001audio test audio test are there any announcements uh yes there is one announcement today kicks off the first day of national bus safety week held during the third full week of october each year national school bus safety week is an active public education program and an excellent way for parents students teachers motorists school bus operators school administrators and other interested parties to join forces and address the importance of school bus safety designed to promote school bus safety school districts throughout the country observe school bus safety week and today we'd like to send an extra special thanks to the springford drivers who safely transport students to and from school thank you mrs zazelski is on zoom this evening we are going to move into public to be heard on agenda items only as a reminder masks
002are still required this evening the springford area board of education believes the community has the right to bring before the board issues and concerns they may have about items on the agenda or about things in general which affect the district or their children at the beginning of each board meeting the springford residents will have an opportunity to share concerns and comment about items on agenda items only each community member on zoom and in person will have up to three minutes in which to address the board prior to adjournment there will be an additional opportunity for the community to comment publicly again each community member on zoom and in person will have up to three minutes in which to address the board please note as in past meetings um we will do our best to balance
003comments from in person and zoom callers this meeting is being filmed to be broadcast on community cable channels and online individuals intending to speak to the board should be aware that they are being videotaped we respectfully ask that those individuals in attendance this evening are respectful courteous and civil during public comment and throughout the meeting i'd like to begin with public comment in the room are there any public comments in the room on agenda items only no rich do you have any comments on zoom michael lebedinski you may now make public comment please state your full name and address and your public comment to be heard hi can you hear me yes this is michael oginski 2005 will overdrive in rorysford commenting on agenda items 3a and 4i on 3a would appreciate some clarity on
004the scope of the initiative that's going to be discussed tonight clarity is needed for several reasons one of which is that the communication on the district's website is consistently inconsistent for example the springford website refers to the committee as the diversity and inclusion committee however the banner on the district homepage states equity diversity and inclusion in that order the policy that was passed last summer is called edi the youtube video linked from the district's website says edi and the link on the springfield website that redirects to the pa school board association statement on critical race theory euphemistically referred to as cultural responsive teaching focuses on equity quote equity based initiatives unquote however it's nice presentation who will hopefully get some clarity on the scope as well as visibility to the survey data which concluded that
005the springfield area school district is exclusive inequitable and discriminatory in the last board meeting several board members stressed the importance of surveys and data in shaping the district's programs so i expect that they will be equally insistent to see the survey data substantiating this program regarding 4i quarantining of healthy students in our district the montgomery county health code defines a quarantine as quote a selected partial limitation of freedom of movement determined on the basis of differences in susceptibility or differences of disease transmission in which the designated to meet particular situations i'm sorry i'm going to pause for a moment could you please um clarify what item you're speaking to at this point 4i uh yeah there is four i there there is no foreign for our board and committee reports yes during the september 27
006board meeting at the one hour eight minute seven minute mark seven second mark mr rizzo said there'd be a meeting with chief warrior on thursday september 30th and he would report back in the next communications it's agenda item 4 superintendents report in the in the september 27th meeting said that he would be reporting back in the next superintendent's update which is today well yeah and listen i i would suggest that you speak to that at the second public comment i don't want to begin a practice of anticipating what will be in somebody's report i'd rather be spoken to at the second public comment i'm not anticipating it was mentioned in the last meeting that there would be an update in the next board meeting which is today sir he hasn't given the report yet so
007let's wait to the second public comment thank you steve f you may not make public comment please state your full name and address and unmute yourself can you hear me yes good uh this is steve fry 1711 brook drive royford in regards to agenda item 3a i've looked at the steve please remove yourself i think you unmuted me and muted him so can you hear me now yes okay something happened um how far did i get your start at the beginning all right so i've looked at the edi related content referenced on the school website as well as the educational curriculum of a university with which the school has a relationship there's no doubt in my mind that there's an intention to push activism with very prescribed viewpoints through the schools and on to the
008students with that in mind there are several points i hope will be covered in today's edi presentation first activism has a purpose and that purpose is defined by somebody and that purpose will be facilitated by the content of training materials curriculum and ideas shared with the students it really should be made clear to the community who is defining and influencing the materials school will be using second many resources at the school has provided as reference materials embrace concepts like whiteness and white privilege the eei program seems heavily influenced by the concept of identity-based privilege one of the resources provided as teachers and students to make a list of their identities and then list the privileges associated with each of those identities the concepts of whiteness and identity based privileges are certainly a part of critical
009race theory and related areas of study i'm hoping we hear during the presentation how much of edi's based on critical race theory philosophies i also hope to hear how edi with its emphasis on membership in a global community applies concepts like white privilege in other regions of the world such as china or north africa i'm also hoping to hear some discussion from the program leaders about the questionable actions and statements of edi programs in workplaces governments and universities and why they believe the underlying thought processes revealed in those situations are appropriate for k-12 schools and lastly there are many first-hand accounts and media stories of employees facing silencing or severe discipline or simply voicing disagreements with aspects of corporate edi programs i'm curious to hear if the leaders of this edi initiative believe that programs
010or ideas which have value or overall good intent would need to silence threaten attack or punish people simply for voicing concerns or disagreements with that said i'm very appreciative that the members of edit are coming to speak thank you for no further hands raised thank you rich we're going to move ahead then um there are two action items on the agenda for this evening um action items a and b do i have a motion so moved second are there any questions or comments i think um fairness to everyone that there should be some overview of what these two notions are the two a and b what what what we're approving mr rizzo it's it's colleen can can everyone hear me i'm asking mr hunter to provide overview okay i can't see is he coming up
011to the microphone now or yes he is okay sorry about that sorry tom i was looking at for you yes action item a uh we are currently uh having issues with staffing contracted services this was a agency uh first for custodial non-professional staffing that we found that are going to be able to support us we're using this uh for an hourly rate for custodians uh in the vacancies right now that we're staying for for interstate maintenance this is going to be a one-year agreement we have the option it's it's for at world custodial services and we have the option to to see service whenever we get our staffing numbers back up from our contractor any questions on a uh you say the funds will come from the maintenance operating budget but that short term will
012those funds be replenished through the the contract that we have in place with the current custodial firm yes the money that we're not spending on contractor services for interstate maintenance will be used for uh precision hr's employees mr hunter could you share with us in terms of the staffing shortage how short are we at this point and and what type of operation deficiencies do we have in terms of our custodial staff we are currently sure uh nine classroom cleaners and three full-time custodians uh we are making up the difference with in hours with our spring for custodial staff with overtime hours so far there's been no deficit of service we're still able to maintain our cleaning protocol it's just that we're working additional hours with spring for staff thank you very much any other questions
013on item a thank you mr hendrick could you share with us a little bit of background on item b yes during hurricane ida we had water back up through the storm water system it impacted about 1800 square feet of the gymnasium floor it started to cup well we we had a professional come out of nowhere sports floors come out evaluate the floor they did moisture readings and and provided us an estimate as you see here now for the removal and replacement of the gymnasium floor we we did a investigatory as to what the cause of the of the water situation was the moisture underneath the gym floor uh we come to find out that it's related uh to the construction project project the addition um the hallway edition uh there was a storm water uh
014retention basin uh that that still is uh collecting water off the gymnasium roof uh but it was not tied in and or extended out to the new stormwater system i currently been working with our architect engineer and our general contractor our goal is to get reimbursed for any out-of-pocket expense that the district has aside from the insurance claim uh which we we're still working on that right now right and and i'm under the impression that if this is something we don't get on top of it can get worse correct exactly the moisture in the floor we've noticed over the last two weeks that it has expanded the floors cupping so the idea is to get ahead of this now we currently worked with dr coyer and mickey mcdaniel as far as basketball and use of
015the gymnasium we have a plan worked out that it's going to be shut down for a five week to six week period for the repairs to be made thank you mr hunter are there any other questions okay we have a first and a second all in favor any opposed okay we're going to move on to presentations we have dr elaine rupert miss samita i'm i'm going to do my best here bessie toker and miss christina corey hi everyone um we'll have samita this is bossa talker go first then mrs corey and i'll finish up thank you hello welcome hi the edi committee started two years ago in september 2019 and was composed of a small number of teachers administrators instructional assistants and secretaries and administrative assistants the formation of the committee was based on district
016goals to assess recommend and coordinate activities that have a positive impact on school climate and promote diversity the focus for the first year was to develop a policy which would be the foundation of the committee during the first few months time was spent creating a safe space for members to share their why for serving in the committee and building the relationships and trust to begin having the necessary uncomfortable conversations a vision and mission statement were developed and research was being gathered to create the policy the policy was being finalized when the pandemic hit in march 2020 and was approved by the board in june the 2020-2021 school year was difficult the time and energy needed to move this committee forward was being consumed by the challenges brought on trying to educate students in a virtual
017hybrid and in person setting training teachers in canvas and other technologies and supporting one another during a tumultuous school year there were small steps taken during 2020 2021. some alumni from the class of 2012 had reached out and asked how they could help the edi committee we spoke with approximately 10 springfield graduates who wanted to share their experiences as students here in springford in the spring of 2021 the student subcommittee of edi and some of the alumni put together a q a session for current high school students later in the spring there was also an opportunity for high school students to ask questions of mr rizzo dr murray and mrs lease student participation was voluntary and offered to students who participated in the social justice club cultural awareness club diversity club gsa club and now
018club the professional development subcommittee headed by dr patchke and dr whitaker held focus group sessions after school for employees who wish to participate the community subcommittee developed an online presence on the district's web page and the virtual multicultural day was held at the 56th grade center the curriculum subcommittee has worked to gather research and tools that would assist teams in evaluating the equity and accessibility of curriculum and materials through the edi lens the goal of this process is to enhance our current system of curricular evaluations rather than replace it the curriculum subcommittee's plan is to have a set of recommendations that would be based on research and best practices and will be shared with the curriculum and technology committee for feedback before being finalized and implemented for the 2022-2023 academic year what became clear is
019that despite our efforts we needed guidance on how to move forward and in june 2021 a consultant was selected to assist the committee in early august 2021 the consultant met with the leadership team and some members of the edi committee to introduce himself and to listen to our thoughts concerns and questions the edi committee has doubled in size and is now at 57 members we met twice in september and have another meeting planned on october 19th mr wiley conducted a listening tour on october 5th and 6th he had the opportunity to meet with our eld teachers and dr moyer at brook elementary meet with the staff at upper providence elementary who voluntarily came in early to speak with him meet with administrators in each building and meet with the staff from the social studies department
