001okay you need the video on you can stop that video which one this one no it's just i need him he's just not getting audio from there right oh andrew's probably got it muted upstairs [Music] andrew do you have it muted yes all right unmuted okay hey guys we all hear you hello i'm gonna guess oh andrew andrew andrews uh brandon standby andrew check one two three four five check five four three two one so as we kick off tonight's meeting i want to welcome laurie bigger who is here as our new board secretary welcome lori we hope that you're going to be here for some time thank you for having me and to just assist you until you get to know all of us i know that if there is going to be a
002vote we will take roll call until you get familiar with everybody here so we make sure we have that all correct and so some comments this evening i would like to welcome all in attendance and all in the zoom and again remind everyone to please be respectful of your neighbor with masks properly worn by all in attendance we will hold this meeting tonight in an orderly fashion the springford board believes the community has the right to bring before the board issues and concerns community members may have about items on the agenda or about items in general which impact the district or affect our children because of this belief and philosophy the board will open an opportunity for community members to share their concerns with the board at the beginning of each board meeting springfield residents
003will have an opportunity to share concerns and comment on agenda items only each community member will have up to three minutes to address the board prior to adjournment there will be enough an additional opportunity for springford residents to comment publicly again each speaker will have up to three minutes in which to make a comment to the board springford community members who choose to join us on zoom and who would like to make a comment should use the raised hand feature when prompted individuals with their hands raised will be called on during public comment and will be asked to unmute themselves before speaking please note as in past meetings i will do my best to balance comments from those in person and from those on zoom all speakers are required are requested and required to state
004their full name and address before making any comments in this way the info information can be recorded for the meeting minutes 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 the board will do all it possibly can to assure each member of the community has an opportunity to speak on issues however if a large group of people wish to discuss a specific topic the board reserves for itself the right to limit participation and total time allocated to this part of the agenda once the public comment on agenda items is complete only board members will have an opportunity to speak on issues on the agenda however the chair may at its discretion permit discussion on selected
005items and as the need arises finally i respectfully again ask that those individuals in attendance this evening are respectful courteous and civil during public comment and throughout the meeting and with masks remaining properly worn throughout the meeting as well are there any uh announcements from our student reps this evening yes today is be kind ella day ella smith was the definition of light and love her smile was infectious her grip was unmatched and her spirit resonated with everyone she came into contact with she believed with her entire soul that kindness mattered right up until she lost her battle with cancer in the spring of 2020. with september being childhood cancer awareness month friends and neighbors wore blue today and took extra steps to do something kind for someone else in ella's honor okay thank you
006and thank you for that reminder and then we'll move on to a public to be heard on agenda items only is there anyone in the room that would like to make a comment on an agenda agenda item only okay um do we have a pen to sign me i need you to wear your mask mrs mcnamara i need you to wear your mask even when it's okay when i'm talking yes please okay we'll do okay okay hi good evening so i'm here to speak on agenda item 7a so i spent my sunday watching the eagles lose watching the phillies lose and learning about a survey called pace i want to keep my comments short because the word hasn't really discussed the agenda item yet but i would like to understand a couple of things number
007one why is the district participating in this with the extent of loss of learning that we've had over the past 18 months i think i understand that it's voluntary um we're taking up the time of 6th 8th 10th and 12th graders to fill out a survey that's 12 or 13 pages long why in the environment that we're living in today with all the talk about inclusivity diversity equity inclusions um cancel culture why are we entertaining a survey that talks about race neighborhood parental involvement family functions other things that are extremely personal and in today's environment could be considered conflicting i'll just use that word and then lastly and mostly importantly to me at least is why is the survey an opt-out scenario why aren't you getting expressed parental consent to do this survey i will
008admit if i had known about this survey in sixth and eighth grade for my other children and in 10th grade for my other children and i paid more attention to detail i certainly would have upped it out i really think that there's a need to be able to have expressed parental consent for this survey and then lastly i'd like to understand more about where is the funding going it's that i read through all the faqs i'm not the brightest bulb in the bunch but i there there seems to be a tie-in of the funding based on the responses for what our special needs and programs are i don't know if that's accurate so i'm looking to the board to hopefully discuss that and give more clarity thank you very much [Music] stacy salazzo 44 woodley
009driver i'm speaking tonight on agenda item 7a uh regarding the pau survey i looked into some of the surveys and spent a lot of time going through each year the results and the results it did start in 1989. however i did notice it did change around 2001. they skipped 1999 and totally revamped the surveys they ended up merging multiple surveys into one and doubling almost doubling the questions from only 95 in 1997 to 185 in and from there they've only increased now it's up to 10 pages long including a new covet section for this year how does an anonymous survey identify at-risk kids at the end of the day you have no real way how to identify an at-risk child but rather you're gathering and selling their information to get state funding for programs that
010you probably already have in place i do have concerns that everything is a passive opt-in what else are you giving out to children without my knowledge including a survey i know found out that my child came home and told me about last year there was a tobacco survey i wouldn't have known about it otherwise so just for an example i went through some of the questions that i kind of wonder what they have to do with anything someone one page how often have you driven in a car while drinking or smoking pot most of the kids taking this survey aren't even a driving age i think sometimes it's okay to cheat in school it's important to be honest with your parents and then there's some how many occasions have you used cocaine crack heroin hallucinogens
011metachorazole such as magenta zip or seasons i had to google that one i didn't know what that was most of the kids including my own don't even know what these things are is this opening up a can of worms for them to come home and say what is this stuff and then get questions start to wonder what is this how many occasions have you used cocaine during the past 30 days crack heroin again hallucinogens and then it goes on to family issues do you feel close to your mother or father then there's another section how many of your brothers or sisters have ever drank beer smoked cigarettes took a hand and handgun to school or been suspended how does this relate and what's the point of these questions it's just adding and taking away from
012actual education it takes an entire school period for them to take this survey when children are already behind michael baginski 2005 wheel overdrive talking about 7a you have a recommendation to spend over 1.1 million dollars of taxpayer-funded covid sr funds tonight including 314 thousand dollars on two board certified behavior analysts and a social worker another 625 000 on five school psychologists and another hundred and sixty three thousand on two additional full-time and school counselors you have a recommendation to prove a memorandum of understanding for continued futile and harmful aceit covid testing concocted by dr david rubin of the chop policy lab you have a recommendation to approve the pa youth services survey that asks questions about illicit misdemeanor drug use pervasive alcohol abuse depression suicide violence and whether students like spending time with their mother
013or their father what's the common thread in these expenditures do you see it well one year of behavior and psychology services magically meant the damage the mishandling of the pandemic response has caused waffling back and forth every board meeting between masks mandates mass optional virtual in-person education hybrid masks indoor masks outdoor masks in here but not in there masks at sports six feet three feet how about the acit testing before you vote tonight will you ask mr rizzo how many of these antigen test kids were administered last school year can we quick focus it on the agenda item all three agenda items you said it was on sevena and the other two what was the other one whichever one is about the acet testing which one is it it's not my time it's vmware 7a
014going to border okay my time oh no that's fine but we'll how many tests were positive how many healthy children were quarantined as a result of the testing none of whom were ultimately contracted infection from the supposedly positive test will you consider the act antigen testing is more faulty than the pcr test which itself is being authorized by the fda in december due to its inaccuracy will you ask if this program turns our nursing staff into a health care service provider with all liabilities that entails what's not only gendered tonight is a recommendation from the administration or the board to follow through in a promise you made in august to fully and completely obey all mandates from the state section three of the order specifically states quote an individual may state an exemption inexplicably springfield
015has decided to violate the section of the order setting an exemption form that requires a doctor signature that was put in place in july of 2020 at a time when the secretary's universal massacre specifically stated that no documentation was required can we focus your your on your comments i don't mean to interrupt mr fitzgerald we're not dealing with the masking or the back and forth right now we're specifically if you're going to focus on on the antigen testing or on the page survey then we just need to hear comments about that please do not try to wrap in the other issue i understand that they're still out there but please do not try to wrap those in to talk about the antigen testing specifically the district enacted a form which explicitly violated the secretary's order
016and is now doubling down on compliance to deny legitimate exceptions for the five largest school districts in bucks county i'm gonna have to stop it we asked police we asked so i'm gonna have to stop that comment and we're gonna move on is there anything else in the room okay what about on the zoom nothing on zoom right now okay we're gonna move forward then with our next agenda item which i believe is mr rizzo giving a presentation on the administration restructuring proposal mr rizzo good evening tonight i want to talk a little bit about uh we just as you know um we're looking to replace my position the assistant superintendent position and through that process uh we started talking about how we can help service students so tonight's presentation is about helping students and
017positioning people in a way that's going to help support them more so what i'd like to first talk about is our current structure now when i came here we have a superintendent and then we have under him a super assistant superintendent who provides is the director director of curriculum instruction uh special ed supervisors and then what would be considered pupil services personnel our recommendation in short is to add one senior administrative position and reshuffle some of the responsibilities accordingly so we can focus on two main areas teaching learning and innovation to help service um our students with our new technology and tech ed um ed tech and then also the primary focus is to focus on our students with special needs and helping their families and our teachers the proposed structure would be underneath the
018superintendent we're going to ask for we're asking for an additional position that is an assistant superintendent of special education and student services um realigning the positions there we're asking that that person will be responsible for the four special education supervisors school counselors school um social worker school nurses school psychologists and then the assistant superintendent for teaching learning innovation would then be responsible for the curriculum instruction and ed tech and the director of technology and the idea is um those it's a pretty significant responsibility to cover all those things with increased needs so dividing those up and helping support our special education supervisors as we move forward is sort of a long-range goal so we can help support our students essentially there's a lot of print here but what i was trying to illustrate here was
019redistribution of the responsibilities so what you're seeing is the assistant superintendent on the far left for special education student services those would be sort of the main buckets that that position would be responsible for and then the assistant superintendent for teaching learning and innovation next to the director of curriculum instruction and educational technology and you can see how those positions um and responsibilities have been parsered out i'll just kind of leave it there for a second even though the print's kind of small for you to view so what that does um to adjust our organizational chart if you look at our our structure that we're proposing you have superintendent and then you have the chief financial officer that handles the business side of things transportation food services and then you have the assistant superintendent for
020teaching learning and innovation the director of curriculum instruction would report and the director of technology would report to that position and then you have the assistant superintendent for special education and student services where all people services positions as well as the special education supervisors would report to that position again highly specializing in a particular area the benefit to that is we have hands-on support for special education supervisors all relatively new in their positions um helps establish some consistency and an extra layer of support as they work with our families of students with special needs does the goal is to reduce costs for outside placements and settlement agreements focus on comprehensive mental health services across our district focus on district-wide embedded social and emotional learning learning programming enhanced focus on innovation and how we use educational
021technology we are now very technology rich and how does that impact what is happening within the classroom it helps with our parent education support we are we are moving in the direction of really supporting our families we're going to be talking a little bit more about that later and how we can support our families with of students with special needs some examples are right there this would be an additional cost to the budget of approximately 230 000 all in sort of the idea behind her the validation behind it this proposed structure is in alignment with what other districts most districts in berks bucks chester delaware montgomery county with 6 000 plus students and they may not have a second assistant superintendent but they do have a dedicated pupil personnel student services director position to help
022support in that vein springford has discussed this as long as i've been here i've seen notes and discussions about needing to have this position so we thought now might be a good time with with the new assist with the new superintendent restructuring this might be the right time to approach the board about this and as i mentioned before the volume the volume of work with the increased needs uh certainly during covid um the increase needs if it seems like a right time to to provide some extra support for our families as we've gone through the interview process one of the one of the uh maybe the inspiration for this was as we went through we have two very very strong candidates um and you know one of them would be have a background special education
023that i think could help support us so that's the quick and skinny at this point i'll take any questions from the board and i believe mr rizzo we've had some uh prior discussions about this we were i had the opportunity to review this in our board memo and uh i'm grateful for your planning in the restructuring if no one has any other questions we'll move on from this point okay thank you so much okay if you do then go there i think you recognize that this is something that we've been playing around with for a couple of years in springford especially as our student her special education population is is is increasing um so with with your recommendation and and you said additional the additional cost to the district was how much 230 000 and
024so that means all the the backfill positions and special ed that we have now are you still going to fill in that's correct this isn't replacing a position correct it's an addition of a position right um and then so this position is going to be strictly i know you talked about student services but it seems like this position is going to be strictly focused on special education and that will be a significant portion of the responsibilities yes um so as far as having the two assistant superintendents and they're both going to be reporting to you directly so they're basically at the same level correct okay um and there's you don't see a need to bounce out any other duties or just pulling off that one is is going to be significant uh reduction services for
025the other assistant superintendent no that's fair um we are certainly like i mentioned that one slide that i showed where we had list side by side those are the big items there was some shuffling of responsibilities there were some things that were moved around that seemed to make sense with the responsibility of the position and then there are some other things that did not make that list that we're going to continue to talk about um as we you know what what am i going to be responsible for what are each what is what each assistant superintendent be responsible for so yeah those discussions are still occurring but yeah there would still be some reshuffling going on and you uh i'm assuming that you you re kind of reviewed your your plan with your current uh
026current staff from special education standpoint to kind of get buy-in as far as what the concept is yes and how what was their what was their thought process they felt this was really supportive of what they're trying to to do or what i mean i just want to understand their feedback as well they they have been asking for this for a while um since i've been here we've been having those discussions about needing a position similar to this so they were excited to see that the board was willing to entertain this all right this is great i i i'm excited that as far as where we are as district-wise i think this is the time to to make that i know in in the past when you know dr gordon was here this has kind
