you've all had that circulated as long as everyone is comfortable with us following up on the mayor's letter in this way again i can circulate for signatures tomorrow and we can get that on and get that on its way i was in

112touch with mayor cognetti today and she said that she anticipates that her letter would go out i think today or tomorrow absolutely i think it's a great great idea you know uniting as a city that yeah together uh and then our next item are our upcoming meetings after this evening's meeting um this is or i know you'll be advertising we will have a budget and finance committee meeting we will begin august 3rd with that so that mr laflin can review in detail the proposed preliminary budget that is available for public review on our website and also mr laffy you are planning to take it to the albright memorial library tomorrow you were in touch with them and they do offer some limited hours so you know it might not be as easy access as it

113was in the past but it will also be available for public review there correct yep that's correct so we will get an overview of that on the third obviously you all have access to the document now we can you know ask any questions we may have at that time and then we will have our special meeting that will begin with a review of the reopening plan um each department head will review his or her section of the plan we will of course hear public comment we will be we will not be voting on the pool that evening that will be it is looking like the 10th um if all goes as planned today which we all know is up for debate but then we will vote to accept the proposed preliminary budget that evening um

114missy and i talked a bit today about some other ways that we might accept questions about the reopening plan as you mentioned earlier the plan is to post this plan prior to the meeting so that people will be able to do it in writing before we get the presentation um but i discussed with missy that the board does have an email address that we use to share our press releases and information out and we would be happy when we advertise this meeting and share the information to share that address hoping and asking that the community once they have reviewed the plan could submit any questions that we will then work through ms fox and i both uh use that account we would then work through and develop frequently asked questions that either can be addressed

115in the presentation or if there needs to be a follow-up document and that could also include anything that comes forward in public comment that evening oh i think i got it i i think it's important director gilmore and i think it's important to note that we will um put this out and and are taught we do have a target date which unfortunately i'm not going to say right now because then everybody's going to hold me to it it'll be headlines in the paper tomorrow so um we do have a target date to get this out which is several days before monday um and i'm hoping that the the public will take some time because it's a very large document and we will not be able to go line by line so what we will be

116giving is a summary of our health and safety plan we will have two proposals for the board to consider um and again a a hybrid and a virtual um and we will go over those like i said in summary form but i'm hoping that the public will take some time to review those documents which is why we put want to put them out then after the meeting on monday um the following week we will put out a survey where the community can vote on proposal one or proposal two um we will provide that feedback give me the right block and put the extension cord in the window sharon please mute uh the community will then be able to vote proposal one and proposal two and we will provide that as uh feedback to the board

117for the board's decision on august 10th and then on august 10th the board should have enough uh feedback that we are able to you are able to make a decision so that's that's the timetable um that i'm hoping um will work out and i also want to clarify i think i mentioned it but just to be crystal clear we will take public comment on the proposed preliminary budget that evening as well after the budget and finance committee meeting that will be a topic on which we will vote and so of course people have the opportunity to comment on that matter at that time as well will there also be public comment on august 10th are we assuming it is a voting meeting so obviously we are hoping that we will be able to address any

118questions or concerns but you know any voting meeting does include public comment okay okay with that i believe i'm looking at my scribbled notes in the corner of my the side of my paper here i believe we have addressed everything so i will entertain emotionally adjourn thank you bye good night