020at the 8th grade center he was interviewed by doc by mr andrew rothermell for rctv mr riley also observed team building activities hosted by the senior high school 1012 resiliency and avid of edem club and qpr training at the 9th grade center he then met with eight students at the senior high school 1012 center who were recommended by student subcommittee members as being interested in participating this group of students is representative of many clubs and activities at the high school including it's a long list diversity club cultural awareness club social justice club interact club debate club women now gsa stage crew medical club spanish club fcs club resiliency and avidum distributive education clubs of america girls tennis skills usa animal rescue club ram buddies art club theater choir student government model un book club and
021yearbook both dr shelly and mrs lise were present when mr wiley met with our senior high school 1012 students mr riley concluded his visit to the district by meeting with a small group of parents who had shared their interest in serving on a parent committee the goal is to increase the parent committee to approximately 10 to 15 in number the parent committee will operate alongside the edi committee with mr rizzo mrs lease and the sub-committee chairs of the community subcommittee serving as liaisons to the district and the edi committee mr rizzo and mrs lease are currently gathering information for the parent committee and will be meeting with them at the end of october we are gathering data through skyward and the pays survey to determine areas of need the data combined with the listening tour
022will provide mr wiley the information needed to assist us with our inclusive excellence plan from this point forward mr wiley's work with the school district will be behind the scenes working with the edi committee and subcommittees and providing us with resources needed based upon the data we provide there are some items we need to improve upon to create a more inclusive environment for our students and prior to providing professional development to our employees these items will be fleshed out and communicated as we move forward in the next few months once the data is reviewed and analyzed and areas of need identified the edi committee and subcommittees will align their work with those areas the board policy will be reviewed and rewritten as needed the parent committee will work in conjunction with the edi committee mr
023vizzo mrs lees and the chairs of the community subcommittee will work directly with the parent committee our timeline is as follows october 2021 gather data november 2021 review data from subcommittees and parent committee and identify areas of need december 2021 develop our inclusive excellence plan based on data and observations of the october 5th and 6th listening tour january 2022 provide an update at the january board meeting to share the inclusive excellence plan thank you ladies if there are any questions i'll be happy to fill those a couple questions here and i'll try to keep them short it was mentioned that we spoke with 10 students from a decade ago what was the intent i guess my question is what did we gain from speaking to someone 10 years ago having uh input of students who
024previously attended springford high school i think sometimes students who are graduates and a little older and more mature than your average high school student um i think they have their thoughts together about their experience in high school and i think they're able to um really provide just a good look back on what their experience was yeah this was a very um this is a proactive group they reached out to miss lease a while back and i think one of them even talked about we had a young lady come to one of our board meetings and talk about i think this group and wanting to come and help and give back to springford so they coordinated with miss lease and they it was basically a q a and it was current students meeting with former students
025uh part of it was that little bit of outreach then was also sharing their experiences and how their time at springfield was okay that's great so what did we learn from their feedback what was their feedback and what was the ethnic breakdown of these students i unfortunately was not at that meeting yeah i was at that meegan i'll have to get that information for you i i i would say i'm not even gonna i'm not even going yeah but the takeaway the takeaway was that their experiences were they were they generally were very happy with springford but they did feel that the edi committee there was a need for the edi committee and helping to support them and it says that october was the information gathering november will be the review of this data and
026december will be the that's not my question my question is it was stated that we met with students that attended 10 years ago so i'm trying to get the feedback of meeting with those students and that isn't that part of the data collection that the information gathering that they're doing this month so i don't think they were prepared to present that probably until the review of all of the input from everybody and the december um plan sorry i'll move on to my next question but i i will get that information for you though okay okay originally we had 28 people now we've increased it and at the end of the day i'm very concerned about this we have 28 people now we've doubled that and i'm trying to understand the logic of the projected benefit
027of going from 28 people or 28 people to 57 people on on this committee i think the number is kind of some some uh members of the committee have left our district um others possibly maybe we don't know i'd rather we say we don't know yeah i i wouldn't i don't know why someone would say i'm interested now to be on the committee some have and are all of these meeting zoom or any of these in person we're uh current we met in zoom last year and we were kind of in the process of deciding if it's better to meet in person for everyone involved or if it's better to meet and zoom we're kind of in the middle of that and haven't haven't really finalized one way or another we've had a little of
028both yeah i'm just trying to you know some of us work from home for because of the current conditions and i'm just trying to understand yeah one school gets done at 3 30 another school gets you know what i mean like we're getting done at different times so we try to meet when everyone's schedule is we have the highest likelihood of people to attend no i get that my question is why was there an increase of another 29 people that's what i'm trying to understand what was the benefit of adding 29 people on mrs lease in her hr newsletter says if anyone is interested in being uh part of the committee to email her all right last question i promise so we have an edi committee and an edi subcommittee we have several subcommittees one
029is based on curriculum one is based on a community one is based on professional development and we have the students a student committee and now we're incorporating parent involvement as well so all of these committee some total 57 people all right thank you so i got a i got a bunch of questions um please in my opinion for the next time you guys present you don't need to recap the last two years because you took up majority of presentation was a recap of what we every time we get a presentation we start with the first two years of and nothing's really changed except carlos wiley came in last week or two weeks ago and had a bunch of meetings and we don't have any information yet that's what i got so far is that inaccurate
030if you're saying we're referring to the board um correct it's all part of our data collection yeah so so this group that's been functioning now for and i'll give you a give a give a pass in the covet time but going back to january of this year this group was of 28 was already functioning and meeting supposedly meeting so we just went 10 months we're still no further along we still have no information the boy still has no information and you we we were presented with some 100 000 foot level deliverables and there's a bunch of subcommittees that's what i got out of this evening so far what what is it what's the purpose of each subcommittee i don't want to know the title i want to know what's the purpose of each subcommittee [Music]
031okay so i'll go down the line the um as far as the community it's about outreach and informing parents and soliciting input from them so that's the purpose the purpose is sharing information gathering information professional development is as we go as we go through and we learn more and we gather information we want to share that with our we want to share them with our staff and at this point we are we have been building capacity we've been getting uh providing opportunities for teachers to have conversations because this is this is not an easy topic and it's it's a and while it's not a new topic for springford it is gaining momentum we want our staff to be comfortable and ready to talk we're going to next talk about the uh the curriculum committee when
032we talk about resources for students you know are there resources that are missing from our curriculum that could help connect um diverse students with with text so do we need to enhance by providing supplemental resources what other type things in the in the curriculum subcommittee do we need to consider and share with our regular curriculum our curriculum and technology board committee um what am i missing students yeah soon the student committee the student committee simply put is is talking to students and hearing about their experiences um providing opportunities for them to come and share and share safe space and have a conversation about how their experiences are going and get their input about how they could how they could um or just give input on their on their community and their culture and then the
033parent committee which is brand new that has met once is by getting their feedback and sharing information and allowing them to be part of the processes we build to enhance transparency and and get as many stakeholders as we can so that's you know that's kind of what the five subcommittees are for and as far as from january to now uh if you recall back in january i understand i appreciate i i appreciate the concern for the amount of time but since january you know we were gradually bringing kids back into school covet was still at that point we were just starting to bring secondary students back there was a lot going on and this is above and beyond the teachers regular work day which is arguably inarguably the most difficult time of public education that
034our teachers ever face so it has taken us some time to get some momentum but it doesn't mean we're not committed to the work and it doesn't mean we're intentionally dragging our feet the work is about looking at our data which we have shared it's about looking at our data and identifying are there areas of concern and if there are what's our plan to remedy those so yeah we're giving you a hundred thousand view viewer view right now because we're collecting data but it's not about me analyzing the data or mislease analyzing the data it's about us empowering teachers to analyze the data and having parents take a look at the data and having conversations around that so there's very specific purposes it's evolving as we go boy that would have been great to be
035in the presentation this evening that was that was a great explanation so thank you for that you're welcome um so what's the difference between the parent group and the community group well the community group is a subgroup of teachers talking about how to commute how to again how to work on communicating and sharing information the parent group is truly that it's a parent group of outside people that have an interest in the work or have an interest in hearing more about the work so what are we going to what are we going to share with the community and the from the community group that's from teachers so if i may um here we go this committee started out kind of overwhelmed and uncertain where to even begin when it was nine of us around a
036table and we we gained a little bit of momentum in the very beginning and as we spread the word just verbally or through mrs lee's hr newsletters to staff we started having deeper conversations about potential needs and gaps regarding equity and inclusivity in our district and we kind of decided that we could divide and conquer hence the subcommittees cova definitely threw a wrench in our plans for sure but overall we're trying to go slow to go fast and i don't want that to get lost in the shuffle because we want to make sure that we are really inclusive and equitable for all of our staff and our learners specifically so by breaking down our responsibilities in this edi committee we are hoping to hear as many voices as we can we are hoping to collect
037very thoughtfully to make sure that the data we're collecting is genuine and can be applied for our students and our community to be very effective the first time we're hoping to not hit any major speed bumps and realize that we should have done something differently so that kind of summarizes our timeline that we're just trying to do things well what data are we analyzing we are going to be the student subcommittee is working on reaching out more to students in our buildings right now because their student voices are really our driving force as to why we're trying to make our education stronger for our students we are going to be analyzing their feedback what gaps they felt and gaps in our curriculum so as a part of the curriculum subcommittee we are looking at how
038we can look at our evaluation tools when we are going through traditional curricular cycles there has been a lot of growth in sel that is a new buzzword but just as we are evaluating all of our tools that we are socially emotionally relevant for students we also want to be equitable and inclusive as far as diversity race even medical needs and things of that nature so the curriculum subcommittee is working to build strong evaluative tools moving forward that as we pull new items in they are as equitable and inclusive as they can be is there one thing that we found out so far that that we know from mr wiley being here anything is there one thing one opportunity one opportunity for us to address we're still collecting data again i mean should we be
039prematurely sharing data i mean can i i look i looked at i looked at um september's data that was pulled i mean i looked at the raw data and are there are there some area yeah i mean but should i prematurely share data i can tell you over the summer the one thing that i did over the summer was i looked at our ap data and i shared that with the board um the percentage of our students that are um you know the percentage of our students took ap courses relative to our enrollment right and and i saw that generally speaking they were fairly equal for the 2020 2021 school year so that i could share with you the liberal because i share that with the board um we can tell you that you're saying