027of came out from time to time but this seems like the right time right opportunity for us to to move in this direction so i i think it's a great idea so thank you thank you mr rizzo i too would like to thank you for this presentation and i agree there has been much discussion regarding an approach of this nature my concern with this is that we're adding almost a quarter of a million dollars for this restructuring and that's back to our struggle with this but it's it's a good approach but it's an expensive approach thank you is there anyone else that would like to make a comment to mr rizzo before we move on yeah i'd like to just briefly just with respect to mr jackson's comment um bob i look forward to i
028know one of the reasons that we talked about before with this and also in your presentation was that the emphasis and special knowledge and focus on the special education work within the system that would you know strategically look at reducing an expense that we have historically have which some of us know is pretty substantial so just sort of with regards to your comments mr jackson that that's that's one this is to me it's more of an investment in reducing that and hopefully we'll get an roi on that regard so uh at some point you know i don't know that we would necessarily want to see sort of a report on that but i am going to be paying attention to see about you know sort of where historically our uh expenses have been around that
029and then with this new position if it's approved this evening you know uh the impact of that because to me i think this may pay for itself in that regard that's fair sure i think it's a super slope mr schaefer if you take the statement that reduced cost for outside placement and settlement agreements no one can sit here and say by adding this one person that those agreements for those settlements amounts are going to go down so i think that's that's a false positive from where i sit but i respect your position on us this is just hopeful optimism i suppose you know that that's part of it and so we shall see you're right nothing's a a guarantee thank you and and i do appreciate your presentation again i think uh you know this
030certainly um we have all talked about supporting um you know the mental health of our students making sure that we are focused on social emotional learning whether it's for our special ed children um or or for our general population i think this allows for better continuity between our basic education and our special ed programming so that all children are receiving the social emotional and mental health support that they need so i think it's a wonderful compliment especially as we're coming out of covet and we keep talking about the needs of our students and and the challenges that they've been facing it it creates a more structured cohesive approach to serving our children and our students here at springford so i think it's it's you know timing is is perfect for that so thank you are
031we saying we couldn't meet those challenges without spending a quarter of a million dollars sorry are you saying we we couldn't meet those challenges without spending a quarter of a million dollars i'm saying that i think timing right now that has to be one of our primary focuses and and certainly we have all commented on the need and the focus in that area and i think this does a very nice job of putting together a cohesive programming to reach all of our children all of our students here at springford not just you know a specific group so um yeah i i do think that this is the time for us to take that step so that we are are being proactive and and ready to to take on whatever challenges we face coming forward yeah
032absolutely so mr willow based on this presentation we're adding two bodies correct two people we're adding one position but we would be we would be hiring two people yes okay all right thank you yes okay thank you for your time thank you mr rizzo moving on to boarding committee reports do we have a student wrap report this evening we do i don't know before you get started allison i do have a request from some of the other board members if people in the audience could just keep those side conversations to yourselves until after the meeting or to move to another location to have those thank you please please we're not going to do this tonight we're not going to take we're not going to take anything from the audience now allison and adidi are you
033ready to go with that report yes um it seems that it will not be projected on the screen but i think that we can um get the effect out of it just from spoken word um it it will be a brief report and a dd is going to start with some back-to-school updates so good evening everyone this will be our august and september student rep report so for some back-to-school highlights um athletics began on august 16th and just as a quick reminder to all parents please be sure to submit the required physical exam dental exam and immunization records to springford if you have not had the chance to do so find the information on the springford website at the health and service department so some recent events that are taking place in our school and
034it's hard to believe that it's already the third week of school students are excited to be returning back to the in-person environment to maximize their full learning potential for the full five days per week teachers return to school buildings on august 25th for in service days springford football competed in the season opener on august 27th at westchester east high school the first day of school was on august 30th and we did not have school for students on monday september 6th 7th and 16th in observance of holidays and i wanted to make one note um just to spring for teachers and administration i feel like as a student at the high school level i i can see how much effort the teachers and administration are making to make this return back to in person a reality
035and uh i really say hatsoff to all the students all the teachers and administration staff for always keeping um keeping a smile making our days brighter and i'm just really excited to be back in school so i think that's one thing i'm looking forward to so thank you so much um i wholeheartedly echo that sentiment of adida and i can definitely agree with the fact that being back to school morale has been very high um and with that i will move into some upcoming events springfield football will compete against perkins valley this friday at perhaman valley high school and those tickets are on for sale online right now um back to school night will be held this thursday at the 10 12 center from 7 to 9 p.m and back to school night at the
0369th grade center will be held on september 30th from 7 to 9 p.m there will be no school for students on monday october 11th spirit week will commence on monday october 18th the powderpuff football game will be held on friday october 22nd the freshman and sophomore homecoming dance will be friday october 22nd at 7 30 and the junior and senior homecoming dance will be held on saturday october 23rd along with the homecoming football game which will also take place on saturday october 23rd and with those homecoming festivities i wanted to mention a discussion that took place today in the herd of learning center featuring members of the student council and representatives from various clubs in an effort to revitalize some of the homecoming traditions at springford and i think that all students are extremely enthusiastic
037about this endeavor and there will definitely be some exciting developments in that area to come and details will follow and that concludes our report for august and september thank you great any questions for our student reps that's great really good to hear okay thank you girls curriculum and technology mrs fazzini okay uh the curriculum and technology committee meeting met on tuesday september 7th at 6 30 pm we're excited to welcome dr jennifer reinheimer to the curriculum department she's the new curriculum supervisor of math science and music replacing dr heidi rocklin dr murray informed us that the district is in the process of starting its comprehensive planning the plan is due march 2022 mrs gardy provided updates on the summer 2021 pre-k program 60 students were screened 30 were invited to the program and 27 attended
038reviews of the program through feedback and comments from families was very positive mrs gardy provided an update on the results of the 2021 civics assessment in may all 11th graders take the required exam in the spring all information regarding the exam will be posted on the website website and certificates will be sent to all students who got a hundred percent on the agenda tonight there's a contract renewal for t s t l s um to complete the year three of the remaining cohorts of modern modernized learning initiatives this is a budgeted item there's a contract for administrative professional development with empowered school solutions not to exceed eleven thousand this is funded from the twenty twenty one twenty twenty two special education budget uh there's a contract for online training services for scenario learning not to
039exceed funding will be paid from the assistant superintendent budget there's also an item for approval of twenty five thousand dollars for edgeseer llc which provided summer school courses as part of springford's learning loss mitigation 125 courses for 90 students in need the cost is being paid from the esser grant as previously allocated uh dr murray presented a three-year plan for the use of i ready ireti is the educational system used with the summer rams program it can diagnose and identify specific learning needs and provides both assessment and content to address learning issues the curriculum department is interested in purchasing it for three years for k-8 at a cost of 386 000. the committee agreed that we would not move the product product forward at this point due to cost the committee discussed the need for
040the department to change its seven-year curriculum cycle to a six-year cycle so it will match the publishing cycle this follows the move of publishers as they shorten their renewal schedules dr murray presented a draft of the administrative regulations for policy 119 for feedback and curriculum committee members had the opportunity to provide input and feedback regarding the regulations and then i just a brief technology last i checked all 5-12 devices have been deployed k-1 classrooms have received cards of ipads there was a back order shipment of chromebooks for third and fourth grade but they're expected possibly this week i haven't heard and they should be prepped by mid to late october uh let's see what else a new tech center has been situated in the 567 building to support device deployment and service for students and
041staff the next meeting will be tuesday october 5th at 6 30 pm at the district office does anyone have any questions or comments part of the discussion we had too was talking about what we can do to support students that are quarantined um so i just want to put that on there that we also we brought that up in curriculum i brought it up to mr rizzo also to see what we can do to support students that are quarantined because many of them are still healthy and able to do their schoolwork and um not a true fan of the asynchronous would like to see if we can do something more to assist them i'm glad to see mr catalano is here tonight too because i think we wanted to get an idea of maybe what
042we have in place from last year technology wise if maybe he could weigh in if that's an option or mr rizzo can weigh in um because i know we asked you to meet and speak with the teachers too so can we get maybe an understanding of where we are with in regards to how we're going to fully support our students that are quarantined if well i guess maybe we could because we had talked about it during curriculum so it would be an appropriate time i believe to have this conversation sure okay um yes absolutely hold on let me look at my notes so we did have several meetings over the course of the last week to talk about the virtual option mr catalano um feel free to jump in in case i mess something up
043here the last year's model grade seven through twelve had ipads in the classroom so we were able to stream in the classroom through zoom and see the whiteboard through use of the of the cameras that are on the ipad those ipads have since been repurposed and they are now with our k and one students what we do have accessible is approximately a hundred chrome tabs that can be used for the same purpose uh if you recall we bought 300 microphones for grades seven through four yeah 300 microphones for grades 7 through 12 to increase the audio quality those we still have but we kept them with the 7 through 12 teachers i think primarily because once it was in people's ears they may not have wanted to share those with somebody else so we just
044kept them in those spaces they still have those so what we can do we do have like i said i'm calling that 100 mobile kits and that includes a chrome tab a microphone and a stand for the chrome tab you're still nodding yes cool um give you an example of kind of where we are right now currently we have about 25 students that are quarantined um what that impacts is 28 teachers and these are kind of ballpark numbers 28 teachers 9 to 12 10 teachers grades 5 and 6 16 teachers k through 4 which would then be roughly 50 plus kids utilized right now with about 28 25 students quarantined now there is overlap of course so there might be more than one student quarantine in the same class same feature but just to kind
045of give you an idea seven to twelve i mentioned we have microphones um they do have the ability to stream right now the downside is if they stream and they don't have the the extra camera that that will do with the chrome tab or last year with the ipads they would only be able to hear and see whatever is shared on their screen on the whiteboard they wouldn't necessarily if the teacher's using the whiteboard outside of a slide deck presentation for example that would not be visible by the student that is sitting at home so be more of an audio only if they're not using that computer k86 currently does not have microphones and k-6 did not have experience with this model at all last year because we had dedicated elementary virtual classrooms um so
046i did meet with i met with our cabinet i met with um some of our administrators i met with the teachers association to talk with them a little bit about what that looks like and they struggle with supporting this because the student experience that they would get might not be what people expect it to be so for example um in a typical classroom uh if there was full direct instruction it might work out fine oftentimes there's independent or group work that would be idle time if somebody streaming in they wouldn't necessarily get the same impact out of that um one one of the possible factors could be uh families might lose some flexibility if because they work and somebody has to watch their child that they you know if they're on at a certain time
047throughout the day they don't have the flexibility of asynchronous instruction that could become an issue maybe maybe not again we don't know we're not in that situation right now and that'll be more for younger kids than older students um so the experience while it seems and sounds like it would be a good option um it seems like it might be a little bit more robust if we were able to provide recordings and we were able to provide asynchronous instruction to go along with those recordings so the students could um could watch recordings over and over again if they wanted to watch a video they could watch it more than once to get the concept versus just watching it um in a streaming way and then maybe not necessarily having access admittedly it could be posted
048obviously there are some concerns about confidentiality if an issue arises in a classroom teacher doesn't get a chance to mute the microphone in time um something could be out there you could make the argument that student would be in the classroom if that would happen it's a little different than when they're outside and it's and it's online and again just we would want to be very very careful with with who would have access to this because once we start to go down this road we might find ourselves in a full blown model at the same time kind of instruction and we cited back in april 12th some reasons why we felt that wasn't a good way to go for students again we struggled administration and the association struggle with supporting this model we like the
049idea of providing videos providing opportunities for students to learn and even a sample schedule to give the students structure they might need throughout the day to make it more of a robust experience for them there are some concerns with the mobile kits and again we have a hundred i don't know we'd ever need more than a hundred at a time but moving them from classroom to classroom based on the demands of the quarantine uh the students that are quarantined to get them to the proper teachers with the proper training and again we have new teachers we have k-6 that didn't do this model and then 7-12 which if they were here last year obviously they're they're fairly comfortable with that so that's kind of the quick and the skinny in terms of when i talk
050to the stakeholders we struggle with the live streaming piece i know that's an important thing for the board um i'd like to look at ways to make a more robust experience for our students it doesn't involve live streaming um but that's that's kind of i think where we are right now with the teachers in the administration with this model how will students and teachers connect so for example if a student is struggling with a subject and they go through a recording and they watch it two three times and they're still having difficulty are there specific uh would there be specific times that would be allocated for um these to be able to access teachers and and get through some of the the challenges or struggles that they're having in the classroom that's a fair question
051um the teachers the teachers would be available to students um with before or after school based on whatever the contractual day looks like they would be available to help support students for questions yes how many students are we quarantined this year so far we're going to ask that question i want to s you know let me just not if you can give me 30 seconds i'll tell you exactly what it is i don't know if trish is right tricia there can you answer that question i'm here can you hear me yes sorry i'm multitasking i wasn't ready that's right the question is how many students have been quarantined so far this year hello everyone so far it looks like we have quarantined 66 students in three weeks that look right to you mr rizzo um
052i'm seeing close contact quarantine at about 140. i'm only mentioning um i'm only i only report close contacts to a positive at school so that may be where the difference is not sure okay what's the difference yeah can you talk about that difference please yeah so each time that i report i tell the board um the number of positives the number of positives that were infectious during the school day that resulted in us doing contact tracing and then i tell you the number of students that we quarantine based on a in-school exposure those are always the numbers that i've recorded to you as opposed to people who are close contacts to someone at home in their household or someone in their community outside of school so for the no i was going to say so
