001okay a reminder that while many restrictions have been lessened please continue to wear your masks and socially distance from one another we will again take public comment from those in person and from those on zoom tonight we also did have an executive session this evening prior to the meeting and that was regarding personnel are there any announcements from our student reps this evening there are no announcements this evening okay thank you and public to be heard on agenda items only we'll start with in person first if there are any comments please come up to the podium uh michael baginski 2005 will would drive royceford commenting on agenda item d3 which proposes the use of title two funds for consulting services to help the district with the quote creation and implementation of an inclusive excellence plan
002for those not familiar with title ii is the us department of education fund which is designed to quote one increase student academic achievement through strategies such as improving teacher and principal quality and two hold local educational agencies and schools accountable for improvements in student academic achievement the title ii program description of the state pennsylvania state department's website states that quote title ii is 100 federally funded supplemental education program that provides financial systems to improve the skills of teachers and quality quantity quality excuse me of instruction for core academic subjects can someone please explain to parents of the board how an inclusive excellence plan helps achieve student academic achievement in core academic subjects the agenda description indicates ten thousand dollars in consulting services being awarded to a gentleman as part of the district's uh diversity inclusion
003and equity initiatives what exactly is the goal of the planned inclusive excellence plan how will the success of this plan be measured is the board completely aware of this plan mr jackson raised a question in the last board meeting regarding attendance at a workshop for culturally responsive teaching which is a well-known euphemism for the inherently racist and divisive critical race theory how much district resources are being dedicated to these initiatives especially at a time when the district is over budget and raising school taxes three percent the board should be crystal clear on the legit on the goals of this program misallocation of title ii funds if reported to the department of agitation could jeopardize the district therefore i strongly recommend the board consider this proposal before voting on it at a minimum i would expect
004the board members to ask reasonable questions and engage in debate before voting on this proposal thank you well we will take that under consideration are there any other comments in the room this evening do we have any public comments on the zoom related to agenda items oh is there somebody here that's fine can you please state your name and address for us before you speak i'm having trouble hearing him on the mic hold on hold on one second thank you my name is anthony frigo at 1003 main street glenville pennsylvania i would like to preface this by first thanking the board for being here i understand you're not paid for this i did write a letter today that was circulated among you it's not on the agenda however i'd like to know when it will
005be on the agenda i i think could could i ask you to please hold your comment to later because we do have an agenda and this public comments section is specifically for items that are listed on the agenda however later in the meeting there is public comment on a variety of issues that you could bring to us at that time that are not listed specifically on tonight's agenda would that be okay for you to hold that comment sure thank you thank you on the zoom rich kelly german please take your full name and address unmute yourself please at this time we have no more hands raised all right thank you we'll move on then we have a few action items this evening so i would like to take a through h they are related to
006resolutions honoring our students for their many accomplishments and awards from the pennsylvania music educators association so moved second any questions or comments all in favor say aye bye bye any opposed those motions carry and then we'll look at i i do have adjusted language to share with you for letter i administration recommends approval of an independent contract with crystal stubs certified school psychologist to provide psychology services for the 2020 2021 school year and the 2021-20 2022 school year services will be provided for a total of 35 hours per week for 27 weeks at a rate of seventy dollars per hour funding will be paid from the special education budget and shall not exceed sixty six thousand one hundred fifty dollars is there a motion for eye second any questions or comments all in favor say
007aye aye any opposed that motion carries then jay is referencing technology equipment for grades k through four this was explained to us in detail by mr catalano at the last curriculum and technology meeting is there a motion for jay so moved second questions or comments could we just be reminded of the number of devices and and the types of devices it's it's approximately 600 chromebooks and 600 tablets and approximately 100 carts this will provide a device for every student in grades k to 4. thank you question is this part of the which easer grants are these part of this is this coming out of the grants we already received or had access to or the new grants because i know the kind all comes together but yeah go ahead sorry s or three three and