040that we're inclusive with our ap courses then i'm saying for the 2020 2021 school year we are i didn't do it i didn't go back more years than that but but i looked at the number of the the percentage of enrollment and ap courses compared to our overall percentage of enrollment nice that's the number that i saw all right whatever okay so that's that's a deliverable if you will that's i mean i guess the there's stuff that's happening you're finding out you're hearing stuff and i don't want to wait for some big package of information to be presented we if you look at that data you could sit there and say as an example as we're looking at data as an example over the summer one of the things we did was we looked at
041our ap enrollment and what we noticed with our ap enrollment was percentages lined up pretty equal to our percentages of student cultural break however we want to call you know lay it out right yeah so so that's like one thing that's encouraging that's actually already happening and i would say to your to your point and the reason why it sometimes takes some time oftentimes we have that i'm going to do it myself thing and this is not a do-it-myself thing this is a having other people do the work together and having conversations around that does take time so yes we will we will have a trickle release of information instead of one big full-blown presentation so that we can kind of see that we are making progress and moving forward and that's that's what i'm
042trying to get to because it's like there's the community at large is hearing all about spring forge doing this edi stuff and there's now we have 57 people involved and you know as a board we've been asking what's going on what do we know what's the deliverables what's timelines so a lot of questions would be asked so it would be good as we're proceeding forward you could sit there as we're giving updates or talking about it you're you're kind of saying here's something that we know like you know we've got curriculum that we revisit new curriculum every year right so one of the things that we could sit there and say one of the things that we're seeing in curriculum is that there is a shift from the curriculum providers that are also including additional
043tools because i i believe our curriculum department should already be all over that i mean correct me if i'm wrong i mean i would hope that they should be on top of that holy orc right so that's that's another progression that we could demonstrate to say as we're presenting curriculum we say well here with this new geology geography program whatever it's like here's some additional tools that are more culturally aligned with our uh diverse student base you know i'm trying to like show progress and success as we're moving forward um i just i wanted to just comment that i don't think we should rush ahead to try to pinpoint one issue or two issues before we've sort of implemented a process and i'll explain that i just think that the whole point of an equity
044and diversity committee is to establish a safe environment that's a large part of it um just wait let me speak let me finish okay to set a policy create systems a process to report and deal with issues um and possibly to undo bad messaging or parts of existing culture that undermine equity or inclusivity and if students and parents and families and the community and the staff the administration don't trust that there's actually a process to address these things [Music] then often they won't come forward at all to say that there is an issue we need the infrastructure we need to be thoughtful and comprehensive about creating it because a culture especially a culture that ignores or doesn't take zac doesn't take action even on little things and on maybe possibly big things maybe we don't
045have big things but if you don't um do that it actually reinforces or promotes those problems and just gives it lip service but if you have an infrastructure people feel comfortable coming forward and then we might see what the issues are so i think don't jump ahead is my advice i i never actually was like wait i never actually used awards to jump ahead or accelerate or all i said was instead of waiting for big if stuff if we're finding out stuff or we're seeing stuff or we're learning or accomplishing things all i'm saying is just to present that as we're moving forward that's all i said i just think we do have to realize that until we establish these processes or you know get a system a lot of people won't feel that they
046can come forward and that cur that's a that's a problem but miss fizzini and i i respect your opinions but you make it sound like there's no infrastructure in place now and everything we're doing is brand new and it shouldn't be the things we're talking about here should already be in place it should already be in place i well i you can disagree i disagree okay i respect that my other question here is we have a consultant at a value of a ten thousand dollar contract do we foresee the need for additional funding at this point in time for additional services are we talking about this year are we talking moving forward after this year or yes his contract is ten thousand dollars at some point in time that money would be expended so based
047on what we've done to date our projection and based on the inclusive excellent plan this is going to be delivered in january so that would be the end of his contract just based on what i know as a board member so i'm asking based on what we're doing now what we think we're going to do what we're projecting ahead do we see the need for additional funding at this point we are not seeing a need for additional funding for the 22 school year and we don't know what 22 23 looks like yet but as far as this year and in the extent of our contract with mr wiley no there would be no additional funding for that so based on this timeline we see january as the declaration date when everything will be completed and
048presented to the board i'm reading about what i'm reading if that's incorrect no i mean that that would be the development of the plan for sure the plan would be developed at that point but he would also be helping us throughout the remainder of the school year implement the plan providing us with resources to help us implement the plan as well and from his presentation i thought he was so involved with maybe assessing whether it was doing well or succeeding or not and where yeah my question is just based on the finances is what it is like we have ten thousand dollars we spend x amount of dollars to date based on the remaining work we think it's going to be done do we see additional costs that's all i'm asking i think it's a
049pretty great and i do not believe we see any additional costs at this point all right thank you so if i may just um i actually have some simply procedural and process questions so as a board member we have a certain structure where we have committees that include policy and i heard one of the goals is to come with a new policy and we have curriculum two that i feel my question is and i understand this was called under a previous superintendent but is this a board committee or is this just at your discretion to assemble you know people and then and then what bring it to the policy committee that will then bring it to the board is that it well that's correct so the edi committee is is not a board created committee
050it is a district created committee any work that we do or any any recommendations that the edi committee makes would go through the board channels if it's a policy would go through the board policy committee if it if it were curriculum and technology it goes through the curriculum and technology committee all right so just clarity because you said that after january there would be something implemented that would be based upon a policy being reviewed and presented and approved and or a recommendation from the curriculum committee that would come to the board as an action item so there would be nothing that is done unless those two channels would bring forward something at the board level correct correct i mean we'll see what's on the plan but yes we would keep you up we would want
051the board support all the way through the process yes okay so again clarity there would be no action implementing anything unless it was brought forward out of those two committees one of those two i would say generally that's fair to say um but again i haven't seen a finished plane yet to see what kind of recommendation i was just i'm asking but you're right because i can't wrap my head around we got 27 to 58 to i don't know who runs the committee i don't you know there's we do a lot here right so that's why we have these committees and i'm just trying to funnel where this is supposed to go so thank you i just have one comment which is a caution i think um i appreciate you know mr develo and asking
052for you know just updates if we see something it's a positive and and delivering that back to the board i just want to caution um the potential for kind of this um false sense of you know accomplishment right i i don't want to create an environment where from the outside looking in we're saying oh we're good here we're good here we're good here and all of a sudden it undermines kind of that building of that trust environment and that safe space right so that folks have access to if we just keep saying that we're good we're good even if they're small pieces um it may negatively impact the long-term objective so i just wanted to share my thought on that can can someone i've heard this terminology a lot now can someone board table audience
053administrators explain to me safe it space that somebody feels they can come forward with if some child who has a disability or is harassed or any sort of thing happens they feel they can or or it could be a a person who works in the district or it could be a family member who sees something happening to one of their students they feel comfortable coming forward because they feel that what they report or talk about will be handled taken care of there will be some sort of process to it that you know will actually deal with the issue and that they also feel they won't be gaslighted or just given off lip service like oh boys will be boys or these things happen or your child will get over it and that actually something someone
054will listen and there will be some type of accountable action i actually thought it was six feet with a mask on so so okay so my my point becomes because whenever i hear things like that okay so we're saying things are happening that we're not taking action on then i'm i'm asking a question i'm saying that you can't take action you can't have a system in place to take action on things until you create if you just expect people to come forward when they don't think there's a system or a policy in process or they don't see that people in front of them have done this and and had somebody take it seriously they won't come forward and actually it promotes people it prevents people from coming forward and it actually sometimes promotes bad actors
055from getting away with it more often because they think there are no consequences to it it's a cultural issue that occurs in a lot of i don't think anything about this is cultural and i don't think edi is the savior that that is an infrastructure issue if things are occurring and they're being swept under the rug that's nothing to do with edi right so let's not get confused here um i'm not confused no no no no no so this isn't an issue of sweeping things under the rug let's face it being a high school student is a challenging thing we've talked about it is difficult being a high school student more so for some students than for others and and i was in the classroom for 18 years and i can talk about 18 years
056of anecdotal data that i could share with you that there are students that go through school and they struggle and they need to know where they can go and breathe where they can go and feel comfortable where they can go and be themselves and where they can go to talk to somebody to find out what their next step should be so we talk about safe spaces we're talking about creating opportunities for students to be able to breathe talk and if they need to get help get help to know what their next steps are it's not that anything is being swept under it's not that any of our buildings are not doing their due diligence we you have set us at the table a number of times we can't fix something we don't know this helps
057them get to a place where they can talk to somebody that needs to be informed and if they have if they have somebody trusted whether it's a student a staff member a principal a school counselor that they can go to and that person can usher them in the right direction to get the help that they need if they need help then that's what a safe space does thank you i certainly hope that's happening now i'm not saying we could always get better absolutely right and everything and and again i i just would like to i'm just curious from how this is progressing and and the organization is my biggest concern is not to that this the subject matter isn't important or that we're not creating safe spaces for i understand that um so you know
058please know these questions are not meant to mitigate the the the issue or the importance it's just from a you know just trying to wrap my head around how this is proceeding and what's next and what's the plan and and that's all i can say we do work very hard to have that environment for all of our students and i can also say it's an uphill battle because we are working with young people and as many times as i personally in my job i'm able to proactively address a situation because a student shared something important with an adult i i also have said many many times why didn't you come to me sooner so and then i don't even that's not even great you know i'm trying to send the message of you know i'm
059here for you but i don't want a student to feel bad that they didn't come forward so i want that to be more built into their psyche into their knowledge that they that there is someone that they can go to and that they know who those people are and we tell them that all the time but i think there is always going to be work to be done in that area and i really do think that this committee helps with that so i don't i don't disagree that there's always work to be done and i think what i'm hearing is that it's a messaging issue because we have bullying processes in place we have we have every kind of process and procedure already in place we have counselors in place we have teachers that have
060close relationships with with students that they know they could talk with we have administrators that they could talk with i mean so there's there's an enormous structure already in place what i i still go back to and yes i agree that we could always improve but i'm kind of i i still kind of saddened that it's taking 50 now 57 people to identify something that we need to we should improve on that we should already know that because the other issue i have concerns with is that there's legal implications with all of this because a student just can't walk in and start talking to somebody and expect something to happen there's legal things that mr fitzgerald correct me if i'm wrong but isn't there concerns with student engagement and confidentiality and everything else that falls