053we have three ways that we that we track it we have community household in school so the number you shared was just the school close contacts and the number that i have is total that 145 is all those combined okay yes and the truth is is for the purpose of your conversation right now you do need to tell all of them because all of those children are affected being at home obviously so just for clarity was this discussed in committee or not it was it was to this step no not to this death we asked them to look into it for us and come back with some recommendations and and ask ask them to look at what technology was available for use you're looking at looking into us it's an issue i'll look into it
054to educate ourselves i'm looking to it to plan for plan b or if i recall several board members at the curriculum meeting were interested in looking into it because they wanted to see what we could do to improve it education for quarantine students so are we quasi saying what we're currently doing isn't working or we're just being explorers i think mr debello had brought it up in a committee meeting so maybe he could answer that question best well i brought this up towards the end of last year i brought it up multiple times that i questioned if we're quarantining healthy kids for a period of time of seven to ten days what education are they losing um and we never got an answer i brought up a curriculum i know that we have we have
055and i don't think we really know what and that that's part of the big long-term issue but i i we're forcing kids out of school and i'm just trying to get my arms around the reason i brought up the curriculum is i'm just trying to get my arms around what can we do to ensure that these kids are getting the same educational experience that they normally are getting that even after that we're forcing them out of school i i would question your language that we're forcing them we're mandated to close quarantine healthy and sick kids that have been contact traced okay so we're okay we have we're responsible for educating okay so i won't use the word force we're telling kids that they can't come to school okay so we're forcing him out of school
056following the mandate by the county um so it is a concern and that's why i brought it up towards the end of last school year knowing that we're going to be in this situation again this year we knew that we quarantined over 2 000 kids last year and i do have concerns that they're not getting the same educational experience that they deserve right wrong or differ we're following a mandate that's put forward by montgomery county with the contact racing so that's why i brought this up because i want to ensure that these kids are getting the proper education so that's what had led to the discussion i'm sorry i mean to cut in um mrs zazini um whether no matter why the students are not in school and the reason we want to consider all
057options that we have and maybe i should be talking to you mr jackson since it had originally in your question what can we do to help these this any student who would not be in our school get access to education so looking at the technology end of it could we live live stream could we videotape this is just one of the options that we wanted to consider so we tasked the administration with going back and seeing how feasible this would be so that's where this comes from that's the reason fair enough i thought we'd already evaluated this for what else okay so with that i think my my concern here tonight is also is that we are all we are only three weeks in with 143 that have been quarantined and while some people may
058have appreciated the asynchronous wednesday last year i guess i look at the quarantine as wednesday all day every day for those students that are out which i'm not necessarily comfortable with but i'm also only one person here that being said it's only it's already september 20th i think we we need to really decide what path forward we're going to take to support these kids that are quarantined i'm not looking to open it up to you know somebody that has an incredible sad story i know they're out there not looking to do that not looking to do it for for even the kids that are positive despite the fact that their symptoms may be minimal because they're technically sick but i am looking to do it for the kids that are quarantined that are healthy that
059miss a lot of school if we had over 2 000 students last year and we were only open for part of the year what are those numbers going to look like this year if we stay on that track without a virtual option which may be a watered down in person i'm not saying it's going to be nearly as good as in person but what will those numbers look like and what kind of learning loss will we be facing at the end of the next school year that concerns me greatly so i i feel like whatever path we're going to take to support these kids we need to really move that forward tonight and have that and and let's get this let's get something in place because i don't want this to go unchecked or by
060the wayside or anything like that this is i think a very important issue that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later so my next question would be are we again i'm asking a question again are we saying the the current approach is not working it's either yes we're saying that or no or not and this is why you want to go in a different direction because i haven't heard that it's not working i have concerns about the current approach and i respect that madam president my concern is we're sitting here talking about midstream potentially going left when i have not heard where we're currently at is a problem that's where i'm that's where i'm challenged with this and that's fair that's fair mr jackson so mr rizzo in in light of what mr jackson
061is bringing up what has been the feedback from your your faculty parents what have you when a student is quarantined if the asynchronous is in fact working and effective would that be fair to to ask yes okay yes i could just simply say that if it is not working it has not reached my desk if the concerns voiced maybe it was addressed at the building level and maybe was dealt with but it's not reached my desk so are we comfortable that the um the lessons the classwork the explanations everything are being loaded appropriately into canvas are available to all of our students accessible there's no hidden gap in um you know lessons that are being presented school work that's being presented whether it's you know worksheets or or homework or any other thing like is
062it consistent in terms of what's being delivered with canvas for those students who are currently [Music] at home versus those who are in the classroom so the curriculum department established minimum expectations um for for the asynchronous environment on canvas my understanding is that they are meeting the minimum expectations but i don't know that i can't say that in this point 100 certain that we do have established minimum expectations that have been shared with our teachers so that may be a first point is to kind of do some form of audit and review of canvas and make sure that the information um is is being presented so that any student who may be out due to quarantine is able to access the information and not lose that learning opportunity within the classroom then we may have
063a better idea of you know how much how little um are students getting when they can't physically be there versus they are and look at that gap and make a determination at that point but i think there's information gathering that still needs to occur before we make a determination as to whether or not there's an issue here it sounds like we're trying to make a case for something so we've asked we've passed the administration to go back and try to find this whatever this is i mean mr you just sat here and stated that it hasn't reached his desk so he i'm not sure what he's going to go back and try to find him can he can maybe find information that can confirm or deny our concerns and we could have legitimate concerns and
064maybe he'll go back and what he'll uncover is that you know canvas and and the learning management system that we spend all that money on that maybe it's working and maybe he'll go back and uncover you know what they're on to something maybe it's not working as well as we as we want it to or as well as we need it to to support our students but either way i i think more more investigation needs to take place whether i want to see wait a whole other month go back to curriculum and bring it back to here that's my concern with that delay we've already had 143 students if he was to uncover that this isn't working i don't want to wait a whole other month and have that the numbers i don't see them
065getting better so i wouldn't want to wait if there is an issue there so i'm sorry we're saying it's 143 quarantine yes correct why wouldn't the numbers get any better yeah i mean because they're not going to go down it's not going to be why not i mean we're mandated i mean masks are supposed to stop i understand that but i mean the 143 the 143 isn't going to go down right i mean we're not going to go backwards those kids have still been quarantined they've still been impacted by being on the quarantine and the numbers should be lower theoretically because now we have to wear the masks right and that was one of the things that we had said in the last meeting that regardless of whatever masking order or mandate is there or
066not those quarantine rules are in place that if they're not wearing the mask they're going to have to quarantine right so hopefully now that they are that if it won't continue to climb like this and maybe it'll level off but there's still going to be some that are going to fall into having the quarantine well more than that mr shaffer respectfully i do want to remind you that when we just went through the numbers less than 50 of those students who are quarantined or quarantined from potential exposure within the school the majority of those cases of students who have been quarantined have been quarantined through exposure either at home or in the community so that is not going to change the masks may be required here in school and so we may see that 66
067number go down but we're not going to necessarily see the other portion of that go down i mean that's still what's occurring in terms of other exposures and close contacts are not going to go down well thank you i was well aware where the numbers come from i certainly don't need to be respectfully reminded i get that i'm just saying let's say 50 or whatever it's still it's all relative right i'm just saying that these are supposed to knock it all down so for five and a half hours right so going back to what i originally brought this up was that i was concerned of because when i brought this up a curriculum i thought i heard maybe i heard incorrectly that we didn't have a lot of the content ready to go for students
068that were being quarantined so far or it's minimal and i think you just kind of said that now that we're meeting the minimal standards that have been put forth by curriculum department is that correct well i mean we put minimum standards out there listen i don't i don't have a problem going back and then having a conversation with our curriculum department and looking to see where we are in auditing i don't have an issue with that at all i mean if we find out that we have some deficit errors and in full disclosure there's been a little bit going on the last three weeks i could have missed something you know i you know i try and be as thorough as i can but i could have missed something so i have no problem going
069back and revisiting and asking some questions the question is if we do have a deficit area do we scrap our plan or do we just double down on our plan and make sure that it's a more robust plan so that's that's kind of where i am but let me ask some questions and get some information for you right and i'm fine with that the reason i've brought it up is i want to ensure that the students are getting the educational experience that they're that they're supposed to be getting um here at springboard and it shouldn't matter if they're quarantined or not they should be getting the full educational experience i want to ensure that the content is available i know other districts have instituted some type of streaming it is happening i'm not saying that
070we have to definitely do it but it does other districts are doing it for those students that are are quarantined um for whatever reasons uh i'm not even getting into that i'm just talking about these students are out um in most cases no fault of their own and i want to make sure that they're getting the required education because we don't need more kids to be to have learning loss well i agree and for me again the bigger thing and maybe it's not a place to even say this i want to revisit why we're quarantined to begin with because we're excluding healthy kids i know we have some limitations there we want healthy kids to be in school so that's what bucks county did away with it and circle back to like this so the
071quarantine also we do want to remember um it's not always you know we talked about the 10 days out it doesn't always look like that for everyone and um some people just have to wait for testing results to come in and things like that sometimes the sugar notice the weekend there so we do want to bear in mind that it's it's a little bit less frightening when we think of the idea that it's not all like not 10 days for every student and i i can assure you mr develo that everybody wants up here wants our students to have a full educational experience that is our goal for for all of us and when we were at the curriculum meeting um if i recall correctly mrs zazini you were the chair for that meeting i
072believe that we when this was brought up by mr dibello we tasked um and there was uh dr mario who was there to look at this particularly like is there a way that we can use the technology to bring that experience to students but also to see what other ways there were because so that we could have more robust experience without looking at that other virtual one that would be so can be so burdensome to our teachers too um because you know we want we want the best that we can for our students but we don't want to kind of go backwards on it so i'd like to see what dr murray has to say that was what i had anticipated was going to happen from our curriculum meeting was that that she was going
073to or the someone from curriculum was going to come with some of these ideas and suggestions to our next curriculum meeting i see the how important and timely it is um also but um i think that's what i think that's a way to kind of cover all of this is provided to the committee the next meeting any suggestions or ideas yeah that was the conversation at the time also i mean the technology to maybe pos make some of these uh virtual in the same way they were last year a lot of that technology has been redeployed elsewhere which is kind of the crux of the problem right but but as you heard mr rizzo say there are a hundred mobile units and only about 50 classrooms impact it right now so i think that i
074i'm very glad to hear that mr rizzo has already kind of looked at that that pieced a bit um because i do believe also when we were in that curriculum meeting mr catalano was not there that night and we had asked um further to find out in a little bit more detail where the with the technology where we were with the technology um so again correctly to be transparent it's not exactly the same experience that it was before because no but i'm not i don't think i'm even looking for the same but i i personally think that it's important for the kids to have structure and i think that they need to be going into their classes whether it's the full experience that it was whether they're just listening i don't want the teacher sitting
075there feeling that they have to teach the two modalities but i want the kids to be able to zoom in now that's that's where i personally am at it doesn't mean that i'm not open to other suggestions or something better that may come along that may be the suggestion it's going to answer the problem but i think there may be a problem there that we could be facing with learning loss and i i hesitate as i said to wait all the way till the next curriculum meeting followed by the next work session where we have questions discussion and then a voting meeting at the end of october what what's that number going to look like by the end of october when i said mr schaefer earlier that it's not going to go down i would
076hope that it wouldn't continue to increase at the level that it has but it's not going to go backwards to less than 143 is what i meant by that so um so yeah so i'm still of the position that as a board i would like to see mr rizzo courtney or somehow work with dr mary to try to get us something in time for next week with potentially a recommendation to how we can support these kids further or if it's working what's in place then then tell us that but i'd rather not wait then again i'm one person so what does the rest of the board want to do do you want to wait and go back to curriculum or do you want to ask for further feedback at our next meeting i like to
077comment as usual my concern here is we're we're asking dr murray we're asking mr catalano to evaluate this mr catalano dr murray is a part of the cabinet mr rizzo said he's met with the cabinet he's met with the teachers association anyway and if there is an issue i am all for thinking out of the box i just sit here as a board member and not i don't see what the issue is and so i'm not sure what he's got what they're going to go back and evaluate since she just sat down with them that's why i struggled with this she spoke to them x amount of days ago so they're going to go back and evaluate what now that's why i struggle with this it sounds like we i am all for kids being
078in school having a great education my concern here is are we trying to [Music] create something that doesn't exist being an issue do we want to turn a blind eye to something that may exist the ghost may exist but we don't know that for sure and i don't want to sit around and try to debate it madam president i'm simply saying this mr rizzo stated he met with them so in my simple brain if there was an issue they would have brought it up to him he also did say that in his defense that your last three weeks have been super crazy busy with the start of school and something could have been missed did i hear that correctly okay i wouldn't say you're on an island by yourself no i don't necessarily disagree with
079you the point i was when i made last year and the point i'm again making this year's all like all i'm bringing up i'm not the one that you know all i'm saying is that i want to ensure that the kids are getting when they're quarantined they're getting all of the necessary required and in-depth education that they would normally get if they were here and however we're going to achieve that if it's a resume room or if it's through asynchronous with lessons or whatever i just what i'm bringing up is i want to ensure that they're getting all the education because i don't want to promote more learning loss within our students because based on the montgomery county quarantine rules we're going to be quarantining kids for a while uh there's no doubt about it
080so that's all i keep saying i'm not i didn't take a position one way or the other other than i keep saying the same thing over i just want to make sure that these kids are getting the in-depth education that they deserve and that is what we all want so what the board i don't think it's funny but what is the direction of the board at this point are we kicking it back to curriculum or are we asking mr rizzo to have a more in-depth conversation with his administration and faculty what are we doing doesn't it normally work where the committee brings a recommendation up and then we vote i didn't hear a recommendation from the committee oh and i'm not saying that the board doesn't agree with me all i'm saying is what i'm