008what's what's do we know the total of that grant okay and further questions or comments so we want to move forward with the vote volley all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay that motion carries we'll take that further clarification when it's available to mr develo's question moving on then to presentations we have the recognition of the eighth grade boys basketball team and their coach richard harrison for their undefeated evening tonight or undefeated season thank you mrs zazowski um first i would like to mention and say a few things about the teams that we recognized uh the meeting i missed due to i was home ill so if you don't mind if i just may say a few things i would have said that night we recognized the seventh grade girls basketball team
009for going undefeated they were 5-0 during their season they scored 127 points averaging 25.4 points per game allowing only 65 points for an average of 13 points per game so their average scoring differential was a positive 12.4 points per game which is remarkable and you'll see a consistency through all the teams we're recognizing tonight and the ones we recognized uh two weeks ago high school girls basketball finished service season 24-1 some highlights from team records most consecutive wins to start a season 24 in a row offense averaged 59.3 a record school record the defense allowed 32.1 points a 27.1 point differential they held opponents to 30.4 percent field goal percentage while springf while we were shooting 45.2 percent we averaged uh or rebounded teams on an average of 31 to 22 every game forced an
010average of 17.3 turnovers while only committing nine turnovers per game and set as another record by turning the ball only over only four times in one game so they're all school records that the team set this year and that's not the entire list individual records lucy olsen became the all-time leading scorer in school history whether it's boys or girls program she finished her career with 169 points and she also holds the record in a season scoring 543 points which was last year and she'll continue her basketball career at villanova university abby boyer set a school record that's really dear to a lot of our hearts her career record in taking charges she took 22 charges during her three-year varsity career she set a school record taking three charges in one game this season and last
011year set another school record by taking 11 charges in one season if you know abby 5'3 is stretching it so she was willing to put herself in harm's way for her teammates the high school wrestling team you know again what an awesome season this group of young men and her coaches had they finished with a 14-1 overall record and in the pack they scored 592 points while allowing only 106 points so they averaged every match 59.2 points to the 10.6 they allowed up for their opponents so their differential was 48.6 points per match in pack wrestling that's one of the reasons why they won the championship they also were the first time southeast regional championship and the winner of four postseason team championships that is a school record by any sport and i'd like to
012mention a few things about joey milano and jack mcgill jack is our all-time pins career leader with 93 he also accumulated 148 wins during his high school career and he'll be continuing his education and wrestling career columbia university in the fall joey had 128 career wins and probably missed about a season and a half with injuries during his four years he is a three-time state qualifier three-time state medalist and he will continue his academic and wrestling careers at north carolina state university in the fall and by the way the school record for wins is 150 by brandon meredith who went on to penn state to wrestle and jack had 148 and we had a shortened season due to covid and um uh joey had 128 and again missed that that uh about season and a
013half so they would have their full which comes with sports injuries and whatever it may be um now tonight we have two special groups with us tonight we like to recognize we're going undefeated first will be our eighth grade boys basketball team we're asking them to come forward and stand here social distance in the center mr harrison is the head coach he could not be here tonight he is currently coaching our baseball team down in ram stadium against potts grove tonight so mr shukta who is the ninth grade coach and will have the opportunity to have coach these young men next year is it here in mr harrison's place the eighth grade boys team finished the season 8-0 and scored 400 points with an average of 50 points per game while their stingy defense allowed
014only 212 points or an average of 26.5 points per game with a positive differential of 23.5 points each game understand 8th grade games are shorter than 9th grade games and high school games and them getting 50 points a game is pretty amazing they scored a high of 64 in one game and 63 in another and while two games they held their opponents in the teens to 14 and 18 points so congratulations to our eighth grade boys basketball team for their undefeated season and coach head coach mr rick harrison congratulations gentlemen [Applause] ninth grade are they out there mr shukka come on in ninth grade stay about six feet in front of them okay see bow ties are still in the ninth grade boys basketball team the head coach mr mike shukta mike is a spring
015ford grad who played varsity sports for varsity basketball here by the way for four years and at one point was our all-time leading scorer till mike brock surpassed him the ninth grade boys also copped an undefeated season with a record of 8-0 they were also very efficient on offense scoring 430 points for an average of 53.75 points per game while while allowing only 234 points which comes to an average of 29.25 points that they gave up per game their average point differential 24.50 per game they scored a high of 71 in one game and then 60 in another and i would bet to say that 71 is probably school record mike if we look back on it while in two games they held their opponents in the teams to 16 and 19. so congratulations to