061into that sure there's there's student confidentiality under ferpa for for for all issues now whether it triggers any sort of responsibility on us to investigate matters and the like it would depend on the individual interaction a student might have with a counselor or a social worker under the circumstances exactly that's my point is that if we're if we're doing things there has to be designated people that we have to have proper messaging so the students know to go to those designated people because exactly what mr fitzgerald just said i mean there's this camp i mean i want to give this illusion that we're going to have a room with puppies in it i mean this is i mean this is this is what people envision you know when they hear this stuff right safe space
062and everything else i mean this is this is a definitely serious situation that we got to make sure that we're already doing and we have to look for areas of improvement and if there is i don't believe anything gets swept under the rug here that when it's properly disclosed to anybody so i commend administration for trying to address every issue um things may appear to get swept under the rug but sometimes people don't understand confidentiality and legal things are associated to you know uh a person that may do something to another person so there's a whole other avenue here that we're not even we're not even discussing but so to me it sounds like what's missing in all this is the messaging because we have a lot of stuff already in place and and i'm
063concerned that maybe that's not widely known of the the the tools and procedures and everything that's already in place i do think that data collection is really actually the most important part because data is really where you make any sort of best practice decision from that and and you know you have different types of data so you have quantitative data where you are looking at test scores and demographics and comparing sort those sorts of things but you also have qualitative data which that's where we have the conversations that we're having and the meetings that we're having and hearing voices from various you know individuals and groups within our community at large and that data takes longer to collect and it takes longer to sift through and analyze and find you know trends and and needs
064and so you know so that to me is the important first step and it it is time consuming it it takes a while i'd like to thank you and and the committee that um right now um for your thoroughness and information gathering from so many stakeholders and taking the time to collect the data to assess that data and then to present a plan i appreciated the review of what had happened up that brought you to this point and i would agree that there is a there are many structures in place within our school whether it's assessing curriculum looking at um student interactions and all of that but that we continually need to assess um and and reassess ongoing of what we're doing you know our our world our society is changing and we're it's not
065so much we're looking to fix problems we have is we're looking to continually to assess and improve so that springford can continue to be the place that we want our children to be a part of so i look forward to hearing what you have to present in december no you're presenting january but with the plan in december thank you very much and i would like to second dr wright's comments i'm sitting here as a member of the board who still has family members attending springford and some of the experiences and lack of guidance that i hear about makes me very supportive of edi and you can't say well how come we need 57 people well it can't be two that make all these important decisions and the more input we can get and more discussion
066to help these kids who struggle through difficult times especially in this day and age dr eight i just was thinking mr rizzo what you were saying about how many policies you've revised in the past year that is ongoing process and that is definitely something i feel very important thank you i just had one last question and mr miss feldman i respect your opinion um but i think as the board this is a conforming board and part of our job is to ask questions okay um how do parents who are not a part of the select circle initially when mr wiley was here how do they get how do they become a part of the parent group yeah when you were asking about the difference between the parent committee and the no that's mr developer okay
067sorry sure am i speaking no okay the the yeah i think mr develop asked that you're right the parent committee versus the community committee the parent committee kind of grew from the community committee because they wanted to determine how can we start to bring you know we had the student piece because the students already attend school how do we bring parents in and that kind of came as as part of that community committee but no my question is if there's a parent that's on zoom right now and they want to involve themselves in the parent sector of these committees how do they go about doing that so their first step should be to reach out to either misleads or myself and just say they they have an interest um we are meeting again with the
068parent group um that met with carlos uh next week and part of our discussion is if we're going to expand well we are going to expand what the best way to do that is we've got a large community and you don't want the committee to get get too big so it's about the best way to do that but first step will be to let us know that they're interested thank you are there any more questions or comments i i have a question but i don't want to cut anybody off is everybody finished there at this point yeah it looks good for you mrs b okay so i just want to uh say thank you for the presentation i do think that it um it's on the national scene and it's something that we need to
069recognize here i think that the presentation did provide a solid framework and a timeline um and that it's it's something this this is something that is not necessarily going to be neat but it's it's it's important that we do put structure around it so that we can as mr schaefer said you know maybe do what we're doing and do it better um and then just three ways to mr develop said i would love for a sneak peek at different times or a little caveat of information just to kind of keep us going and keep us focused and keep us feeling that we are going forward in this process but i thank you very much for your presentation this evening and that's just my my take on it at this time thank you and thank you
070all um your questions and concerns actually do the same for us they your interest keeps us you know moving forward so we do appreciate that dr rupert miss bestoker and miss corey thank you so very much for your presentation tonight and for answering our questions and and addressing concerns of the members of the board we appreciate it thank you thank you thank you our second p presentation will be deferred until next monday october 25th we're going to move ahead into boarding committee reports um allison and adidi do you have a report for this evening we do so this is our october student representative report we're very excited we have a lot of events coming up and with that i will give it over to adidi for a recap of the last month so as for
071some recent events that occurred in our district um on wednesday october 13th the psat and nmstq exam was administered to over 800 students qpr training was provided for the 9th grade students on october 6th students did not have school for an in-service day on october 11th the montgomery county college application day for seniors was on october 15th and a fun run spirit week at evans elementary took place from october 12th to the 15th as for some sports highlights um the sf girls varsity tennis team won the pac championship and as well as their first district tournament match uh the springford varsity girls golf team won the pac championship as did the varsity boys golf team and we did have some individual victories for golf independent championship thank you so spirit week began this week and
072all the students were extremely excited about this as this marks the return to spirit week um for the first time since the pandemic began so that began this week and it will run through the 23rd the homecoming football game versus o.j roberts will take place on saturday october 23rd at 2 p.m and it will be preceded by the homecoming parade which begins at 12 p.m the homecoming semi-formal dance will take place in coach mcnelly stadium on saturday october 23rd at 7 pm uh we sold over 1 400 tickets for this event um so that's very very exciting we will have our pep rally outside and coach mcnally stadium as well on friday during 6th and 7th period at school um and the powder puff football game will take place on friday night in coach mcnally
073stadium and tickets will be sold at the gate all proceeds will go towards charity um and some more upcoming events that we have include an interactive club sponsored canned food drive that will take place all of this week and the next um spirit week is taking place at the elementary level as well with a red ribbon week at upper providence elementary evans elementary and spring city elementary as well as the 567 center there will be an in-service day on november 2nd students will not have school on that day and the fall play cinderella will be performed on november 12th and november 13th and that is our report so thank you very much terrific thank you a lot going on um two quick questions for mr rizzo um quick question about if the student wants to
074participate in spirit week but doesn't have the means do we have anything set up in the school to be able to help them yes we do and the students are aware those students are aware of that that i am not completely sure of i know the lawyer there is there are things in place though okay good and then um we're doing this uh homecoming dance outside i'm assuming they're getting their winter where it's gonna be in the low 50s what what are we doing there um because we may be protecting against culver but we're going to be promoting the full or something what we're going to keep what's what's the plan there for this for the students sure i i mean i do know that some questions have come in terms of temperature and things
075i think they're encouraging if you're going to do a semi-formal attire to bring warm clothes as well um but at this point that would be questions would have to direct to the senior administration i don't know what all those answers are [Music] yeah mr jackson did you have something else well my question was where they're based also and mr developed uh to steal your thunder no no no no that's not thunder hahaha i guess my question goes back to is there a temperature that we would look at not having the dance based on i'm looking at the weather is there a certain temperature that we would say no based on these low temperatures we wouldn't we're not going to have the dance or again i would have to defer to the senior high administration i
076would imagine um barring precipitation they would try and hold it to the to the extent possible but i can't speak to a specific temperature i will say this i do know that whenever you have a pre-k counts program and five-year-olds go outside they're required to go outside as long as it's above 25 degrees and down above 90. will we be providing any sort of heat for the students i don't think that's implants right now but i do know dr collier was looking at options i just don't know how much that would help it would help a lot well it's a big stadium okay he is looking an option so just for clarity since i have daughters i'm going to ask this question so if they decide to bring jackets four jackets or dress beyond what
077is defined now because of weather that would be that would not be an issue for them to enter i know that would not be an issue that would be what i'm encouraging my daughter to do several moms call me about that that they want their daughters they're going to wear nice dresses but if they decide to dress warmer then i believe that that's being encouraged okay all right okay questions or comments okay mrs fazzini curriculum and technology so the curriculum and technology committee met on tuesday october 5th at 6 30 p.m on the agenda there is a contract renewal for approval of one thousand five hundred dollars for tablet this is an annual budgeted item dr murray presented a comprehensive presentation on student instruction during quarantine she reviewed what we were currently doing provided feedback
078from teachers families and building administrators detailed how it was working and in which ways it could be improved she compared it to other districts quarantine instruction and then presented a detailed plan for each age group elementary and secondary on how to enhance quarantined instruction live streaming is not supported by sfva or the administration at this time for many reasons but the few main ones include due to the disruption over the past year from school shutdown fully virtual and combined virtual then in person education the district needs the full attention of both students and staff during classroom education to make up lost learning experience from last year has shown us that maintaining two environments is incredibly difficult for the teachers to manage and it produces a watered-down education for both in-class and virtual students and a
079passing passive learning experience for virtual students it also creates enormous stress for the staff because they feel they're not doing either well enough lastly evidence this year indicates learning loss happened to all kids both in-person and virtual dr murray presented an option to add additional teachers to provide a tutoring teacher option for quarantine students at a cost of 192 000 the committee had a thorough discussion with teachers administrator and board members it was agreed that we would prefer to spend any unbudgeted money on something like iready a resource that would help many more students from k-8 then spend that amount of money or unbudgeted money on a tutoring option a very limited value for a small student population the option was not supported by the teachers the administration and the board members present at the
080meeting the committee meeting and thought to be less helpful than specifically targeting recognized issues as presented by dr murray specific enhancements for quarantine education that will be targeted include k-4 access to devices um more explicit instruction and guidance on recording video lessons clarifying and re-communicating expectation of greater consistency and scheduling tutoring times for quarantined students then we met with bob catalano about technology just give you a brief update we've received all outstanding equipment for deployment so devices for grades 5-12 and cyber have been prepared and deployed grades k-1 have received their carts of ipads and additional lock boxes will be deployed for kindergarten for flexible instruction days grade two chrome tablets have been prepared and deployed grade three and four were given chromebooks and chargers for all devices k through four are being sent to