081envisioning what i'm saying i'm not saying no one else agrees with me i'm just asking what the direction of the board is going forward is the direction of the board to kick it back to committee then at this point and wait that extra time is that what we're doing are we kicking it back to committee yeah i'm fine with that i think that we need to let them actually figure out what the what the problem is before we try to just slap a solution or even if there's a problem before before as a board we slap a solution on it again the solution often trying to expedite the process right but often we come up with these issues and then we don't even want to fund what it the solution always cost us money and
082then nobody wants to fund it anyway let's make sure there's actually a problem so the rest of the board wants to kick it back to curriculum is that what i'm hearing could i just get some agreement on that yes okay moving on we're going to go on to community relations so we met on tuesday the 7th at 7 30. we first had ms crew give us an update on the new ios and android apps the committee is looking forward to the full rollout in the coming weeks miss crew also gave an update on the weglot translation service for the springford website project is moving along and she hopes to have the complete version ready in the coming weeks there is also a focus on the skyler additional edition the newsletters ms crew has been using
083the new newsletter feature since july and has been pleased with the response weekly updates now include video pictures and are easier to navigate on any device mr rothermell is also using newsletters for a weekly high school headlines newsletter many of you may have seen that from dr collier coming out we then went uh upstairs to with mr rothermell on a little bit of a field trip to the steve bonnett's television studio mr rothemel received nearly fifty thousand dollars in eitc funding which he used to upgrade the studio cameras he purchased and is installing four cameras which will be used at upcoming board meetings these new cameras will eliminate the need to man a camera during the meeting and instead will give students an opportunity to direct and produce meetings live from the studio so that
084was most of our meeting that evening and we will be meeting again in october following the curriculum and technology meeting that night does anyone have any questions regarding community relations okay extracurricular activities mr schaefer the extracurricular committee met on monday september the 13th we started the meeting at 7 30 sharp we on the agenda was presentations on high school sports and high school activities and compliments of our our student reps making more extracurricular comments my reports moving forward will be a little briefer so i appreciate that thank you very much i will add some statistics with regards to participation that mr mcdaniel reported on so compared to last year fall sports to this year fall sports we have an 11 increase in participation i view that as good news administration is also reviewing and selecting
085an online ticketing system that will be used for events including high school football games details will be shared with the community when it is up and running mr wigner presented on high school activities all clubs and activities uh are active that normally would be active during the fall and they're holding in-person meetings and events this past saturday the marching band um held our our first competition um and uh another highlight here is the class of 22 is hosting a color run on saturday september 26 with a rain date of sunday uh october the third the fall play is underway it is cinderella and the performances will be on november 12th and 13th the committee will be meeting again on monday october the 11th at 7 30 where we will have presentations on uh music and
086middle school activities along with uh any additional agenda items thank you any questions for mr schaefer um i just have one comment i believe that the class of 2022 color run has been cancelled due to low signups sad you can't see me i'm frowning so finance mr dabello finance meeting met september 14th at the district office 6 30 we started we reviewed the executive reports although it's only uh one month really into the new budget year on the we have a 102 million dollars in cash cash in the bank we collected 25 million more in real estate taxes than prior uh prior year we have 40 million deposit in september to date um our revenues are on schedule the exelon check came in this time i'm sorry excellent my classes are fogging up the exelon
087check came on time this year for 1.7 million dollars expenditures are as expected as well with uh with the budget assessments were open uh where target is 4.14 billion which is achieved and we're like i've talked about this before um there was carry over from last year because of the county offices being behind so we're looking at an opening budget or opening target for this new school year 44.2 i can't read this opening target is 4.2 million and have 10 months to achieve 60 million dollars jim i don't know what you wrote here this doesn't make any sense we gained three to four million dollars in august the real estate the real estate transfer taxes uh year to date we're about 1.1 million of the 1.8 million budget so we already collected 61 of the
088of the real estate transfer taxes we feel that this is going to level off as we get closer to november and december the county is still catching up as i mentioned due to the spring surge um earned income taxes last year ended about 12 million dollars new budget amount was 11 million we collected 2 million to date slightly ahead of prior years starting off at a good pace self-funded insurance uh only two months in and then we're on par except expectations food services um we had served uh 19.5 000 meals over the summer compared to last year was 10 10.8 000 meals so let's just say 11 000 meals we are as mentioned i think uh last month that the the those meals that were providing rules have changed so we're only serving uh our
089students on school days a la carte uh is back in and functioning again this year so we're hoping to see uh increased sales as well um we do have a usda audit compliance this year uh ms smelton did ask if we know the date as of yet and not not we don't know exactly when that's going to occur um we did explain uh to everyone involved at the meeting what the audit's for and why we have to do it we are looking at starting the breakfast carts as well um that was something that we were going to try to do last year but then covet hit we did but we're hoping to get that in place this year so that those students when arriving at the school in the morning could have a opportunity to
090maybe grab a quick snack or sandwich or something in the morning the covert related expenditures and grants we did review each of the grants the sr2 and sr3 are still under review with pde we did receive from the federal government as about four million dollars as of the end of august i did bring up during the pres presentation that we don't want to we would like not to see any additional esser funds utilized for things that are haven't been already presented because it isn't an endless bucket um so all the money that we've been allocated or all the money that we believe we're going to be getting through these grants have already been allocated um and and you'll see this evening on our on our agenda there are uh several line items that are associated
091to that million dollars that we put aside for social emotional issues um i am concerned that and i will have questions about this a little later uh with the amounts that we're signing in the contract this year it seems a lot of these services are for one year um so we are waiting i believe we're still waiting for about two million dollars in grant money um and we'll see how that goes i'm not anticipating it's not receiving uh any money um but hopefully we don't get gypped other than that that was the meeting questions from mr davao so no more s for mining correct no more new esser money correct as of now mr jackson property thank you our property committee met on september 14th at 7 30. uh some of the construction updates was
092mcdonald's mcnelly's stadium regress project gave an update on where we are there were some engineering concerns regarding gate b we reloaded relocated that gate b to the field side of the firing zone which should reduce which should reduce the scope of work and potential cost savings uh completion is scheduled for october 8. uh limerick elementary boiler replacement project is many is experiencing the country right now supply chains management the boilers were due to be installed delivered in november right now that's being pushed out so we've decided to take your boiler from the 567 grade center replacement project and use that until the ball is received there was an update on the oatmeal property subdivision there was discussion regarding conceptual project layout provided by our engineering consultants birch and associates the property lot fixed boundaries came
093into point seven eight acres we discussed adding the remaining quarter acre to the lot to alleviate ground before upper providence for a one-acre subdivision variants we also discussed the property grounds for evaluating found acceptable for a new septic system minor revisions would need to be made to the plot plan the oaks elementary walking path there was discussion regarding the title search it was completed there's a meeting scheduled with the solicitor's office to review ownership of the bridge repair contracted cleaning services we're experiencing the same issues everybody else is staffing mr hunter and staff or work on another company to see how we can find supplemental support for current cleaning services uh police and emergency management uh chief warrior he's working with traffic control i'm sure we all know that's a challenge this year with more
094cars coming into the district uh congratulations to lieutenant phillips for completing the fbi leader executive leadership trilogy and that concludes my report any questions for mr jackson thank you thank you next we have the um report for western uh mr develo miss earl and myself were there we had an executive session uh on september 13th prior to meeting for the first time not our first time our second time in person we did have an executive session though prior to that meeting to discuss personnel we then had the meeting and approved a separation agreement with mr martin we also approved and welcomed the new principal to replace mr chaminsky in the interim of a new director dr roach the superintendent of record and rachel hetzel who's on site will work together to cover the happenings over
095at the western montgomery ctc everything seems to be in order there i believe chief lawyer is going to also pitch in when needed and i believe dr rich has been in contact with mr rizzo and also with um dr finnerty yes to coordinate the coverage at the um ctc until we're back up and running at full full speed ahead are there any other comments that mr earl or mr de bellow would like to make regarding that meeting nope okay legislative mrs melton that's the third that hasn't occurred yet okay all right thank you mr develo mciu how's it encourage you okay mr shaffer psba no report tonight mr schaefer is there going to be a meeting this year in october or was that moved to a virtual platform did i say not sure are you
096talking about the combined conference i think that i saw somewhere that it was going to be i think that it was moved virtually but i could be wrong okay if you find out maybe you could let us know uh mr rizzo do you have a superintendent's report also this evening i do thank you um as you know this has been mentioned a few times tonight the board is really focused on supporting our students with special needs part of that is a parent group that we're looking to support um there was a survey that was recently sent out a special education needs assessment survey sent out and 311 responses to date some questions were asked highest selected topics for discussion generally just understanding special education whether it be elementary middle school or high school is one
097of the higher interest groups higher interest topics adhd autism executive functioning and study skills and then several parents had asked for opportunities to connect with other families we also asked what means of receiving that information was most important that was a select all that um all that all that apply so of the hundred and so i'm sorry the 311 response is 55.6 or 173 preferred virtual or zoom options um 31.5 or 98 preferred in-person presentations and then 55.6 again 173 preferred information available on the district special education webpage and again you could select all that apply so those numbers add up to more than 100 so our special education supervisors are working along with our communication department and again with an overall goal to provide parent professional development that will support their children and family
098structure now and going forward regularly updated information is going to be available on a website on the special education website the supervisors and communications department are working to provide engaging monthly workshops and seminars to help families learn about the special education department and how to support student learning and provide opportunities to ask questions and collaborate monthly topics would include for example understanding the mbe process and the iep process gifted focus esy and early intervention supports esl and eld supports transition and supports coordinator information with future planning center traditionally a parent advisory board would be a parent driven 501 c 3 non-profit organization we do already have something like that in our footprint which is the 18 model again following that 18 model the special ed supervisors are excited to collaborate with the parent group to
099provide resources professional development and opportunity to connect and to discuss so we're really excited about where we're going with that i know our special supervisors want to be able to reach out and hear from and provide opportunities for our parents to be able to connect and share and lastly it's been covered both by mr schaefer as well as our student reps but we are back to school we're very excited about being back to school back-to-school nights are in process we have two coming up this week uh we have one more i think coming up next week and then one in october um athletics are up and running participation as mr shaffer mentioned is up and again this past weekend i attended the marching band home show there were 17 bends which did include our middle
100school and senior high marching bands and what i really enjoyed seeing was the support for each other that that event brings a lot of excitement just in general for supporting each other and i'm pretty excited that we are again planning um to continue creating experiences that are of a more normal nature and again mr schaefer did have that opportunity to discuss those things as we planned for moving forward so we are really working hard to try and provide as as robust an experience for our families or for our students as they can in this school year and that's my report thank you thank you any questions for mr bizzo a quick question on the special education advisory i mean it sounds like you're it's progressing along rather nicely i thought i heard that there will
101be opportunities for parent feedback into this advisory group not everything's going to be pushed out as far as speaker series and informative sessions did i hear that right so correct i think there's going to be a 2 and it's still evolving there's going to be a two-way opportunity for sure and whenever we have those parent series and we have the speakers there's opportunities for questions answers and collaboration when they're together in person or whether they're virtual um and then you know whatever however that group ends up taking form the parent group takes form they would meet with our special ed supervisors i would imagine on a regular basis to help provide the supports they need their time frame for this well ongoing i believe we're going to be seeing a virtual meet of the special
102education supervisors it's going to be happening in the next week or two and then each month there's going to be more and more happening so it's an ongoing process right okay nurse smith um are you still with us this evening i am still with you so we did our numbers based on the start of the year um we had a total of 65 positives reported to us so far this year 40 of them were present in school during their infectious period which required contact tracing and those 40 resulted in 66 students as we said earlier being quarantined as close contacts due to potential school exposure um the good thing to notice is because of since the mask mandate has been in effect um the majority of these quarantines are occurring due to potential exposure at
103lunch so that's where our quarantines during investment date may continue so that's all i have hey thank you for that are there any questions for nurse smith i think we knew that that lunch could be an issue and that we're doing the best we can to navigate that and to keep it at a minimum um thank you for that thank you for everything you're all doing all the time thank you that does not cover it but thanks quick question has there been any in-school transmissions yet we are not aware of any in-school transmission okay any other questions from north smith all right then thank you again and we'll go to mr fitzgerald you have a solicitor's report i i have no report this evening okay thank you and moving on i have a question for
104the solicitor yes mr fitzgerald could you please clarify there seems to be a lot of uncertainty in the district as far as what the uh and i want to preface this with that i'm fully agree with following the state mandate because i don't want that to be but could you please clarify well you know because there seems to be this question as far as are we following the order 100 percent or are we not following the order 100 percent i believe you're following the order 100 so the question at hand is that there people keep asking we require medical signature on the exemption form and the order doesn't state that and could you please clarify that and so we could clear this up this evening and we move forward the order doesn't say that but
105it also doesn't limit that either um and the department of education we are not going to have chatter from the audience thank you the department of education uh in multiple communications to school leaders school boards both in published and direct communications through intermediate units um re reinforce that on a couple levels first pde has indicated that putting aside the the medical documentation their view is the only way to qualify for an exemption on the medical side of it is to go through the section 504 process which as many of you do know that that's a far more onerous frankly process it involves members of a team it involves review of documentation student student information and the like so utilizing the the medical form in terms of documentation from a practitioner candidly i think expedites the
106process in terms of getting to the exemption so with both processes the district in my opinion is is adhering to the requirements of the order but pdes it's not pde's order it's the department of health order correct it is a department of health order i'll be the first one to tell you um it is a poorly written order i think everybody can acknowledge that um so it does take the there are multiple ways to view it um i i will acknowledge that as well however in the totality of the information that's available to the district whether it be the order itself and the documentation that came subsequent to the order the process that's in place in the district right now is compliant clearly with the order and law isn't there also somewhere in that information