016our ninth grade boys basketball team and head coach mike shook on their undefeated season [Applause] before you leave i just want to jump into the spring season right now and let you know that our boys track team is the 2021 champions cameron moore is the pack singles champ and at the present time and i'm hoping to get an updated text from coach brennan cameron and john pergin are in the finals of the pack doubles they've qualified for districts next friday so i'm hoping we can get a final here and have another champion gentlemen if you can all do me a favor just turn and thank the school board and administration for their help but more importantly when you get home you have to hug and kiss your parents and tell them how much you appreciate
017what they've done for you because someday if you don't realize it now you will down the road realize how much they've done for you so congratulations thank you so much mr mcdaniel for that very thorough report and for updating us with the information from the last time and for bringing these two groups in tonight um to be in front of us like that it's quite a commendation [Music] and we also have some another award this evening um ishika and dr collier i believe for our next presentation we'll be presenting the third quarter students of the month and do we also have allison on zoom ah there she is okay good evening thanks for having us tonight and allowing us the opportunity to represent our students of the quarter for the third marking period on behalf
018of the high school administration it is my pleasure to recognize these four students first we will start with our ninth grade student of the quarter eli vivian our 10th grade student of the quarter william corey our 11th grade student of the quarter nina aquilante and our senior student of the quarter alexa prince again on behalf of the high school administration and all the teachers congratulations students congratulations to all of you i know that that's a little bit different of an award and we're really glad that you brought that to us and that you do that at the at the close of each quarter so thank you for that thank you colleen um i just want to i want to remind um this student of the quarter came from ishika and uh jules lilly uh as
019from the student rep so this whole this whole thing was you know came out of the student rep program issue you were involved in the beginning of this right and uh and i think it's been i mean this is our second year into it i mean i think it's been a great program you know it's it's driven by the students uh and through the ambassador program that they also put recommended that we put in place and it's so great to see these students each quarter that get this recognition it's so well deserved for each of those so it's a great job by all i'm i'm also happy to see that they're wearing their jackets that um too as ambassadors for the district but they are getting some good use so i'm glad to see the
020ones that clinton and i were gonna buy if they need it yes that's right okay and with that we're gonna move into board and committee reports mrs fazzini for curriculum and technology the curriculum and technology committee met on tuesday may 4th at 6 30 p.m we started out with two exciting announcements the u.s news and worlds report came out with its best high school rankings for 2021. springford was ranked 990th nationally out of 17 857 schools and 31st out of 711 in pennsylvania curriculum shared a student spotlight video of taylor campbell she's a bright young springford cyber student who also took classes at monco and she'll be able to attend college in the fall as a sophomore it's a great example of how this springford cyber school can be used for our students and our
021families to meet individual needs and provide educational advantages under curriculum dr moyer gave a presentation about the english english language learning program it's the legal responsibility of the district to provide a program that teaches english to those students students whose first language is not english so they can access and succeed with the springford curriculum currently springboard has 136 active english learners 64 monitored english learners and four who have opted out of the program he presented an overview of the program the services provided and the exit process the program program is funded by title three funds and is supported in many ways by the mciu staff and resources this program is an important example of the benefits that we receive by being a member of the mciu dr moyer submitted a proposal to offer a summer
022in-person tutoring program for the el students who are most in need of due to lost learning uh due to the coveted pandemic 25 students have been identified the program would meet twice a week in person for six weeks from july 21st through 31st oh that can't be right i'm not sure what the dates are in july for six weeks the cost is not to exceed twenty thousand dollars and this is all covered by the essers funding dr murray shared an update for the professional development for staff through a micro credential academy springford is working to be more creative and strategic with act 40 48 professional development they're planning on enhancing the options by developing a catalog of courses structured to support different groups cover different topics based on students and educators needs there's a professional
023development task force that will be conducting a needs assessment to direct this course development more will be coming on up about this they're working on it as we speak and this is to be funded by title ii funds dr rocklin presented an update on the professional development of springford cyber learning there will be two sessions the first is ingenuity training and a cyber orientation session required for for all cyber teachers the second will be a canvas and course building training for any teachers who want to build a cyber course 60 teachers have indicated interest the cost of this will be covered by title ii funding and essers funding details and plans are being finalized we're still determining uh what this will look like and there should be a presentation will be given at the next