081buildings in the event of flex flexible instruction days 300 new teacher devices are in the process of being distributed and those return devices will be used for substitute teachers special ed supervisors are in the process of determining which instructional instructional assistants require device and those ias will receive a device once deployment to all the students has been finalized which probably has happened this was a week ago um lastly there on the agenda there's lifespeed alert the board was introduced to an enhancement to our web filter that increases student safety called life speed the company's compliant with hipaa ferpa ccpa cdpr and coppa and social media platform agreements and security marks mark fitzgerald has verified that the enhancement is legally compliant he reviewed the policies to assure they're worded correctly and that we have a policy
082or procedure in place to address the alerts mr catalano met with chief boyer to review this process and chief warrior said that it will be very similar to our safe to say process with some tweaking um do this due to this being a security issue i'd if you have further detailed questions i'd suggest you talk to mr catalan or chief lawyer the next meeting will be tuesday november 5th at 6 30 p.m at the district office any questions so the long and short of it is we're back we're back where we were a month ago we're still in the same spot not a bad thing but yes so uh she detailed what are you talking about specifically the quarantining instruction the proposal is the proposals are no correct correct okay all right i'm good then
083thank you you said the life speed is like safe to say or no uh that doctor boy or not stockton that chief boyer said it's that the process is similar to safe the safe to say process so with some tweaking they're going to be able to they have to make sure that all the policies are compliant and so there's just going to be a little bit of word tweaking is that correct mr fitzgerald yeah there's there's some notices that need to be developed out with regard to this technology as well as some updated policies to to reflect what will be utilized so i'd encourage and that our recommendations that needs to be put into place first before we then deploy the technology so just for clarification for the sake of the community this is a
084software that would be that would enhance kind of all of our devices here at springford um and i don't know um mr rizzo dr murray either one of you want to kind of just define exactly what it does right what is it catcher what's the purpose of it would be helpful why don't we ask mr carlano since he's the one that proposed the program well i'd like to hear from mr carlano it monitors student devices for violence and self-harm activity thank you any other questions or comments yeah i i wanted to ask this i'm not sure if i missed it earlier but the light speed and the ford guard i believe it is uh is the light speed going to replace the florida guard or does it is it is a plan for it to
085complement do we even need the sort of guard anymore with the light speed no so pauline porter guard is different it blocks uh threats intrusion um you know it's more like a anti-virus that type of thing it's it's a totally different it's also a very needed protection but it's a different thing okay i just read that i guess we've been using the florida guard and the safe to say to maybe cover these other areas that now light light speed is going to cover is that the plant fortiguard doesn't do what this does at all so they're totally different i mean this bob is not joan i have that correct correct fortigard is our firewall that has our procedures and policies in place to keep us compliant and safe lightspeed alert is an enhancement to our
086current filter that gives us the additional functionality to search for the violent self-harm terms okay any other questions or then just that um linda i think you said the next meeting would be tuesday november 5th but i think the fifth is actually a friday because november 2nd which i believe is election day would be the tuesday and um curriculum would be that night along with community relations but i would like to ask if we could move at least community relations and possibly you would want to move curriculum to wednesday november 3rd anybody have a thought on that yeah we'll have to decide tuesday i'm sorry i meant tuesday november 2nd but that is election day i'm not sure if we having a meeting if we're not having school we'll get back to that and post
087it [Music] okay well i would go next for community relations event and we did not have a meeting in october but i would like to move our next meeting on november 2nd to november 3rd so i will talk with the committee members to see if we can make that happen along with this crew who's big on that committee as well thank you thank you uh missouri policy um yeah we met um monday october 11th and um we've covered we've gotten a lot of these policies back from the the state um board of education uh where we're combining the three four and five hundred uh policies that um the 300 were based uh aimed at administrative the 400 at professional teachers and nurses and the 500 professionals they were duplicate policies so we're combining them all
088into the number 300 and putting in any um excerpts from the other the four and five hundreds that that applied specifically to those uh addressed in in those so we went through about nine of them and they're going on mrs elise will review them and then go on to the solicitor and they'll be presented in the um the november board meeting a couple other policies this isn't really policy safe to say procedures that will be brought forward for approval in november but it will not be a policy it will be added as an addendment to policy which is what's the name of that school safety yeah and then um the new pro the policy trauma-informed approach was approved uh but the program itself is not ready to to rock and roll so it's approved it'll
089go on to our solicitor and we'd like to get it approved and ready to go but the program itself is not exactly ready to go so that's about it anything else mr rizzo no you covered it thank you any questions or comments just to comment that mrs earle was an honor to be a part of that i appreciate you stepping in we had a little bit of a loss of personality at that meeting you run a great committee it's almost the best the second best third time it's third it's finance problems really goes you know and mr schaefer extracurricular i know you can yeah so we met i'm just i'm waiting for a few um written reports from administration i'll just i'll present at uh with everyone's okay at the next meeting thank you mr
090debello finance well while you're looking i got it i could sing okay no don't sing no no we're good finance committee met tuesday october 12th at the district office and attendance were committee members and some [Music] community members we did review and accept the meeting minutes then we jumped right into executive reports um from a liquidity standpoint we're at 139 million dollars compared to last year we're at 137 million so we're ahead a little bit on the cash um which it's not like it's revenue producing it's just how there's expenses that we'll be paying local revenues are tracking ahead of prior year by a couple of million due to tax revenue collections which gives the reason why we're ahead in our liquidity our state and federal reserves are tracking as expected expenditures capital purchases are
091up due to previously approved lesser-related expenditures again even though that's grant money we have to show that as an expense so that's going to show an increase in expenses uh year-to-date assessments we picked up another 2.2 million towards the end our end of year goal of 4.2 billion um so we're tracking um well towards achieving that number total assessments are up for the year 23 23.5 million real estate transfer taxes 317 000 are left to achieve our goal of 1.8 million from for this year transfers tax revenue leveled off a little in september we're ahead of average rate is about 150 to 175 000 monthly so we have no concerns that we won't achieve our our goal um i do want to i did point out at the finance meeting i'll point out here the
092reason why we're tracking so quickly on real estate transfers is because as mentioned before the county was behind it is continued behind on processing transfers so there were revenues that would have been captured last in last year's budget that we're capturing this year because the transfers were finalized and sent to the district in this this budget year so that's why we use as mr fink uh pointed out we use a five-year trend analysis and we just don't look at the previous year uh as far as uh transfer taxes because it'll be a false indicator our indian earned income taxes are up roughly uh are on pace i'm sorry or overall 75 000 over last year at this time self-funded insurance uh quarter one were below budget uh we expect average net claims is about 101.1
093million per month and this quarter average was about 1 million um which translates to about 300 400 000 on the budget as of september but again it's we just started into the school year and some of those numbers can change as we go into second and third quarter food services year to date we have served 106 000 meals versus 45 000 meals in the prior year and of course that's majority is due to students being back in school a la carte sales are up 52 000 over the prior year again due to kids being back in school our overall sales are up about 366 000 a year today cover grant activity not much has changed since the prior month the total receivables from the fed is currently 4.3 million um we're still waiting on somewhere
094around three million dollars that we should be receiving hopefully in the near future uh and then after we finished executive reports we jumped into uh some other business we did have an overview of the budget calendar which i'm sure everyone's excited to be looking at in uh starting the budget for what is it 20 22 23 school year uh we're once again we're striving to have an approval in place by the may board meeting uh the index this year is 3.4 and referendum expectations are expected to be very low this year um other than that there was a few public comments and the meeting adjourned about 706. any questions mr jackson property [Music] thank you miss melton um property was held on october 12th and i'm very happy to say the participation is growing i
095think everyone is hearing about how exciting property is and how important it is to the district and with that some of the construction updates from mcnally stadium we're looking at a completion date of november 13th uh this has been pushed off as we know throughout the country there's some shipping delivery delays and we're sort of caught up in that web so the project is uh scheduled to be completed on as i mentioned november 3rd uh one of the great things about this project it looked like we're going to save about 34 000 with the relocation of gate b great out-of-the-box thinking by mr hunter and staff we also reviewed the limerick elementary boiler replacement again delayed shipment has arrived the boiler is in place the project look look to be completed by november 1. the
096temporary boiler that was borrowed from the flex building will be returned and installed upon completion of the limerick project uh contracted staffing clean we've talked about that that's an item that's on the board for approval to utilize precision hr to provide substitute custodians on an as needed basis um also previous discuss what's the property insurance claim at the high school that's an action item for board approval and the maintenance vehicle replacement is an action item for approval replacing two vans in 1999 and 2000 and that jumps over to my second or really first first second favorite person chief warriors applying for the pde grant for safety security communication equipment 33 digital radios and the springfort police department presented three training courses for the k-6 alice updates barricade training and unstoppably practical training and that completes
097my report i would like to say as i always do chief warrior and mr hunter they are great working team they do things that this community you don't see the hard work that goes into the activities that they perform the money that they pursue um chief marty is a grant king he's just brought in so much money that this district can never hear about it so hats off to chief boyer mr hunter and sean ryan and all the other staff that keeps this school district moving thank you questions or comments okay western montgomery center uh mr develo missouri mrs zazowski not sure who's reporting no meeting okay thank you mrs earl said there was a meeting in october no there's no meeting no meeting okay no no but i will say that there we are
098we are progressing forward with hiring a new executive director so hopefully um we'll have i'll have something to report in november um as far as where we're at or offer possibly made at that point that's correct and i just want to add to that that um chief boyer has been extending himself and his staff over there to assist in the absence of solid leadership just uh there there's a lot of people that are pitch hitting right now to keep things running smoothly over there but no we did not have a meeting in october we will november thank you mr schaefer do you have any updates from psba not this evening no thank you mr rizzo superintendent's update yes thank you first i'd like to welcome dr murray to the table uh and to let her
099know that she gets to do the report next week so thank you for that um it was referenced uh earlier in public comment and i did want to make this uh they want to provide an update on modified quarantine and test to stay so just for a point of clarification the county uses the terms modified quarantine and test to stay interchangeably i do not for me test to stay is an overarching term for two things one modified quarantine and two symptomatic testing just to um just to kind of keep you and i'll get into that but i just want to make sure i clarify several weeks ago i did meet with chief boyer and our nurse departments as i told the board i was going to do to discuss what a test to stay or
100modified quarantine program could look like at springford we met and sketched out a few ideas and at approximately the same time montgomery county office of public health decided they were going to also consider the adoption of a modified quarantine so this past thursday i along with about a half a dozen montgomery county superintendents did meet with montgomery county office of public health to help shape the process now we're going to continue to meet weekly to review and make suggestions and we should be receiving our first draft of their modified quarantine protocol this week to discuss thursday we're meeting every thursday for the next four weeks the modified quarantine will work in concert with the testing programs that we've already noted in our health and safety plan which are testing out of quarantine and again test