107where it clearly states that if what our process is that's what should be followed and in our process for an an actual exemption from a required mask we had said that you would need a medical exemption so they they reiterate that at some point in addition to the liability issues that are raised and in addition to the effects that the pde sent out in supplemental information is that correct the guidance from the department of education on september 7th was just what you described it said for exemptions to follow your established 504 team process let's mention two things here that's i understand what you're saying but that's not what this is yeah you're correct that's not in the order that is in the guidance any further comment on this piece or questions for mr fitzgerald before
108we move on okay and we'll go through the rest of this piece the minutes a and b are there any questions or comments hey personnel let me just clarify that it should be a through j um it goes a to h and then p and q but it should be i n j so we're going to make that correction we can do that mr fitzgerald without a sunshine law violation correct being the work session we're not voting on this will just be noted for next week's agenda any questions there on personnel questions or comments on finance a through m yeah so i when i've gone through finance uh you got c3 c7 and l and all three of those are funds that are being used for i believe the esser grant and they're all geared
109towards providing um i'm sorry not l just i'm sorry let me c7 c3 and j i'm sorry c3 c3 c7 and j yes are all related to l's to mou sorry about that those three are all related to utilizing esser funds for social emotional issues is that correct uh social emotional issues as well as um just providing you know providing services evaluations etc yes it's it's about it's about mental health social emotional and then providing services to students and evaluations so they're you're you're with all three of those you're probably at or above a million dollars we are above a million dollars with that um and if i could just elaborate on that whenever we went through the rfp process as per the esser requirement we put in what we believe to be a range
110of what we would need which included for example between three and five school psychologists so all these dollar amounts are the the not to exceed amount so we believe that we don't need five school psychologists for 180 school days so that dollar amount will be less for sure we haven't signed any contracts committing us to that number so i've been working with our special education supervisors to identify where we do need to have services in place and where we do not we do believe we need to have the social work we do believe we need to have some of the bcba support we might not need to have those two full-time positions we do believe that we need to have three school psychologists we may not need to have five we do believe we need
111to have the two in district two in district councillors to help support students those are meeting kids where they are so as we whittle that away and they're all based on 180 day school year contract um that number will be less i don't know how far we can stretch it but we're going to try and stretch it as far as we can because my concern is that we allocated a little over or i guess it was about a million dollars for these services and my concern is is that i believe we're going to need these services not only for this year but possibly definitely next year possibly the year after that and i'm just concerned that well i don't want to say concern well i'm concerned that if we exhaust all this money all these
112funds which we make it may come to fruition that we do then what are we going to do next year yeah and the year after that that's a fair question um and i don't have that answer right this moment but but i will say one of the other things that is sort of impeding our progress here impeding our savings is that we have been trying to fulfill the board um have the vision to add a school psychologist on taking our total school psychologist up to 11 we have not been able to fill that position so we're still deficit one school psychologist so having that having the extra school psychologist help us with just our day-to-day as well and again it's just the fact that we're dealing with we're just you know it's we're struggling right
113now to be able to get that position filled so but we will work to keep that number as low as possible so we can stretch that into the 22-23 school year yeah i mean don't get me don't get me wrong i'm not looking i i i just want to make sure we're on the same page because i'm not saying you know do whatever you can not to spend the money because obviously we allocated this money for purpose and it's a very strong purpose to ensure that this support is here for the students as we navigate through this pandemic but the issue is is that what i'm i'm concerned is that if and when we exhaust these funds i don't want to be in a position where we're just leaving the students hanging next year because
114we don't have the funds available do you kind of get where i'm going and again i think i think if i can if i can summarize you're saying don't overspend this year two no let me rephrase don't don't um over don't put too much in place this year if you don't need it so that you have more moving forward but also whatever you build this year make sure that you're building capacity to move forward in a year so we can keep supporting students after this year well i want to make sure that all the students needs are addressed my concern is if that when we meet all those let me rephrase it this way if we need all addressing all those student needs through these services we got to figure out how we're going to
115do this next year if we exhaust the ester funds this year sure you understand what i'm saying i get you yeah i'm not saying i'm not saying don't spend the money or you know try to cut where you can that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is that we're identifying that potentially there's going to be an issue and we're bringing in staff to address those issues which is great and we allocated a million dollars to do that or and we're going to be spending a little over a million dollars potentially and if we do i just we got to start planning now of thinking that if we exhaust all those funds what are we going to do next year agreed okay agreed also also on l under finance um this is the uh increased
116testing that was referenced earlier uh mr rizzo can you expand on that a little bit for us sure the um the project faces so last year throughout the entire school year and chief boyers and his team did a lot with this so the project acet testing program that we did last year this year to engage in any kind of testing using the using montgomery county office of public health and their resources is going to require the approval of an mou and that is what that is what this motion is for and again we are looking to use that testing possibly for three reasons one to test out of quarantine we can use those to test auto quarantine getting students back into classrooms quicker two what we call symptomatic testing so if a student is in
117school and they do present with some sort of covet-like symptom then we could test and if they test negative then they are not required to quarantine for the amount of time um thirdly and for me and i've talked to mr fitzgerald about this i am very interested in a test to stay program which is not supported at the state level right now which essentially means if a student is a close contact then they if the parents agree to it they can instead of quarantining test on say day one three and five of exposure and continued negative results allows them to stay in the classroom instead of quarantining so i see that i see the project acet as a way to keep our kids in the classroom as much as possible so that's why i'm interested
118in doing this if we don't approve the mou we don't have access to montgomery county office of public health resources we would have to find those resources elsewhere so can we just also confirm in all of these situations regardless of whether it's testing out of quarantine testing for uh symptomatic or test to stay we would absolutely unquestionably obtain parental consent for any of those tests correct that is correct we would not do that without parental consent now there were there was a concern with the mou mr fitzgerald can you speak to that in terms of whenever we went through it with the uh county yeah there was um a notable provision with regard to um by assigning the mou the district would essentially be adopting whatever guidance the uh department of health was was providing
119i don't like that provision i i think it it you know it ties us up a little bit uh it's and i've gone back and forth with um mr rizzo on this i i the resources available are i think it's worth the gamble to at least get into the mou if we find out that there is too much of to to onerous of governance on their end about adherence to provisions there is another section in in this that allows mr rizzo the ability to say well we're going to just opt out of this mou we believe that the restrictions that you are um providing to us you know it limits our ability to effectively oversee our own um health and safety plans so put that out there just as consideration but i think the benefit
120outweighs the risks at this point so is there anything that's currently presented as written you see as problematic yeah i mentioned it and i believe you you met maybe in the board memo there there's a provision and i don't have the exact and i could point it to mr jackson i can point it to you um yeah there's a section called minimum participation requirements and it's specifically the last second to last section so they're they're in bullet points uh compliance with current mco ph covet 19 guidance so it's it's somewhat of a backdoor way for us to have to follow their their uh their guidance again i think we need to see how this plays out in the relationship and that's why we have the next provision in there which allows the superintendent to withdraw
121from the mou if we find that at this point the uh um we're not getting the benefit and there's too much of a owner's oversight is there is there a required timing to that withdrawal or could we just it's it's it's given to the if he's given to mr rizzo at any time no i'm not saying that we i'm questioning that if he wants to get out he could just get out he can get out right because i i i am concerned about what implications that come along with this when you start to sign on to things like this um and i'm also i you know i i like the concept of the test to stay but that's not record that's not um what's the word i'm looking for um when we meet as superintendents
122we have been encouraging strenuously encouraging montgomery county to advocate for us at the state level they tell us that they are but again it has not it seems to have fallen on deaf ears it's it's on hold in in i think almost all counties at this point everybody kind of has the provision available at the county level but it's most counties have placed that on hold temporarily but it's been on hold for a while now so there's no anything associated with this that's going to potentially alleviate as mr russell brought up earlier about the quarantining rules that montgomery county has set forth not in the short term i i this mou doesn't change that dynamic right now those quarantine rules are the only game in town as we speak the test to stay protocols appear
123to be what is going to be the evolving process over the next several months i i'm gathering and i mr rose and i went back and forth on this um this mou will give you the resources to be able to have that ready to go when when we can greenlight it and as mr rizzo brought up because i just want for clarification purposes again we are required to follow because every county has their own quarantine rules or non-rules i mean like for example bucks county has no quarantine rules when it comes to student tracing contact tracing i'm not sorry not contact racing um so we're what's the specifics again why why do we have to follow montgomery county's contact racing quarantining [Music] that is direct guidance that they have provided to us you are under
124a microscope with this department of health unlike in bucks county you might as well it might as well be a different country um in other parts of the state where there is there is no department of health it's the wild west because the state department of health is really not there to support those districts good bad or indifferent and those districts are creating rules as they go in this instance you have the guidance from the county my recommendation it being the only game in town right now until there's a viable alternative that the board can seriously consider and that the nurses can support i think we need to stay with what we're at i'm not i'm not advocating i'm just i'm this is clarification because uh mister mr roosevelt brought it up and i just
125wanna i think we all everybody's kind of has different opinions on a lot of like everything associated to this but every county has if they have their own department of health every county is kind of doing something different um and so montgomery county as you're stating it's guidance is what they're putting forward at this point and the recommendation is as of now we should follow that guidance and unless something better or more acceptable one way or the other is available is that is that kind of what you're saying this was asked and answered several times well please don't interrupt when i'm having a conversation yeah i mean i would i would i would concur with that absolutely okay so i i mr fitzgerald just too not to be the dead horse but why is it
126that that montgomery who who gives montgomery county the authority to do all this when bucks county please wait please who gives them the authority to push down on us when there are districts like in the wild wild west or bucks county because frankly i think that our plan that we voted for nine to zero was a better well-constructed plan i think we learned a lot from the last 18 months we put a plan together with time frames based on metrics in our own area and it just seemed to be a better better plan than hearing okay first week of october we're going to revisit revisit and what what's the next step what is it based on we learned that the hard way i would say in the last 18 months about how to put a
127viable plan together it's based on specific information and numbers i'm sorry so sorry it's one minute too but do you know you understand what i'm saying that i i felt like this was a poorly written as as you said earlier whether the order the order was poorly written whether it was purposeful or mistakenly done so that's not the county though no but it's not the county but what i'm saying is that's my question why can the county who gives the county the authority to dictate what we do i guess in light of what i think what we had was a better plan for us moving forward that was thrown out the window and overturned by this so why do they have the right to do that well i'm not not confusing i don't think i'm
128confusing i think the order's the state i understand okay what is the state beyond the order and i said this before those quarantine rules that are in place they push us to mask whether there's an order there or not because if we don't we will quarantine and if we're quarantining there's healthy kids out of school and then you're talking about massive learning laws and it just is this cyclical thing that we need to get out of we just want our kids to have the best education everybody at this table wants that so my question why can the county push down on us who gives them the authority to do that [Music] well it comes out of the the disease prevention and control act um which which which outlines the fact that they empower local boards
129of health i.e montgomery county chester county house with delaware county and it gives them that authority to not only implement whatever is going on at the state level but candidly put in more restrictive practices potentially now in bucks county i can't speak to what's going on in bucks county because there is a provision within the act that allows the state to come in to to take over a local health department if it is perceived that they're not following state guidance but i don't know what's going on in bucks county to to suggest that but it comes from the same act that is being litigated up in butler county that's in the commonwealth court uh and we'll hear a lot more about it hopefully within the next several days thank you sorry to i wasn't really
130confused i understand what you're saying i'm just trying to show the relationship between all of that that's going on but thank you for the clarification so one last question mr fitzgerald regarding the mou that's going to be marked up or we before we went to the county with our concerns and they said no you know no moss we're not we're not changing that language they did add some language with regard to superintendent ability to move out of the mou but that language in particular i proposed counter language that they they rejected so we're not going to issue this to parents until it's completely addressed one way or the other or mr jackson unfortunately it does presented all right thank you well that was a lot of question finance anything more before we move on oh
131that no that wasn't solicitor that was no it wasn't it was l on finance it was l1 finance okay all right programming programming and curriculum a through e we heard comments this evening about this uh pace survey and i think that over the years it's it's taken a life of its own uh with the with the type of questions and um actually i went through and i read all 10 pages of the questions and the unfortunate thing is that there are probably um definitely um grade levels that a lot of those questions pertain to and then some of those questions when you read through them you kind of scratch your head when you start looking at the sixth grade level [Music] deserve provision as if parents are are not feeling comfortable with the survey that
132they can opt out of that survey for this student uh so the short answer is yes um our practice has been here at springford or at least prior to my appointment here our process has been that i send out a letter we get board approval to participate in the survey generally a few months before we do the survey and but then a letter goes out from my office explaining what the assess what the survey is what we do with the information and how parents can choose to opt out of that with a form to return to opt out i have received a few emails over the last couple of days on this one and one of them pointed to pa code which i reached out to mr fitzgerald for further clarification and basically the code
133states that um for a survey according to pa code you need to opt in not opt out so i reached out to mr fitzgerald to get his clarification to get his point on that and would you care to open mr richard uh yeah i mean this this question was posed earlier today and i i looked at the provision in chapter four of of the pa code which is the state board of ed regulations uh it appears to suggest that it would have to be more of an active you know or opt-in instead of an opt-out scenario as you just discussed um i i but admittedly i haven't stress tested this this provision but that's my prelim preliminary look at it because based on what the language indicates um this is being done it's really another