024board meeting the intent is to have it finalized for board approval in may so that training can be completed over the summer the following annual renewals are being brought forth for approval for curriculum renewals are paid out of the curriculum budget and our annual budgeted expenses there's nwea map renewal discovery education and nearpod there are also new purchases of title 1 resources for the elementary school and intermediate grades from various vendors they're funded by title 1 funding under technology actually we approved it but 7th i just want to let you know seventh and eighth grade chromebooks have been deployed that were have arrived the older devices are being collected cleaned and repurposed it repurposed and being distributed to the elementary buildings to be used in classroom carts technology department is moving forward with the technology
025plan and purchasing the devices so all 5 through 12 students will have an assigned device and k-4 will have dedicated cards for the classrooms all the costs are eligible for covet-esser's fundings this process is utilizing the grant money to greatly accelerate our existing long-term plans so that spring ford can meet the technology and device needs in the event of a necessary closure um this item is time dependent that's why it was brought it was on tonight we already approved it we need to order them right away so that they can be deployed before school starts the following software and contract renewals are being brought forth for the approval for technology all renewals are paid out of the technology budget and our annual budgeted expenses their smart panel project um rwan renewal that's the internet safari
026montage e-rate renewal assessment builder renewal performance tracker renewal and that was it so the next meeting will be tuesday june 1st at 6 30 in the high school principal office or on zoom any questions i i did find out that the 950 000 that um that we were approving for the professors yeah it was that's 950 000 4.4 million that that we've already been that we've been approved for right so um that's good that those funds are being utilized and i and i sort of just wanted to point that out i think i covered that but there aren't a lot of large ticket items that we can use this grant money for and to be able to use that grant money to greatly accelerate our technology plan is a really good use um because it
027that saves the taxpayer dollars from pa is being used and and it also accelerates the program so it doesn't take five years to do that mr catalano had also said that any event that we would ever have another catastrophic shutdown or something like that the devices would be able to go home with those students so we are facilitating continuity and learning i believe by also doing this correct well as as ms fazzini pointed out this was all part of the long-term plan to to integrate technology with curriculum throughout the entire district and we just and we're able to accelerate it yeah use the use of funds right and i think uh i want to point out also that you you threw out some numbers earlier and i don't i'm not sure if we really understood
028or when you talked about the latest rankings well you know when you find out that spring forward out of 17 almost 18 000 school districts you know high schools or whatever in the united states when we come in at in the top five percent in the country um that's an incredible achievement and we have been moving and being ranked nationally as considered one of the top school districts and tops high schools throughout the country for the last uh several years and and you know for having and getting that recognition just demonstrates the hard work by administration and staff and teachers and everyone involved that their hard work is paying off because um i know where we were several years ago and where we are today has been a big change and we always say that's
029great for this year but where are we going to be next year but because of that um with those rankings and all that and that then this recognition springford still is considered one of the hottest uh school districts in the county we have you know people are are trying to get into this count into the school district uh real estate that sells within a day to two days max i mean it's just amazing what's going on and it's it's tribute to the the school district and why it's it's such an amazing district and why people want to be here so i just wanted to you know yeah and that uh u.s news and world report is basically it's majority academics which is really very impressive but we also have other pieces like our music program
030our arts program our you know the athletics i mean we have all these other pieces too that are just really part of it also well our stem program was recognized as one of the national top stem programs in the country as well so i mean that is part of the piece of us right but it's just it's just it's just a demonstration of how you know i know sometimes it gets frustrating you know some of the things that we deal with uh you know at these meetings but when you sit back and understand the the ranking and the national recognition that we're we're achieving here at springford and to see you know we had the uh decision day last week and when you start to see the the colleges that our students are going to
031colleges universities trade schools i mean the diversity that's going on on with our student population across the country and the the programs that they're going into um it's just amazing i mean we are really truly setting our kids up for success here at springford it really does come back to the rigor and if you look at the schools that the kids are going to they're doing they're able to do that and they're able to be successful there because of the foundation that they've received here and so we do owe that to our administration and our faculty um for making that happen and i just want to correct you mr debell you said a couple of days for the purchase or the sale of the house in springford i think you meant hours actually it's true