101to stay test out of quarantine is currently being utilized but will become available at each building in approximately a few weeks the test estate program as i mentioned is sort of like a two-pronged approach identified close contacts can remain in school providing they are willing to be tested regularly in school for a time period to be determined and they are asymptomatic symptomatic students can be tested at an after hour for spring forward site if they have cova-like symptoms and with a negative test they would follow the normal sick protocol which was something we used to have before covet they would follow their normal sick protocol and then avoid isolation once they're feeling better the modified quarantine protocol may be available as early as the first week in november and again more information to come via
102the board memo and and next week i'll be able to share more information i'll let you know how that goes so that's modified quarantine um october parent center just uh we'll give you an update on that the board has really invested and and expressed a commitment to special education um the the department and students um so um please this uh join the special education supervisors this thursday the 21st at seven o'clock via zoom for discussion on the multi-disciplinary evaluation and iep process they will discuss why a multi-disciplinary evaluation would be completed and what it entails if a student qualifies for the special education for special education services through the mbe process and iep is then written they will discuss who the members of the iep team are as well as the components of the iep
103this is one of the topics through the parent survey that was identified as a high need area so this was a response to that survey lastly i have for community connection um on that same day um our next community connection will be held from 5 30 to 6 30. that's again this thursday the 21st and that'll be a brutal awakening feel free to stop by to chat about topics that are important to you and my community members can pop in anytime during that hour that we are there i'll be there and be happy to answer any questions or have discussions on any topics that are that are like i said are important to you more information was in last week's weekly update so stay tuned check that out um and again i'm here for you
104that's that's all my report this week thank you great any questions or comments mr rizzo with the test to stay obviously i i know you've breezed over at that but the testing would require parent approval or parent signature for that before testing the student absolutely would not we would not test any students without some form of consent from them uh that and they would have to register in the the the pa rapid website so they could sign up and the way the process works is they get a qr code so they scan the qr code they do the test and then and then we have the information and then we share the information with the families but yeah it would not even initiate without parent approval so if i understand what you're saying to me
105or maybe i don't but is the goal if a student is identifying close contact and a systematic we would test them with parent approval if they test negative they would stay in school yeah so the idea is that um this would be an option for parents parents could always choose the full quarantine if they wish but for parents that want their children to be in school and we want their you know we certainly want children to be in school we want healthy children to be in school so the idea is if they're identified as a close contact and they are asymptomatic meaning they have no symptoms whatsoever then at that point the parent has to has the choice to either a give consent and sign up for the rapid test or b take the quarantine
106if they choose the rapid test to stay in school then they would be tested at some interval and the reason why i say that initially the plan was like on day one day three and day five but oftentimes we find out about a student being close contact around day three or four of their quarantine so we would just test them up until that day five through seven presuming they stay they remain negative they get to continue they continue to come to come to school uh as long as they remain asymptomatic the parent have to be present during the testing or just approval the parent would not have to be present but we would obviously have to have that approval yes okay but ultimately the goal is is to keep the kids in school correct and
107just kind of just quick other question the parent advisory committee yes where are we at with that because now we're going into november that's fair um i did talk to again miss davis last week and um she is initiating contact with a parent group to help them get the the parent group set up and then once that once that group gets set up then they're going to be communicating with our special education liaisons to you know talk about programming talk about whatever their needs are to kind of help support them so it again we can't set up that parent group for them but we can help them get moving and then provide that so we did share some names and uh and that we're moving forward well we're we're going to facilitate setting up the
108parent group and to get it rolling well yeah we're going to work with them to help them get it set up correct so when it when or when will the parents be contacted they may have been at this point i don't have to check it i don't know i mean i'll reach out to ms davis to find out i thought there was already a pant group that was not connected to the district but was in existence we we do have a pro we do have the 18 program um which was um which is a parent group similar to what we i think what we would like to do with this um that has been in existence for a number of years this would just be a similar type thing yes mr rizzo on the um
109the test to stay the the tests who pays for the tests and do we have grant money or what how is that being taken that's really a good question and it is from a grant not from us but it's a grant that montgomery county office of public health received last month the board approved an mou with um with montgomery county office of public health that gave us access to the tests so can i just ask a question a couple parents have reached out to me if you have an older child who is vaccinated how does that if they are contacted as close contact that they have been vaccinated what does that mean so technically the test to stay program really applies to unvaccinated students vaccinated students do not need to quarantine they would not need
110to take advantage of a test to stay program okay maybe we should just maybe communicate that one more time because it seems like some parents aren't aware that if they notify or provide proof of vaccination they i i just heard a couple parents talk to me about that so i'm sure one more time so when i asked that question when we were starting school and i when we were rolling out and we were talking about quarantining and all that that was a question that was asked i i asked that specific question if a student is vaccinated where did they fall into that and at the time the county was not recognizing vaccination they are recognizing vaccinations now we've not quarantined vaccinated students unless they were symptomatic okay so then i agree with linda that we
111need to make sure that that's out there that if the student is vaccinated that information is shared and i would just say additionally so i would say additionally um a student that tests positive for covin after they recover um they also do not need to quarantine after 90 days you know for for 90 days post you know post copic um beyond that then they would be if they're not vaccinated they would fall under that same under that same test to say type thing we'll be quarantined [Music] thank you anything else uh yeah i just wanted to ask um i think you know mr rizzo that i was an advocate for doing something for the quarantine students um but with this modified quarantine and the test to stay programming what is the i'm sure there have
112been some discussions about what the projected impact would be on quarantining of healthy students is that something that will significantly lessen that that number because i know the curriculum didn't committee didn't want to move that forward from what i understand from the report tonight um to do any kind of live streaming for those quarantined students so is is this modified quarantine in the test to stay program going to as you see greatly reduce those numbers of students that are of healthy students that are quarantined well it would significantly reduce it because we've had really very few almost no cases of any in-school transmission so what that means is close contacts never become symptomatic they remain healthy so we quarantine essentially we're quarantining healthy kids so by parents enrolling or agreeing to this testing program healthy
113students would stay in school and our numbers would drop to almost zero okay so that that's my question because last year if i recall it was i think over 2200 students that we had quarantined at one point and we certainly don't want to repeat that this year um what are the numbers so far i i was tracking some of those in the board memo what is the number so far on the quarantine we're nowhere near that correct we are nowhere near that but we have quarantined give me one second here i'm scrolling down we've quarantined a little over 400 about 425 ish students but these plans would would mitigate that number from continuing to rise unnecessarily correct correct okay a majority of those numbers are not from close contact within our school am i correct
114on that mr ritzer um there are a portion of them are within our school then there's also community and then there is household contact right so the actual breakdown of numbers i'd have to pull that up but but you're right there is a breakdown of one of the three it really the way the close contacts are happening within our schools are either during lunch or on the bus that's where that's where you're going to see the bulk of any any kind of close contact with warranty thank you very much you're welcome nurse smith i think i see you online i am here how are you i am trying to start my video okay hello [Music] so i can answer some of these number questions um with mr rizzo's approval um but i'll start without my
115typical report since i last reported on september 20th we have uh processed 79 positive cases 61 of those were people who were in school during their infectious period so those were the people that we needed to contact trace um contact tracing those 61 positives resulted in 164 closed contacts so again those are people who were quarantined due to potentially potential school exposure which is what you were just talking about um interestingly as mr rizzo just said only four of those closed contacts ended up testing positive and each of those four had to do with a situation where they're unmasked or very close either a bus a lunch or potentially a recess um situation um of 309 students total that we quarantined over 50 of them were due to school uh being a close contact in
116school so that is the number that we're looking at being able to eliminate as far as quarantining with this whole modified test to say approach um regarding that um basically i just wanted to kind of let everyone know that the nurses do support this whole program we support keeping healthy students in school at his time we have been developing the modified quarantine process as it would look at springford in accordance with the department of health recommendations and we look forward to the update come thursday and we plan to meet with chief lawyer on wednesday to share ideas and then we'll reach back out to mr rizzo and hopefully have a more detailed report to you very soon terrific thank you any questions or comments for nurse smith nurse smith how many nurses do we have
117on staff in the district you know what's coming well you asked me a lot but we have 18 however currently two of our positions one are in position in one cs position are being filled by long-term subs so we are in the process of interviewing and we hope that in the next month or so we will be fully staffed at 18. thank you smith thank you anyone else thank you once again for joining us and sharing your report actually i have a question before she goes so in case in case trish you jump off i just wanted to ask about the whole diabetic piece that is on the agenda tonight um can you just talk a little bit about that so we have a clear understanding are you involved in that or would that question
118be better directed to mr rizzo will we get to that in the agenda it's i could probably help with that but i almost need to hear what's being said first i wasn't necessarily prepared for this question but i can stay on okay thank you thank you great mr fitzgerald do you have a report i have no report this evening wonderful okay we're gonna move on um minutes a and b questions or comments no [Laughter] [Music] personnel a through g questions or comments i i have a question about g um there seems to be a change for the custodial staff and i would expect that this would have gone through personnel rather than going right on the agenda could there be some clarification of that at all about the custodial benefits summary and making a change
119to that yes this is bob hunter um what we're looking to do is have the leave days count uh towards the 40-hour workweek this isn't support for our staff that who have been uh to also support being available to work additional hours typically what happens if someone takes a leave day that doesn't count for the first uh 40 hours of their work week so if they were able to work two nights of overtime they would be paid straight time for those two uh eight hours four hour nights that they're working the idea behind it is giving them uh an option to take the overtime and work and get paid a time and a half yeah i'm okay with that i'm just wondering why it didn't go through the proper channels i think it should have
120gone to personnel before it came onto an agenda because the personnel committee didn't flush that out or hear about this prior and typically we would when it involves a benefit summary for any of the group so i'm just i hear what you're saying mr hunter and i don't disagree with that i'm just saying that i'm asking i'm surprised to see it on here we did collaborate with the fleece on this right but we have a personnel committee on the board mr development and myself or on that on that personnel committee should this have gone through that title or does somebody else put away out on the board that maybe did it need to i'm asking the only thing i can think mrs zazowski is it is probably more of an emergency type situation given um