134agency that's that's you know issuing the survey if we were doing the survey if this was a spring ford survey i wouldn't have concerned about that language but this is a third party survey so we're looking into it but that's what the language reads and i want to kind of see if there's any other other guidance to that language but it i will be the first one to tell you first time i've ever seen that provision in in school code so i love the state so in other words if all the if the parents don't opt in and their students don't take the survey is that what you're saying that that that's how i i preliminarily am reading it yes and there's there's funds associated to this survey it's less about funds being available and
135more about services being provided that would normally have a cost associated with them but or not because of our participation so we received some we received uh sap and intervention services through montgomery county from montgomery county which amounts to approximately forty thousand dollars that if we did not participate in the survey we would not have access to unless we unless we paid for those services that way and i do believe springboard counseling provides a lot of those services which is really a really great benefit for our school district i don't know if anyone's been involved with that but i have and it's really great can i assume that these are um good works um anonymous yes okay so how would you even know if they're opting interrupting you so so the surveys are anonymous the
136issue and you know there were again a few of the emails i received dealt with well if you don't know who my child is how do you know if my child is in crisis through the survey and it's less about the individual and more about identifying grade level trends and where there are issues if there's a significant vaping issue in eighth grade for example based on the results of the survey then we would target our supports towards eighth grade when it comes to vaping to help kind of put that in the right place that's one of the strategies the other the data that we get from the survey we can use towards applying for grants again for more for more prevention services so that's kind of linked to it as well we could use the
137data to make a justification for funds to be able to support students in a different way so there is value to it the questions i read them some of the questions or a lot of the questions are pretty jarring and they're you know i had a conversation becca sorry i had a conversation with my wife and she had some of the same concerns you know so it's definitely jarring but we do get really good data from it that helps us support students that we might not otherwise have through on other means okay so i'm not again i'm not saying not to do the survey i didn't i didn't say that at all what i'm saying is that um i wanted to ensure that there's a division in place that if parents aren't comfortable with the
138survey they could opt out of it but now i'm hearing that in this instance the state has a provision that they actually have to opt in to do the survey so i think we need to get clarification on that before we vote on it next week i just want to ensure that there's a provision that if a parent is not comfortable with the survey in this instance that they can opt out that their child does not have to take participation there is absolutely a provision to opt out and most likely our path would be they would need to opt in yes that's your question yes and just because we've always maybe done something since what was it 1989 or in and around there just because we've always done something a certain way doesn't mean we
139have to keep doing it that way and and maybe it's time that there is a change and then it's opt-in maybe there's also a time where that survey needs to be more sensitive and needs to be we don't write it right it's a third party we know we're not going to do that but maybe that third party might be a consideration of theirs as well and maybe they would think of that if they saw that we were changing our our plan and having people opt in and there was less participation they might say hey let's take a look at what we're asking here maybe it needs to be designed a little differently all of that could fall into place or could not they're all what ifs but again just because we've done something a certain
140way doesn't mean we have to keep doing it that way and maybe for us it's time to take a change and do the opt-in especially if that's the regulation i would like to speak up in favor of this survey i've had many children in this district and i think it provides very valuable information i'm also um i have talked to a psychiatrist about this survey i mean this specific survey even mentioning things and talking about things and being anonymous and sharing information students are incredibly honest about answering this stuff and it provides them really incredibly useful data to the school district and the administration and other you know to address actual social emotional risks and risky behavior and provide a whole bunch of really great information that allows us to actually help the students in
141this district i also think that the psychiatrist keeps mentioning to me and this has been over the past decades we've learned that if you make things mentionable if you discuss things with your children whether it's as a family or in a school district that overwhelmingly makes children less participation have less participation in risky behaviors whereas if you make things taboo don't discuss them or even make them shameful and don't bring them up the participation in risky behavior usually goes up so that is something that is we should consider and i'm familiar also with this survey having been in education too and um i know that it is a valuable tool for finding working with our students with mental health issues we have such an emphasis right now of such a concern about mental health and
142that this is i know from working with experts in this field that this is a they find it to be a very valuable tool in identifying said trends and also again providing us with money and resources which we desperately need um for our our students in our district so okay so i just want to be clear again i'm not advocating that we're not got to do the survey i just i'm not saying you are i'm advocating for it i didn't say you said that i said i'm just being clear um that i'm not advocating not to do the survey all i'm saying is that i want to ensure the parents have an ability to opt out can we i think one of the things that i've heard from everybody and i appreciate everybody's kind of
143information in terms of the value of the survey um given what mr fitzgerald has also shared with us is there a reason that we can't just move right now and say it's an opt-in only and move forward and call it a day yeah sure i mean i think that's what i'm hearing from i don't think that is what i'm hearing i'm hearing a difference of opinion here i think we should hold it till next week when when does this survey go out or did it go out or where are we on the administration window is open but we typically do it in october so we have some time i was going to send out a letter to families in a few weeks all right so let's let's just keep it on the agenda as it
144is um remember we have new sunshine laws and if we make a change it could be that so maybe okay okay anything further on on that okay then conferences and workshops a through d questions or comments on b and c yeah i'm sorry well i i've asked this question several times i'll make a statement first if i send a young engineer young architect to a conference to design our fault in san francisco they will take that information and bring it back and share with other engineers and architects within the firm i ask the same question here when we send people to conferences and workshops what happens to that information does it stay with them does it come back and it's downloaded to a digital library or is that information available for other members so we're
145not sending people you know time and time again to the same workshop or conference so first question and the second question this is an example b and c we're sending two people to the same conference for the purpose of why before you answer that one is attending virtually and one is attending in person no they will both be attending in person it does stay virtually on c yeah that's a typo and and that being said so if they're if two are going why couldn't one go and come back and share the information so let me first speak to mr jackson's um point i am all for a pay forward model where when somebody attends they share out that's part of what our choice day is in november with our teachers they share information they receive
146i was a big part of what i called on conference days anybody went to a conference had to share with their colleagues in some way shape or form this is a little bit unique these are our two these are two child accounting folks that receive updates on on how to do what they do on a re we could send one it's more beneficial for both of them to go because of the critical and accurate nature of what they do in terms of tracking student enrollment um in and out of placements and learning how to do all that in on skyward in general it's it's good for both them to get that information but yes they could they could do that with one of them attending we prefer that they both attend given given the the
147highly important nature of what they do for our district okay i acknowledge your response that's do i other business a through e i have a question about e in the last paragraph where it's talked about the cost of it it this doesn't say it says nineteen hundred dollars per student but it doesn't say how many students there's three substitutes needed i assume we have to pay for them and then there's fundraising events to defray the cost so that doesn't say it's covering the cost it's a trading cost where what is the cost and where is that coming from this is kind of nebulous i actually have to defer to mr mcdaniel on that one i and i know that he's not in here um the cost in the band world the cost usually came from
148student fundraisers and then there were the costs for the substitutes and things were covered this would be three three days three substitutes nine total sub um and then the transportation piece on top of that so usually you approve what is cost what the cost the district is responsible for but then the rest is picked up by the student i just i apologize i don't have that answer i have to get that answer for you and i'll get that for you by next week okay because i i just didn't understand um if it's just defraying cross it doesn't say it's covering so um i wonder where the difference is being made up i could be wrong but as if i remember this correctly the 1900 is what the students are paying it doesn't it's not coming
149out of the district funds what's coming out of district funds is the three substitutes um the students will fundraise to us at the nineteen hundred dollars and i believe they're responsible for i'm beginning to check with mr mcdaniel but i believe they're responsible for the difference if they don't fundraise mr develop that's been my experience with being a parent of several students going on these things and then uh if you can't fundraise the certain amount then you have to the student is or their parents are responsible for making up the difference that would be that would be my recollection of it as well but let me get a definitive answer for it i'll get that back to you sorry about that thanks so any further questions on other business a through e if not we're
150going to move into ford comment i thought we had stopped being involved with voting on people we don't know over in tembo 2. we did stop last year and um mr fitzgerald are we obligated to vote a through d these are what are the this is the psba folks have you never been to the brentwood borough school district um i i mean i listen i i i you guys are members of psba they they certainly would desire that you participate in it um is there a legal obligation to do so no it's really just about the membership you have with psba all right thank you so um under board comment then into that i just want to bring up um carlos wiley we had an information session with him prior to the last work session
151and my understanding from mr fitzgerald is that we cannot continue to meet in that well for mr rizzo i guess relate to you related to me from mr visit was that we cannot continue to meet in an informational session with mr whiteley on a monthly basis and then it would be better to land that informational sharing session what have you in one of our committees now we had potentially discussed maybe policy or maybe an ad hoc do you want to weigh in on that for us or that's that's the prerogative of the board where you do it um you don't want it in an information the first one the one was fine to get information about what his role was going to be uh but ongoing i i would have concern about that from from
152a legal perspective i would prefer to be done in a public meeting does the board have a direction then that they would like to share for where um this could go i suppose policy had come up miss earl because of the eidl work and you know what are your thoughts i think it would make perfect sense to be i mean it's already that's what we do so to create an additional committee is additional meetings for more people and i mean i think i think it's appropriate thank you is there anyone else that wants to weigh in mr sheep well arguably the the topic of diversity equity inclusion could be stretched across practically every committee we have certainly personnel i mean so i i'm just now that that's just for me saying i don't believe it's
153it's a policy issue in fact i'm not sure policy is even involved in driving why we paid for this consultant in the first place so to me um you know it might warrant having its own committee um that's just my two cents i can't think of a committee where it would fit in other words i agree with mr shaffer i think it's it's more of an operational we have a policy already we have a policy we've approved a policy so it's kind of going through policy income out of that so now it's more in an operational setting but it's a very broad far reaching and and encompasses you know many of our standing committees so i agree that perhaps an ad hoc would make the most sense but there is apparently a committee of 28
154people 28 people that sit around and discuss this and i can go back to bring this up to dr goodin almost two years ago so we have 28 people that's already in a committee we have a consultant and now we're debating having another committee to do what maybe what would be most sensible that's a great point mr jackson so perhaps maybe a great way to do that is identify one or two people who are kind of for on-time purposes representatives of the board who attend that 28-person committee and then can bring back to the board a report on where things are and what's happening just as a chair might do for property or finance or maybe that's a way to addre you know to kind of close that gap well it wouldn't be good as
155property but i can i can respect what you're saying my my concern with this is we have a lead chairperson of this committee with 28 people why can't that person present and louis putting that on us on a board member i mean think about this they've been meeting for almost a year and a half now right we we we have a consultant yeah why don't they just present to us on occasion when we want it great point how many people are on the committee 28 people but the issue becomes what are they presenting on uh are they presented on substance progress to appease the board i think we need a com a broad presentation on where they are where they're trying to go and when are they going to get there because this has been
156going on for two years now 410 days is what it took to construct the empire state building think about that okay here we are two years and we still are not at a point that if a parent came to us and said what is your program we have the website with a page on it that talks about it that's it we have nothing else so these 28 people with a facilitator could present i guess i i hear what you're saying and i would agree there's no reason to recreate the wheel here right there there is a group that's in place my question is that it was my understanding the board wanted to have contact with mr wiley so how would that happen going forward if we're not going to have these information sessions i'm just
157asking thank you i'll be happy to answer my president the issue was we're not getting information so you know man the names of the bellow i'll give him credit for this i think he brought up well maybe we should meet with the consultant at least try to get some information because questions are being asked we talk about this there's been a couple of talks from various administrators about it but there's been no time frame for deliverables i've been told it's next year whatever that really means and i know it is it is a challenging matter however we live 34 miles from the fourth largest city in america we've got ivy league institutions we've got top 50 fortune companies in philadelphia this should not be that difficult to get a consultant this is one of the
158hottest button items in america right now this edi dei each one that we should have this behind us so we're not here having this conversation so so what if we had this group and we had a presentation by one or two members and maybe from time to time they could even bring mr wiley in would that be agreeable to mr rizzo or mr fitzgerald is that he is as long as we don't have an executive session with mr wiley he's he's out so mr fitzgerald that'll be 29. so perhaps we could have a presentation by say two of the the people that are you know in in the trenches here on this eidl and then maybe from time to time if we're going to do this periodically maybe from time to time we have mr
159wiley join them so that we can hear directly from him i i like that idea i think that that's a good idea because i can hear the questions that mr jackson has that are like what what are the deliverables and i'm not sure what what they are i'm not sure what that expectation is and um and then you know um about it being a program i'm not sure that it is a program i'm not sure what it should so i think that i i i'd like to think that it has value we have um people on on that are on the committee who truly um are looking after the best interest of our district and i think the structure of it is kind of what is being played into you know the question there i
160don't know what he has against penn state and having someone come from state college down here but um i think that the clarification on the on the program design um and just similar to like how mickey mcdaniels comes in and talks about the athletic program and other people throughout the year come in and talk that it would be good you know annually or biannually to have somebody from the dei committee come in and talk about some of the things that they've been working on throughout the district so that's my suggestion which carries with what you had been saying well i'm looking for a little bit more detail i mean we've been talking about this for and i and i remember when we first the original purpose of what this group was put in place for
161and how it has morphed and evolved and i agree with mr jackson that they've been now functioning for close to two years we still don't know what's what's the deliverables what's what is the ultimate goal we we established a committee to provide this information if if you go back and look at what the edi committee originally was proposed and what the purpose was it was to provide a detailed plan as far as addressing if if there were issues i'm saying if because part of this was also to determine if there's issues in springboard present that what the plan is what the deliverables are what the time frames were all this stuff was supposed to be put brought forward then we hired and it was suggested that we need to bring consultant to help them define