032it is indeed it is but if you would look at the builders and you guys know i love building side of the world every major builder has one thing at the top of their sign spring for schools we should start charging them we should start charging them a percentage for that a point we should i'm going to get to trademarking in a few minutes all right thank you mrs fazzini for that thorough report i'll move on now to community relations and in this meeting there were a couple technical issues that were addressed one is the tricaster update you'll see that the tricaster update there is on m on the agenda a request for some funding to replace the tricaster the tricaster is essentially the computer that runs everything rctv it is an encoder a decoder
033it streams to online platforms and holds the digital plug-in for all rctv cameras in the district it is the brain of the operation the old tricaster will move to the mobile production studio so it'll move to the trailer the unit in the trailer is 10 years old and at the end of its life there will be a noticeable upgrade sorry there will be a noticeable upgrade in quality coming from the mobile unit we work with applied video technology avt to run cables for this project which is a summer project they designed the studio and they will be making the wiring and cable updates with this project the ptz cameras new ptz cameras will be used at board meetings and could be used at any event without a camera operator similar to the hudl cameras but
034a student or program advisor would actually operate the camera the camera from the control room like a remote camera we've had some unmanned cameras at times during the year for example at some board meetings in the broadcast production curriculum major two students are required to work one meeting a quarter rather than two students running cameras one will run the camera and the other will learn to direct and run the ptz camera from the studio forty five thousand five hundred twenty dollars of this project has been covered by the educational foundation eitc money the remaining funding is going to come from capital reserves and not to exceed 30 000 that is a slight change on the agenda where it was 25 the final numbers came in closer to 30. these projects would have moved forward anyway
035this year as scheduled and we're lucky to have received such a large amount from the eitc funds to offset some of those expenses so in addition to that specific technological information which i hope you don't have too many questions on that i cannot answer um but i will refer to andrew um i do want to let you know the uh education or i'm sorry the equity diversity and inclusion committee and and its role with community relations the 567 grade center and i mentioned this before the social studies teachers there have been working with students on the multicultural virtual field trip the field trip will air on rctv on may 13th last week the springford student subcommittee held an alumni panel the class of 2012 then and now was an opportunity for students to dialogue with
036former students and hear about their high school experience how they have transformed into their current work and how they overcame perceived and experienced obstacles the next panel and administrator panel will be held on wednesday the 19th after school this will be an opportunity for students to engage in a dialogue with district administrators regarding how a more inclusive curriculum is developed in each content area the recruitment of a more represented representative staff are hired through our hr department and how the district is cultivating a community of equity diversity and inclusion all areas that were referenced for growth from our student survey administered in february and regarding the trademark there is additional work to be done it will take place over the summer on to a few other newer items the final site renewal it is time
037to update that and we will be updating our district and school home pages they will be powered by resources and posts on the back end we will see design enhancements on the home page and school pages including more frequent use of video and pictures and updated fonts our renewal will include the final site composer cms or content management system 50 gigabytes per school of cloud storage hourly integration from skyward and active directory and modules alerts forms manager etc faculty and staff portal student portal and parent portal there is a new app for the ios and the android the committee discussed upgrading the current app to include centrally managed calendars athletics news and images videos and docs for use on the website and in the app the app would be available as i said on the
038ios and the android and the cost would be twenty five hundred dollars annually so their what recommendation was to um move that forward to i believe to curriculum and technology for recommendation on that same is true i believe for the weg lot translation where visitors can select the language from a language pic picker in the lower right hand corner of the website there are 100 more than 100 automatically translated languages to choose from so it does provide greater access and that cost is also twenty five hundred dollars and then the newest edition would be the schuyler edition with the newsletters um this is part of our existing skylark system we would be adding the newsletter feature to skyler and then that newsletter would be able to go out to all of the members of the