121shortages and staffing and and we're seeing this kind of across multiple industries but certainly it's something that we want to make sure that there's probably a rapid movement on it did get discussed pretty extensively in the property committee uh it did not go through the personnel but it did come through the committee system colleen the answer to your question is you are correct it should have went through personnel and the pros we didn't follow the right process and and hopefully in the future that the processes fall for anything like this moving forward so let's just let's admit to the fact that it didn't go through we there was we was a mess up no ill intentions were just that they're trying to move quickly and um for just all the reasons right yes that's that's
122fine and i get that it could have been an emergency and it may have been flushed out in property i just know that we're trying to give some attention to structure and so that's one of the pieces so moving on move on i agree with you okay um finance a through j questions or comments yep i have a question on a um that 7900 for the for that other capstone that was not included what can that be clarified what that is in addition to the 84 000. i'm sorry could you repeat what number you're looking at please a fight x a no i'm sorry it's not it's um d1 sorry it's not a it's b1 do you like david1 yes thank you so so with increased students come you know come increased and changing needs
123so this is just to this is just to add that service correct we're talking about d1 yes capstone academy yeah uh you know we provide related services and this was an additional need identified by the iep team right so there was already an amount that was approved in the amount of 84 731 dollars this is an addition to that correct that is correct because we weren't aware of this one at the time that that other was approved or it's just a later it's an add-on okay any other questions or comments on finance a through j questions or comments on property a um programming in curriculum a through c questions or comments yeah i had a question on b why was that for that integrated diabetes services that i mentioned with nurse smith earlier if we
124could get some clarification on that and i also wanted to understand why that was only k through six i know that there seems to be a big influx of students at evans right now and maybe some of the other elementaries but it appeared to me that you talked about trading the trader that that could maybe go beyond k-6 or maybe not i don't know mr rizzo do you want me to speak on this sure please so the reason we said k-6 is just because when we have a student newly diagnosed with diabetes obviously the younger the student the greater the care that the nurse needs to give our acuity is very very high in one of our buildings and a few years ago it was remotely high in another elementary building um so our thought
125is to meet the the need right now we would focus on k through six where the most hands-on care is required from the nursing staff and from let's face it it does kind of trickle down into our teaching staff because they you know they see those children all day long they have to be responsible for responding to an emergency or interpreting what an alarm going off means what we tend to find with our older students is that they are quicker to be able to go on to diabetic pumps continuous glucose monitors technology which kind of aids in the whole process it makes the management a little bit easier from our point of view that's not to say that once we're trained we would not become trainers of people in upper grades we positively would and
126i'm truly not opposed that if we don't fill that 15 um i'm not opposed at all to bringing in some staff members from the upper levels from secondary but that was the reason that we proposed it this way does that make sense it makes sense but it doesn't actually say that no then we left the motion we left k-6 off the motion to have the flexibility if we needed it but really the focus is the only identification of excuse me students with diabetes and and then requiring a higher level of care it does make sense to me that the younger kids would be more care and i i thought that was where that was going um but i did you know i saw it a couple times k through six vintage in the board memo
127and i think that's why i was fixated on that but you're right mr rizzo doesn't say it here i said that you're right not to stay in here good good basically k through six um but thank you yes that makes a lot of sense any other questions or comments okay conferences and workshops a through c questions or comments other business a is for a first reading and we'll open up to board comment okay uh i have some board comments and i just wanted to go ahead and show you all my face tonight when i say this because i am pleading with you to reconsider getting on the board trailer for the homecoming event this weekend it is an opportunity for us to stand together for one hour in our community so i'm throwing it back
128out there please reach out to me let's do this for the one hour where we stand together for our community i wanted to also remind everyone that we're having a present council meeting via zoo on wednesday evening at seven o'clock and i have already tentatively scheduled a board retreat with tita from the iu to take place in january if you recall from the last one she thought that that would be prudent for us to do that after we need the new superintendent and by that point not only will we have well mr rizzo is in place but we'll also have um both of our assistant superintendents in place so that's that's it i i'm asking you to please get on that trailer to let me know so that i can get everything prepared and ready
129for this weekend thank you [Music] any other questions or comments i mean any other comments or comments sorry i'm so used to sending questions okay um public to be heard um we will um as we did at the beginning of the meeting we will limit to three minutes per person we will um do everything we can to get everybody um from zoom and from the room we started um before the meeting um in the room so i'm going to start now with zoom if that's okay rich criminals please you may not make public comment please unmute yourself then state your first and last name as well as your full address hi can you hear me um kim anderson 123 patriot drive collegeville um i listened to this whole discussion tonight regarding the edi initiative slash
130committee i appreciate mr dabella's comments beca and questions that he had tonight because it seems to many in the community that we have not heard yet about what actual problem we may have in our district that is requiring this level of special attention do we have a problem yes no maybe or are we doing this because it's become a national topic perhaps not applicable in our district i also appreciate mr jackson's question regarding safe space and what exactly does this mean um i also did not fully understand um or have been fully clear on what that means as well from my experience the wonderful teachers and staff are extremely diligent in responding to every issue as it comes up i believe we have had the correct protocols in place for quite some time in our
131district because our teachers and staff are engaged with their students and have taken their students concerns very seriously for not just now but for decades what i will say is school can be hard we were all students of k-12 once upon a time and likely many of us have had our fair share of tough times and tough days in school we have also had issues or tough times in our workplace it's called life every day of life will not be picture perfect it almost seems like we are trying to give our students a problem-free existence and that is not reality from the last few meetings um that the edi committee topic has been raised it's become evidence to many um that many on this board still do not understand the problem here requiring this committee
132and mr riley's contract their deliverables findings and progress to date they are not alone many of us in the community have been asking the exact same questions i hope to hear some of these answers soon to justify distance thank you christine you may now make public comment please state your full first and last name as well as your full address christine she dropped off steve you may now make public comment please take your first your full name and your full address please steve fry 1711 brook drive warriors group assuming you can hear me can you hear me yes okay um just to kind of follow up on something from earlier um recently there was a letter posted on the school's website and the letter attempted to deflect concerns about critical race theory in schools particularly
133k-12 schools and in my opinion the letter was misleading and not the type of transparency there should be with the community and i'd just like to talk about a few things we typically hear in the type of letter so first we often hear that crt is just a theory and therefore it means it can't be used in k-12 education but does the school use any of these theories theory of cognitive cognitive development learning theory instructional theory yes it does it uses those types of theories in developing curriculum and just generally in teaching we also hear the deflection of crt is a higher level concept limited to universities and law schools but we know elements of higher level concepts are taught to children we teach children the practical applications of levers friction gravity etc without teaching
134them the theorems and math of physics we teach them the basic principles precepts and stories of religions without the formal teachings of a seminary school or similar institution crt advocates have developed stories curriculum pedagogy etc to do the same for kids and one of the key signs of cot influence is the concept of identity-based privilege and the edi reference materials that are made available to the public on the school's website clearly show advocacy for those concepts in addition if you go and look through some university curriculum particularly their graduate level education curriculum you'll see a variety of courses with specifically uh the critical race theory in the name here are just a few i found at some major universities a course called critical race theory course called critical race theory and storytelling in educational spaces
135critical race theory and education advanced critical race theory and education critical race theory critical race methodologies and on and on and that's just the ones that specifically mention the name in the course title and obviously those courses have textbooks as all courses do on this topic so i guess what i'm ultimately trying to get to is continuing to see statements and say crt is not part of k-12 education is i don't think helpful anymore and and just to take a step back as some of you know i actually was able to get a hold of one of those textbooks and found a chapter specifically dedicated to implementing crt in k-12 schools so that's out there um so this is michael lebedinski you make now make public comment please take your please unmute yourself state your
136first and last name as well as your full address michael baginski 2005 will overdrive roosevelt continue my comments from earlier regarding the quarantining of healthy students in our district the montgomery county public health code defines modified quarantine as quote a selected partial limitation of freedom of movement determined on the basis of differences in susceptibility or danger of disease transmission unquote these are the criteria upon which a quarantine decision is made this is the law in our county inclusive of the data updated tonight springfield has quarantined over 2 400 district staff teachers and students as a result of the current practice yet not a single one ultimately developed a clinically confirmed infection from the so-called exposure meaning that these people clearly had a difference in susceptibility that caused them not to become infected just today nearly
137a dozen students at brook elementary were forced to quarantine for five days because they sat near a student on the bus who tested positive for coveted last week all wearing masks for at least one student in this group this is the second time they've been forced to quarantine this school year yet springford has reported zero confirmed cases of in-school transmission in the last 18 months zero cases suggests a lower danger of disease transmission as referenced in the law we also know that the district of determine is determining infectiousness partially on the basis of a pennsylvania department of health presentation which has has a disclaimer in the side deck that literally reads quote the charts and data displayed in this presentation present a simplified visual to discuss and clarify concepts they do not contain scientific data
138yet again tonight there smith for the fourth time has used the term infectious with no clinical evidence to confirm whether or not a student was actually infectious the data is overwhelming yet we continue to force learning loss on healthy students with edi we barely have anecdotal data yet we're already promoting solutions for quarantining we have 18 months of crystal clear data yet we still force healthy children to quarantine now it was great to hear mr rizzo's driving progress in that area and that progress is much appreciated as usual montgomery county is a laggard in this area compared to neighboring counties there's still areas for improvement such as recognizing a positive antibody test as equal to vaccination as we know from dozens of studies completed this year people develop a robust antibody response from both vaccination
139and natural infection current progress is good but we really need to be doing more thank you erica hermans you may now make public comment please unmute yourself state your first and last name as well as your full address hello this is lauren day 57 greenbrier drive phoenixville can you hear me yes um i just want to uh comment on what the caller performing had said there has been no in-school transmission there has been in-school transmission in springford montgomery county actually had to shut down upgrade so that is not true and i just don't want people to think that there is not in school transmission happening because it is thanks i want clarification of that state has there been any school transmissions that we're aware of there was there was a case um at oaks and
140it had to do with uh for accurate seating charts and we ended up quarantining a large number of students excuse me a large number of students in the classroom so much so that over the course of time we did close down that classroom on the recommendation of montgomery county for a couple of days and then they gradually started coming back again but i believe that's the case we're talking about one classroom right but that's not linked to in school transmission that that is we believe but we're not 100 certain we do believe it was in school transmission at lunchtime based on based on likelihood and that's it the likelihood so we we have no idea if it was or not because we got to be careful with throwing statements around sure people have in school