162all of this stuff and now we're turning to the consultant that get updates from that we really don't know what we're getting updates about and then we don't know where to put it i think that i think we are at the point now where i think there should be a presentation within the month with very hard specific things are coming in and saying this is what we're doing this is what our goals are this is what our objectives are these are our deliverables and these are our time frames because and and we also have heard in the past about there was going to be community involvement well that hasn't happened as of yet either there you know so there's just a lot of stuff going on behind the behind the curtain i feel like we're
163at the you know oz but it's an opportunity now to present and say these are this is all the details and all the specifics because if we're not there at this point in time then i question how many people mr jackson 28 is for the record what's been going on and why we don't have these specifics and so i really look forward to a detailed presentation [Music] i think and the board supports this just you know i just saw a kid in the side sport supports it but i think madam president came up with a good idea at least i heard it from that side of the wind that maybe a board member too should attend a committee meeting that wasn't me that was no it's further down i think so let me get back
164to the ei committee let me talk to the chair let's see where we are with this um just as a reminder to the board your one your main goal is to establish a policy year two was to start to build capacity internally year three was with the onset of bringing a consultant on to develop a concrete plan with deliverables which is which is what this board wants so we can bring a presentation back to help solidify some of that that is the work that mr wiley is going to be doing with us um and we will we will get that brought forward so we know exactly where we're going i believe where they are where they are going and the timeline to get there i think is what we had mentioned so we will get
165those things to you um via presentation okay another issue for the board comment would just be the superintendent evaluation i know mr schaefer you weighed in on this earlier this week mrs melton and dr wright i believe you're also on that committee and i know that some of that my understanding is needs to be wrapped up organized set in place is it by the end of september so that's already that's actually part of and mr fitzgerald if you can confirm that was actually included the the rubric that was created was included in the superintendent contract we had forwarded it to you you were including right and all of that so that's what the that's as much as what happened so now we'll it would wait for district goals which is one of the elements but
166there are other elements so for example there's governance and board coordination so that but that's that piece of it is already pre-built and then the district goals are kind of right as you develop them they get so doctor or mr rizzo's goals um do need for this for the annual year needs to be developed i admittedly i'm not so sure dr gooden had goals last year in in but for mr rizzo i think we need to kind of reset put those in place um in in light effect this is really his first full academic year and the school code requires them to be posted but i also think it's important because you may be having two other commissioned officers come on down the road that will need goals as well and those goals should be
167on some level aligned to to where mr rizzo's goals are going to be because you're going to be able to look at other goals for those individuals can there just be some uh communication with mr rizzo about those um setting those district goals because i know that he has to so that the superintendent evaluation committee does not set district goals that's understandable and that we had we had done that rubric and i had been a part of that for some time um i just thought that is can we can that be shared again with mr rizzo as he goes to set his district goals i just want to make sure that what he is setting is in line with what the framework was that we had established so what okay just to to clarify the
168rubric itself is say it's items a through d right item e is actually then district goals so a through d are set those are those are the the governance those are like just that the key metrics right and those are defined metrics then as district goals are developed each year they become element e right so that then is you know whatever those goals are they fall into that i understand it i'd like him to see the whole picture before he sits down to finalize each i'd like him to see a d yeah a contract as well and you have this i'd also like him to see when we had talked about um the rating scale and things like that that's all part of the rubric that's all in there okay so mr rizzo if you
169have any questions on any of that as you're going through the district goals please reach out because i know there was some just maybe um i just was unclear earlier this week okay i'm on it thank you are there any other board comments this evening i got two quick ones one for mr fitzgerald mr rizzo presented an order change this evening is there any board action that would be required to move towards two assistant superintendents or not really i just want to make sure we're you know you would be okay um you don't have to take any official board action necessarily i mean when you approve the individuals that is you affirming the change in reorganization uh to the extent that there's a organizational chart that can be shared with the board that effectively will
170change once once these individuals are approved okay i just want to make sure that we're here and the other thing is that it's been questioned before and i just want to get clarity on this as well is when people are going to give public comment they state their name are are they required to provide their street address are they not required to provide their street address because my understanding through reading uh they're not there's no way it actually requires them unless there's a board policy that i'm not aware of but i don't there's anything that requires them to provide the street address there isn't anything that specifically requires that um that that's been built out of custom here in some other places they just identify the township they live in um that's really a bored
171decision as to whether they want proof of of of address or just establishing township for for comic purposes well though when we talked about that earlier this year we weren't able to do that because the minutes need to capture the address and the only way that would happen is if that if the address was given specifically on the zoom i mean i think looking forward we could potentially look to modify that if that's the desire of the board i i think i think people are don't feel comfortable providing their street address so i'm i'm fine with name and township and just the last question uh last meeting it was brought up about uh zoom which i mean we did away with the zoom for the committee meetings and there was talk what we were going
172to do at the board meeting you're going to look into that yeah the board has the ability to to discontinue zoom at its discretion um in my opinion it doesn't even require an affirmative vote of the school board it can be a desire simply to revert back to what was pre-pandemic access and participation to to school board meetings so that that's again a discretionary option of the board whenever it desires to do so i i personally think zoom is a really good resource for our community and especially at board meetings and i think it fosters greater community input i'm for continuing it can i just ask a clarifying question so are we referring to zoom's capabilities for public comment or zoom's capabilities for for information i'm sorry mr schaefer can you can you repeat that
173uh the disrespect i said i'm sad clarifying question are we referring to um zoom's capabilities as a public comment or zoom's capabilities for information purposes with regards to it being a service for the community's involvement okay i have a pretty strong position on zoom and i will say that from my perspective and maybe from mrs fazzini's that it is an opportunity for people to participate right so it is an opportunity for public comment and i will tell you that i fully and completely detest the keyword warriors that hide behind the screen and misuse the purpose of zoom and i don't want to sit here and be be read it by people that aren't willing to come and say some things to our faces however on an assad as an aside and as a mother i
174know how difficult it is to get out of the house all the time and to get to these meetings having zoom does allow a greater opportunity for more people to be involved as long as they don't misuse the comment section that that's that's that's truly how i feel that this was a silver lining during covet perhaps there would be more people that would stay involved if they had that option you can't be out of your house every night or if you're running to here or you're running to this activity or that activity you might be able to get back into it that's just my thought it's probably not shared by everybody here but i do think it allows for greater participation i'm sad to see when it's misused that happens a lot with different things
175all over the place it is one of the things that happens with zoom but as i said it does allow greater participation not just viewing on youtube but greater participation greater involvement from our community which is always what we say is that we want the comments we want to hear what people have to say normally we want the comments and hear what people have to say so that's that's where i'm at i think this has nothing to do with gender i don't think it has anything i'll take that back when i said a mother i'll say a parent i'll say a parent as a parent when i wanted to come to a board meeting i brought my kids or my daughters with me to a board meeting um zoom we we were streaming before we
176had zoom we we're not taking away the public's ability to communicate with the board all of our phone numbers are public all of our email addresses are public they're welcome to come and talk to mickey to mike anytime they want to but you know to keep zoom as mr schaefer said why are we keeping zoom there's no historical data saying that if we take zoom away that the people are going to disappear we took zoom away from the committee meetings because we were having zero people and we were having staff there all night for zero people i think we need to look at the impact to the staff from my perspective and if parents as my mother would say you make time for the important things we only meet twice a month they could come
177to one meeting which is the voting meeting um could we possibly have andrew or aaron speak to the um how much work it is for the staff to have uh zoom meetings for the board meetings no i think you should speak to the people over there mr zaney those are the guys doing the hard work no offense i'm just saying those [Music] there's no additional setup for zoom while we're streaming these meetings the difference with committee meetings is that we did have people there to set up for those meetings so there's no added work or owners on the staff for these to to make these zoom meetings the work session and the board meeting correct when we have regular meetings is this set up in place over here we would have two cameras that's all
178we would have we typically have three cameras um and going forward you'll you'll see we won't have any of these large physical cameras in place anymore as mrs zazowski mentioned andrew's having a new setup which will be personless filming um so the setup will be different next month more than likely next month no matter what so to answer your question mr jackson is that table and that setup was never here before until we start doing zoom we always have the three cameras we've been streaming we've spent a lot of money the the setup the studio and streaming services and all that this is additional setup and and we have a resource that's monitoring and taking care of of the zoom environment uh as well as everything else that we're doing is that correct i'm sorry
179too is that is that correct that we have one additional staff member here and um is that's the difference i would say additional staff member i said that table all that setup was not there before in the past we've had um students at the cameras as well which again with the new technology andrew has in place they'll be up in the studio running everything from from that location so it's i mean the entire process that we've put in place has changed um but the table is new are we seeing a decrease in participation on zoom over time like have we seen you know obviously you know eight months ago we we had had fairly high participation numbers i'm just curious like do we see a difference in terms of the number of folks who are
180participating in the zoom versus those on youtube or on both zoom and youtube numbers are not what they had been but while i think our agendas are interesting um some parents from home might not be tuning in as much as they were when there were big things being voted on uh more than likely next week at voting meetings those numbers will go up again but across both the zoom and youtube they're not what they were over the summer how many are in zoom tonight 59 right now and 143 on youtube what are the misuses you would you mentioned that we currently are having with the the zoom that would be for me yes i think i would be referring to that there were you know there was there were some intense times that we've been
181through in the last 18 months and there were um as i would say keyboard warriors or people that would hide behind the screen that were able to use zoom to lash out and maybe say things that were borderline disrespectful what have you that they might not have said if they were face to face i can recall a couple of specific comments but i'd rather not relive them and repeat them so that is unfortunately a misuse but as i said i'm an advocate for it because i think it opens up for people to be able to participate not just view but rather participate in the meetings as they're taking place so i know that you can watch it on youtube and i know that you can send in an email and i know you can do
182those things it doesn't carry the same quality i don't think as being able to actually participate and i'm just ask as i do at the beginning of every meeting to be respectful to your neighbor be respectful of the people that you're speaking with and you know treat people the way you want to be treated so hopefully we're not going to relive some of those horrible times ever again and that maybe the zoom could be used for the purpose it was designed for um i do have a question for mr jackson as a follow-up to that and that would be i hear you saying almost what is the reason to keep it but what would be the reason to get rid of it basically let me clarify this i don't care what what the people say
183that that that part doesn't bother me if we're going to have them ask questions or or have we should have a dialogue what's the point of someone coming on there making a speech then hanging out this public comment is not question and answer i agree with that but there are things that that parents bring up that we should answer can that not be done on the zoo yes that can be done zone hey i'm giving you one board membership i think i think you're almost i think you might be moving over to my side a little bit to me there's not really a side here it's just i i reflect on why we brought zoom into the mix in the first place right that has dramatically changed and so therefore why are we retaining it
184subjectively i mean there's still ample opportunity for public to be heard these folks had the courage to leave their house and come here to make public comment i'm just suggesting that you know just because we did something in 1989 was a very good year by the way um i know somebody that graduated um just because we we integrated zoom into how we do meetings doesn't mean that we need to keep it that's all and to me it seems like we're prolonging meetings and i don't even know if these people are district residents they claim to be there's no i don't it's like there's no picture i mean it's just a picture or you know so come to meetings just like we've done for years somehow we make it here i i think they proved their
185residency with their name and their address but i also think that um i mean it shouldn't require courage to have to speak up that's just my personal opinion i think anyone it shouldn't and and sometimes it does here and even on zoom because you do have to identify yourself and give your address but i think it anybody should be allowed and we should give them the access to speak up i think that's the point of public education in the school board and the sun channel on these meetings i personally agree with colleen if indeed we have more families parents participating and i think that that's a very important factor if if it didn't increase participation and people still weren't interested or cared or participating or whatever that would be different but as long as we
186can involve more the community with zoom i'm in favor of continuing it i have a proposal why don't we track her for the next three months and see where three months from now see where we are i think that's a good idea yes and i think it's following the numbers we've got 60 folks on at least today so you know maybe when we're at 20 or or somewhere there you know south of that that's maybe a time to really consider sunshining it but maybe right now we still have a number of folks who are interested in participating clarity would not be sun shining it it would be sun setting sorry thank you and um i would also ask my colleagues i would also ask my colleagues on the board to do research to see if
187you can change your username without any verification of that so yeah absolutely do we have any indication that there has been any fraud with people who are doing this i mean well no i mean i i know that there is that ability but i suppose there's also the ability of someone to come in here and say they were somebody that they weren't i don't have we received any indication at all that anybody is presenting themselves not as who they are on zoom if you're here in person just to answer that interesting question you're on camera so there's proof there is no proof with zoom unless the camera's turned on and you can change your username claim to be someone you're not so i'm just saying do your own research everybody has a right just like
188me um it just concerns me that it prolongs meetings and i don't know that they're real residents well i think that you brought up an interesting point so if they're going to provide if we're going to provide zoom and they're going to comment then they need to turn their camera look i don't have a problem with the camera going on i don't have a problem with giving the name and address i mean everybody knows where we live right you want to make a comment give your name and address i don't really have a problem with any of that but i will say that you know for everybody that could mistakenly fool us online are we questioning anybody and i've never sat in a meeting where somebody was questioned there i mean there have been tons
189of people that have spoken during the last several months right so i mean we know the regulars but we do not know the others we don't and we don't question so i'm just i'm just saying that for anybody that on zoom could be fooling us that could be happening right in front of us hypothetically but i like i like mr jackson's idea that we monitor this and mr schaefer's idea that we do some of our own research and we will revisit it at a later time um is that the end of your word comment or did you have anything else i had one other little thing back to the um superintendent as far as the assistant superintendent intended potentially is that evaluation committee going to set the stage for that or did you want because
190i know this was a question you had mr rizzo did you want to be able to go forward with that how do we because we did talk about them being in line a little bit too well so in recent conversations with mr fitzgerald one of the things that mr fitzgerald had shared is that you know we also um are responsible for oversight as a board for oversight for the assistant superintendents and so we do need to just take a look probably at the rubrics that we have and and modify them appropriately for their respective positions um so as we get a little bit more information i think about these positions and and how those positions will uh be evaluated by the board that's where those uh woodworks would be updated and modified accordingly i think
191it most likely would be the next committee by the time just from a timing perspective because we're already just about in october so by the time we're really kind of finalizing that it would most likely be the next committee that would finalize those documents the um the the district goals that they'll work on you'll you'll meet with them i think within a month after they start to to finalize those those goals with them so you'll have time all right thank you any other board comments this evening i just want a clarification that nurse smith stated there have been no in-school transmissions did i hear that okay yeah thank you all right then i guess we will now move back into public comment we'll start in the room and then move to if there are any
192on zoom michael baginski 2005 will overdrive rorschach um a couple comments first this is the third time that nurse smith has used the term infectious at school first two times this term was used i asked for clarification and was told that what she meant was presumed infectious i'd request a third reinforcement of that because it scares parents to hear that someone was infectious in school when in fact they weren't secondly colleen you asked an excellent question earlier about where montgomery county gets the authority to promulgate these rules we learned this in history those that authority comes from all of us okay so i would encourage everyone to go to the montgomery county website go into the document center i'll send you the link and look at chapter three communicable diseases because that outlines the authority
193and only the authority that the montgomery county office of public health has to govern communicable diseases first of all there has to be an outbreak declared an outbreak has a very specific definition i'd encourage you to read it secondly it's very clear that part of quarantining has to take into care the into consideration the susceptibility of the person so for example if the person has a positive antibody test which many many many many people in our community have that needs to be taken into consideration um also you asked about bucks county so interesting that you should ask about that 52 percent of the students in bucks county now are are operating in full compliance with the secretary's order which includes section 3 exemptions in fact central bucks penn ridge council rock and quakertown school district
194four of the five largest districts provide their students and their parents with an exception form which legally complies with the order not the faqs and the other guidance right if we were following all the guidance we would all be eating you know three servings of uh fruit and milk every day we don't mandate that it's a guideline um so it's going to be interesting to see over the next few weeks there there's a group that's tracking the number of cases in the schools in bucks county the 52 percent that are masked exception compared to the schools that are mass mandate now we know that the order is intended because it's plain english role right we read it as it stated not as we not as we interpreted but jeff garton who is a solicitor to
195both the central bucks school district he's an attorney and also the quakertown school district has stated in both of their board meetings that the board is authorized to follow the whole order which includes section three exemptions where it says an individual may state doesn't say anything about a doctor's signature and last thing i'll leave you with is when our exception form was put into place by dr goodin the secretary of health order at the time explicitly said documentation is not required so the whole basis for putting that in place is incorrect and we're still following it thank you hi my name is ellen townsend i'm at 416 navajo drive in royersford uh i just wanted to um reiterate the um the proposal of having a plan in place if our kids are forced to quarantine
196um my child is in second grade and when she was in kindergarten she was sent home three quarters through the year uh she absolutely fell behind and she struggled all through first grade i was extremely grateful for the summer rams program dr murray even opened it up to take additional students at k through 2nd it seemed to be like the most and they really seemed to be that core group that seemed to be falling behind um so when i hear you saying uh that you have things in place more so for seven through twelve my kids now are in k and two so i'm really concerned what happens to my kids when they go home and are in quarantine what is set in place for them and i know that you think that um we're
197creating a problem where there really isn't one well what are we going to do be reactive i think it's really important to be proactive and have a plan and i'm my experience in springboard i'm a springboard graduate but my experience in springfield is very short only having you know a daughter and second up to second grade now um but i'm noticing like a pattern of spring for being reactive and not proactive um and that goes along with my daughter in kindergarten who had an iep and she was denied services so they said they would see later on and then reevaluate her then instead of being proactive we're going to wait till she falls behind so is that what we're going to do is let them fall behind and how long will this last i just
198think that we the quarantining is just so insane if our masks are protecting us and we're sending healthy kids home if there's no in-school transmissions then what are we i don't understand what we're doing i just want to know that my kid is going to get the education that they deserve and i hate to see my kid cry when i told her she had to go to summer school i mean i broke my heart to see her so upset um but i was so grateful for the program i really was and she really did well in it but this year i'd love to be proactive and not reactive and i understood last year that was a crazy year it was all new and we didn't know what was going on but we kind of know
199what's going on now right like this is just like a this is like a circle we're in so how are we going to change it and and i think being proactive about it and asking the hard questions and getting some real answers it's important right now thank you erica herman's 204 abbey drive um as acknowledged at the beginning of this meeting by the student reps i want to come to this podium today and share as you all know that today is a very special day it is be kind ella day and it celebrates the memory of a beautiful little girl and former former student at brooklyn elementary ellis smith who touched the lives of so many in this community and my family was fortunate enough to have a personal connection to her so today i
200simply wanted to come to this podium to say thank you to mr rizzo in the board for formally recognizing be kind ella day throughout the district um to have her peers and her friends spread kindness and demonstrate compassion and um wear blue in support of her memory meant a lot to a lot of people and in fact i had the opportunity to speak with karen smith her mother this morning and she asked me to pass on a few words to you so i'm going to read them as not to misspeak um she wants you to know that ella loved attending springford she loved school she loved challenging brook elementary and she loved her teachers and everyone has been so wonderful was so wonderful to ella and her older sister amelia through it all and they
201feel blessed by the entire community's outpouring of love and kindness so i just want to thank everyone again who wore blue who spread a little kind of today to brighten somebody's day and i hope that the district will continue to recognize this day for years to come because this little girl will constantly be on our minds in our hearts and be an inspiration and an example to live by thank you anthony frigo 1003 main street linfield pennsylvania actually i think you've stolen some of my thunder i'm here to talk about the edi committee i don't believe it is necessary in this school district at all as mr jackson points out there are 20 people involved who are that where's the transparency there's not absolutely none and you've hired a consultant who in my opinion is
202a spectacular mediocrity i looked him up and i'm disturbed not only by what i've found but what i haven't found he is espousing critical race theories he teaches racism 101 racial identity development learning circles which i don't know what that would be inclusive excellence in higher education um what i disturbed what i didn't see is he's not published anywhere there's no opinion okay and your policy that you adopted espouses crt it is what is it though is to say here overcome overcome your the board strives to overcome conscious and unconscious bias that is crt language and in your guidelines you state you want to eliminate racial predictability and disproportionality in all aspects of education and its administration and you want to provide every student equitable not not equal equal equitable access to curriculum support facilities
203and other educational resources even though this means differentiating resource allocation again critical race theory all right if this start this isn't in your policy it hasn't i assume trickled down to the curriculum but if it does we're doomed this school district is the best school district i've ever seen it is better than true different east town it can be the best in the state but you have to administer it properly and you're not doing that this this is a waste of time and money and energy to to even engage in this it is it is a narrative that is what my father would call an infomia thank you uh john yanchak 12 edmonds driversford i just want to thank dr rizzo tonight for his uh very clear presentation uh around the uh administration reorganization i
204think it's great to see uh the focus on special education i know it's a very important topic in our school district and i know that group is struggling mightily to stand up all the resources and everything that they need to help our kids especially with the last 18 months it's only getting more difficult i want to thank also mr schaefer for pointing out that we should view this as an investment in the future it hopefully brings us a return on investment as those years get realized i would uh like to see a really exhaustive search both internally and externally for that position i think that would be fantastic to see all of the views that are out there in the special education community and beyond that i just wanted to make one other comment mr
205schaefer and some of the others mr uh jackson about our zoom meetings uh beyond the fact that there are reasons why right now many parents don't want to come to these meetings in person whether it be that they can't get the vaccine whether it be that their children can't get the vaccine and they don't want to bring the virus home with them there are other considerations as well as some of you know just a couple of weeks ago here in this room one of your students was told to go back where she came from that's why people don't feel safe coming to these meetings i urge you to keep zoom it's a new way of working out in the world we do it in the corporate world we should do an education too there's very
206little overhead associated with it just a table thank you mary jo mcnamara 187 oh i don't know if i need to give my address 187 abby drivers for pa so i'm going to apologize first i should not have called out it was an appropriate route so i apologize that being said okay just let's move on no it was wrong so um so i have an opinion about tone right i i do agree with mrs sullivan and madame president that you know if we're going to get people engaged that's really really good if you're going to make public comment show your face it's appropriate i'm a mother i can use that term because i am one i'm a single parent i have some really difficult circumstances at home and i still make it to these meetings
207and more often than not i don't want to be here and i am um i think that the dashboard should show all three categories of quarantine we are showing conflicting information to our parents i thought there were 60 some cases found out tonight there's 143 not cases quarantined so that was interesting i think it would be beneficial if we're transparent it appears like we're not being transparent uh i don't know why we can't challenge the county on the quarantine rules i think it was great that it was brought up tonight i don't know why the pda gets to weigh in on a mandate or with their guidance and we have to follow it i don't get it i think that there should be more discussion about it um my intention with the mask tonight was
208to call attention to the fact that we don't have a standard we brought it up at the last board meeting i think mr devela and somebody else brought it up i really think it would behoove us to define what we expect for mask wearing it's not at the state level it's not at the county level and it's not at our district level other than it needs to be something that is looped around your ears that's it i could wear a big hole here i know i know certainly there are children in the school that are wearing mesh masks with regard to the edi or dei and i apologize i don't know what our committee's called all the letters stand for the same thing it needs to have visibility it's it's not an annual or bi-annual
209thing it's a really sensitive hot topic we should have visibility into it it should be transparent there should be deliverables this guy who's the consultant should have some foundation under them i don't know about published or not published but let's get them out here the people the 28 people i've asked to be included on the committee several times when this girl is out and then the only other thing is we should look at the survey that we talked about tonight in conjunction with what we're saying in this edi or dei committee because there are questions in that survey that are directly opposed or in opposition to what we are stating as our edi or dei policy they're in direct opposition you guys so that's it thank you okay do we have any hands raised okay
210rich go ahead michael fabrizio you may now make public comment please state your full name and address and your public comment to be heard michael fabrizio 220 masters drive uh pottstown i'm calling justin regard of keeping the zoom i know you want to look at um you know how many people are on the zoom the next couple weeks i would ask you to look at how many times your meetings have gone past 9 30 and people that have young children can't come and bring their kids to these meetings make public comment we're going on 10 30 at night right now my two kids are in bed so i would say keep the zoom for people that can't bring their children to the meetings but still would like to actively participate in the meetings because these
211meetings are going so late so i think it's important to allow all people to be able to go and make these kind of public comments and be able to watch the board meetings and participate because like i said if you look at your last year and a half how many of these meetings have gone past 9 30 and people that have young children who need to put them into bed so they can go to school the next day really you know it's a good forum for them to have to make public comment and to be actively participating what's going on in our school thank you please unmute yourself state your full name and address hi lauren day 57 greenbrier drive in phoenixville um i just want hello can you hear me you can hear me
212i said i just wanted to thank the board and mr rizzo for following the mass mandate my daughter is in second grade my son is in kindergarten kindergarten and they are loving school they are so happy my daughter already had a positive in her class she was not a close contact because everybody was masked so that was amazing that she got to stay in school and stayed healthy i also wanted to advocate for zoom my kids are kindergarten and second grade they go to bed at 7 7 30 every night so me leaving to come to a board meeting i can't do that but i can sit here and i can listen and i can interact with you guys and and make comment from home so i just think the keeping zoom for parents that
213cannot come to the meeting who have young kids or activities or work nights um are able to watch on zoom thank you kristen kanger you may now make public comment please state your full name and address please unmute yourself hi christian kangar 301 mulberry drive limerick ba uh just to follow up on the zoom i agree with what everybody said i'd be happy to show my face if we did have cameras on so just adding that and um just back to the mass policy i just uh respectfully asked the board to please either consider following the hsp or consider following the order uh as i believe it was michael mentioned there are faqs associated with the order there was faqs associated with the pde they all say should could may recommend none of them are
214saying must so i asked the board to please reconsider the medical form process as well as the exception process in aggregate if you're going to have a medical exemption form it should apply to all of section three not just one category in section three there are nine listed categories in section three you're indiscriminately indiscriminately applying your exemption process to one category in section three and it's just not right so i yield back my time thank you very much for listening harry wheaton you may now make public comment please unmute yourself state your full name and address barry 31 beach court collegeville uh i was the gentleman who spoke at the last meeting in person about coming up with a match mandate i have probably spent i don't know 40 to 80 hours on this for
215the last couple weeks so i just want to give you a heads up that rep ceresi is putting forth a bill in the state of pennsylvania to get at least 100 million in funding he also advised me that there's a 30 billion dollar surplus in the state of pennsylvania i've contacted the cdc i'm in communication with the chief estate there i've contacted allison beam's office she's the department of health secretary who put the mandate in place uh contacted senator toomey's office spoke to casey's office so basically what i'm again proposing is that we have a standard find the funding for it the kids come to school give them a mask when they leave they can dispose of it properly i think we're going to be in this for the long haul i think it's going
216to be longer than a lot of people think so i just want to get you know provide the board with an update on that and i plan on being there next monday in person to show my face and hopefully we'll have some good news from representative ceresi and in fact i'm going to ask him to uh to come to the meeting as well so again not not debating mass no mask i'm going to say if we're going to do it let's do it right and ironically enough my daughter had a positive case in her class today so thank you i'm at this time no no other hands raised we are confirming attendance in the hurdle learning center and no one in the herna center not at this time okay is there a motion to adjourn
217so moved meeting adjourned