141and out of school lives for sure exactly i understand that the other case that we she may be talking about was last year when we did close down for two weeks which we talked about that as well last year montgomery county shut down a 300 000 square foot building for two cases thank you erica hermans you may now make public comment please state your first your full name and you and your full address thank you hi erica herbans 204 abbey drives um i want to comment tonight to share my sadness at the way that certain parties were addressed i first want to thank the former graduates of springford who took proactive measures in sharing their experiences with the district to have a board member question what do we gain by talking to students from over
142a decade ago in the manner which it was asked does not reflect well on the district it's a data point it's one data point of many data points that should be collected when you engage in a comprehensive needs analysis if anything asking that question in a potentially leading way only serve to undermine the credibility of that data before it had a chance to be presented and when that is the voice of your current or former student body it is not right secondly i want to thank our teacher representatives from the edi committee who presented tonight as a member of the public i appreciated the background in the context you shared on the formation of the committee additionally no staff member or anyone for that matter who approaches the podium or chooses to speak on zoom
143should be met with back candid and sarcastic remarks to have a board member say that was a great explanation dr rizzo that would have been great to hear in the presentation as if the staff who presented were not in the room is inexplicable and the irony is not lost on me that it was asked tonight what does it mean to make a safe space can someone define that making it safe means you empathize and you put yourself in somebody else's shoes and promote an environment that is welcoming and comfortable for others to share their experience and viewpoints without fear of repercussions or judgment how some board members chose to act tonight put on display why springford needs to continue to focus on making a safe environment for our students staff and community thank you ellen
144you may now make public comment please unmute yourself state your first and last name as well as your full address hi ellen townsend 416 navajo drive i hope you can hear me i um i just first wanted to thank mr rizzo and everyone who worked on the modified quarantining uh this was a big concern of mine especially with learning learning loss um i received an email today unfortunately that one of my children i'm not even sure which one was a close contact at brook elementary on a school bus and i don't i still don't know which child i have two children in brook um so i'm curious like how are we doing this contact tracing to get an email like that um first not addressing which one of my children and secondly my children don't
145ride the bus my children are apparent um transportation so i don't understand why i got the email that my child was a close contact on a bus that my child's never not once during this school year has set foot on so how can we trust that our children are actually close contacts like it can be an alarming thing to get an email like that but at least i know for sure that my kid wasn't because my kid wasn't on a bus but how do we know that that's not happening in the school that they're doing this contact tracing wrong and they're contacting people and quarantining them for no reason whether symptomatic or not if they're not close to somebody who's a considered a positive and a close contact then i just i'm very concerned about
146the the process i'm very very pleased to know that we're in the right direction with um easing up on the quarantining and modifying that process and i think that sounds great that this we're looking at like two to three weeks out on this um but i know that a lot of kids are being quarantined right now i know in royersford elementary um 25 speech students were sent home quarantined due to exposure to the speech teacher so here we have kids who already need the extra support and now they're home and there really truly isn't a plan in place what happened was the teachers are in school the next morning and told to email all these students their work and we had teachers in tears um from what i understand from a fellow friend of mine
147who's a teacher um so i just i hope that there's still um some proactive planning and what kind of support we can do for the children that are the students that are being quarantined um i'm hearing the eye ready and i'm hearing um the tutor options i don't know what's going to be set in place um i don't know how that's going to look i don't know how that's going to be offered if it's going to be offered is a summer program again i think that especially if kids are home and they're well we need something kind of like while they're home something for them to do um i'm really saddened to know that thank you three minutes at this time there were no further hands raised on zoom thank you are there any public
148comments in the room abby deardorff from royersford um i was actually looking forward to hearing the psba update tonight i saw online and have read a couple articles that psba which is the pennsylvania school board association has actually decided to leave the national school board association and i was curious to know how that affects us here in springford if you have any clarification about how and why that decision was made and if there's another governing body that psba plans to be a part of i was also wanted to let you all know as an outsider as a community member looking in on the way that the edi committee is being approached i don't believe that messaging is what's being missed i believe that leadership and buy-in from our leaders is what's missing and i'm not
149talking about the administration it's evident that this board is split or and community is split on it and i don't see how progress is going to be made constantly bickering back and forth about it here in the room and also on social media you know where the community is being told that diversity equity and inclusion are already taking root in this community and you know using that as a scare tactic so i don't believe messaging's a problem i believe that leadership is thank you there's no pen in the sign up here they sent the sign awesome thank you uh james troutman 199 north of mcroad uh can i go all right uh this is my first time at the springford uh meeting my daughter goes to potts grove my tax money and my goats go
150to springford i do do a divorce so for me i just wanted to talk as a taxpayer to the community that all my property taxes go here uh listen that first presentation i can see right right off the bat where you could just save ten thousand dollars right off the bat that was kill a waste of money uh on another thing covered it poses no risk for her children it has a 99.9 survival rate and the cdc puts a 0.4 mentality rate you're quarantined all these kids uh for absolutely no reason it's child abuse plain and simple having these kids breathe through a mask all day teaching that the air around the toxic people around toxic teachers are toxic and they themselves are toxic teaching this fear is child abuse becomes essential by proxy is
151a physical disorder marked by attention seeking behavior by a caregiver which is you to those who are in their car part four of this msp states that there is a tendency to participate in the deception and to believe that they are disabled and those children that they are abused early recognition of this is vital i am accusing all the school board teachers coaches superintendent principals and nurses of being marked with this disease and i expect every one of you to get tested immediately for this condition just to let every one of you know there is no pandemic in pennsylvania so you keep saying all these things but there's no pandemic you go anywhere in this town you can go to the grocery store you can go to target you don't need a mask go to
152liquor store where i've seen all you is that with no mask on everywhere in this town you don't need mass you cannot tell me right now that tom wolf has the authority to tell every one of us that our kids have to wear a mask nowhere else in this town you got to wear masks so students have no idea who miss you on this board are i've coached for westmont soccer for nine years i'm a veteran of the united states marine corps physical activity is one of my main concerns here nowhere ever was there a time where ever in the years of teaching coach and soccer anything we're putting a mask on anybody is healthy i've seen every one of you right now this guy right now has masked in school kids are allowed to
153have man you know it's just a joke what you guys are doing is abusing kids you need to stop there's no pandemic going on and also just one more thing if you are quarantining these kids who is paying the parents for the time mr work look around this whole community everybody is hiring right now for whoever said that they had to stay at home and work for the conditions i don't know what you're talking about i haven't missed the day of work ever since this whole cove thing has happened not once so and i've never worked for my house i'm always been outside my house so you guys are just the biggest liars i've ever met you're selling a disease that doesn't exist pennsylvania is not in a pandemic thank you thank you just to
154be clear majority of stuff that we're referring to or have been in the past is things that have been mandated by the state or things that are required by the county so i understand they're fighting real quick i [Music] i'm not disagreeing with you i'm just saying that we're following you i will talk if i want to but what i'm saying is that we are following the mandates and we are following the requirements of the county sir please stop sir are there any other comments in the room okay great you want me to do that please sit down please sit down and i asked him to stop as well and i have asked you to sit down now did you hear your time is over and if you need to be escorted out you will
155be thank you anthony frigo 1003 main street linfield pennsylvania uh i have a few comments this evening um i'm concerned about this edi committee and actually i'd like to start with a few comments that have made been made by this board earlier um one is that east er a crt will never be in this school it's here in your policies and it's here in your edi committee i was hoping that the people who were here from the ui committee would stay wait for public comment but they didn't another one comment last board meeting was that the um what miss fazzini fazzini said that your job is to provide equity in this to the student it's not your job is equality equity has no place in this school equity is a racist term developed by crt
156period and also uh this sullivan said that they will follow carlos wiley to make suggestions let me tell you about quality wiley in 2018 he gave a speech a presentation to address racial inequalities and past past and present and the presentation for that speech was wiley's successes have all been very based on in accordance with his philosophical practice rooted in wait for it critical race theory so when you sit there and tell us that critical grace theory is not in this school it's here you are developing it and allowing it to progress it cannot stay here it is divisive the supreme court and tinker has said the divisive things should not be in the schools you're creating it thank you this man is this man his philosophy is rooted in critical race theory okay what
157more do you need my suggestion is that you cancel his contract and if you have a anybody in the cdi committee has a problem then call me i'll troll the internet for 15 minutes and figure out what the solution is because that's all it's going to take thank you i'll do it for free hi it's later anyone here anymore just say we do okay yes please no names on here but i'll put mine hi mary jo mcnamara 187 abbey drivers for pennsylvania so um so i had the privilege of attending the parent meeting for the edi committee a couple of weeks ago we heard similar historical background the parents that were at the meeting were asked to share thoughts and opinions about edi we met mr wiley we asked about the liver bowls we asked
158about his background um what i walked away with was a sense that things aren't clearly defined yet very similar to what the teachers gave as part of their presentation information gathering is still happening the structure is missing there's nothing really clearly defined structurally yet um i did hear some concrete actions from the meeting i heard and and and there was agreement that the policy and mission statements need attention perhaps rewriting we heard about formulating and these are mr wiley's deliverables i believe i asked a specific question and didn't really get a concrete answer but we asked we heard about formulating action plans based on some existing initiatives that occurred or that were defined a while ago we didn't have a timeline to that we heard about a delivery of a five-year plan or recommendation for
159five year goals we heard about setting timelines and we heard that those things were supposed to have a delivery date of october 30th i'm not sure how those things that i just spoke about lined up to the deliveries we heard tonight i'm assuming they're the same we're just being called different names and they've been pushed back based on their delivery date i asked mr wiley about his broad experience specifically in school districts in this setting he's worked with one located in wisconsin about three years ago and although confident in its success he can't demonstrate the success of it because the data is still new so if any of us are thinking that he's going to be able to do an assessment of the success of what he's doing when his year is over that's not
160true he won't be able to based on his own words um he did mention customized workshops and trainings a few times that that he does and that he creates and that they could be constructed as a result of data analysis it was unclear whether that's part of his contract or perhaps the recommendation going forward for extending or paying additional money the committee needs to be involved in setting standards having them adopted across clubs staff student populations every aspect in the districts there are safe spaces in our district the committee perhaps needs to have a grievance process as well we do adopt acceptance of diverse groups we do we do promote inclusion and equity in our schools edi is a new label that has global attention um it's a great idea we need to re-examine our
161standards and make sure we are thank you within three minutes thanks are there any other comments in the room do i have a promotion to adjourn [Music] uh