039database this feature does not replace the stationary feature but works on its own separate future feature and there is a one-time 2839.20 fee that is each year at one time i'm sorry that is for one year there is no setup fee there was a setup c we asked miss crew to go back and negotiate that there was now no setup fee on that so the committee does recommend moving the tricaster project forward so you will see that on tonight's agenda and the committee does recommend moving final site and the sky alert renewal with those other options as discussed to curriculum and technology for recommendation okay and that was that was our meeting it was very technical i have no answers on the cameras but i am sure i can get those for you any anybody
040else with a legitimate question or comment at this point okay moving on then to western um western was a review i think mr debell were not able to be there that evening is that correct okay mrs earl was there i was there i would say it was a review of where we are currently similar to other reviews that we have been given but the biggest takeaway that evening was uh there was a discussion about enrollment and ninth graders and then ten through twelve and one of the questions i had asked was well what happens if a ninth grader comes in are they going to have the same curriculum presented to them going forward in 10th grade would they have the same thing and what i was told what we learned is that they do work
041to differentiate the instruction for those students that come in at 9th grade so with that in mind i think it's important to share that with people so people know it's not going to be the same exact level instruction it would be enhanced it would be differentiated and it would give more time for co-ops and that experience later as they master the skills perhaps a little bit sooner than their counterparts uh mrs earle did you want to add anything to that report no thanks okay are there any questions or comments related to that and if not mr debello do you have anything for mciu this evening yeah i mean at the i we met uh last week and meeting was very similar to a lot of previous meetings as far as taking data day to day
042business and approvals but the one the one item that uh that i do want to point out was that if this board remembers a few years ago the harrisburg school district went through some very tough times and they were being managed by department of education in harrisburg and if you recall they weren't successful at all in fact they were the school was failing on every level we at the iu and as this board recalls i also sit on the executive leadership committee at the iu were asked to take on um the management and of the harrisburg school district and we've been in a three-year recovery plan we call you know we basically put a recovery we call a recovery pam in place because it was to bring the harrisburg school district from uh the low
043marks to making it uh a appealing school district and and get it to the levels where like any school district needs to be at the principal or the superintendent of that school district the harrisburg school district came and gave an update um during that our last iu meeting and he we're proud to hear that all the areas are improving uh on or ahead of schedule areas include getting the finances in place academics are starting to come back and the kids are starting to achieve better scores professional development um is underway and the staff there's new staff that's come in there was staff that uh needed to find a different uh opportunity somewhere else in the state as well as uh there were retirements just with professional development um there was a lot of things that
044were taken that local school districts including springford uh what we're doing with our professional development and and being utilized there now we also took on the challenge of upgrading and getting their technology in place so this is basically i'm trying to say in a nice way but the harrisburg school district was pretty much a failing school district in in pennsylvania and now is moving in the direction of not being a failing school district but actually moving like i said in the right direction um there were a lot of a lot of changes that needed to be put in place there was a lot of um issues that need to be resolved but through eiu leadership and executive committee leadership the harrisburg school district is on the road to recovery and becoming a better performing school
045district within the state of pennsylvania and just the other thing i do want to point out is like a lot of school districts the iu as well has put in place a diverse equity and inclusion steering committee they started to conduct their meetings and they begin to work to look at how the iu can improve practices while also looking at opportunity to support uh all the member school districts uh in this important work as well so there's a lot of good that's happening throughout montgomery county and and there's going to be more to come uh related to that topic as well in the future that there's a report all right thank you questions or comments all right uh mr schaefer yeah psba good evening thank you so great news that's always fun right uh this
046coming school year 2021 school leadership conference the combined psba and the pasa conference is planning on being in person so i'll pause for that let that soak in with excitement um it's going to be held mark your calendar september 27th through the 29th here's another big date mr rizzo um call for presentation application deadline is june 18th now before the world stopped i think we were keen to at least apply for a few areas so you know if you're not familiar with how and where i'd be happy to get together with you at another time so we can review more more good news we shared that information with our leadership team last week so they're already working on so many proposals my report is no longer valid thank you [Laughter] no but so single topic
047or round table so you're on it that's great can you do we know what you're thinking of or should we just not yet let's uh let's give it a few more days to marinate so that's september 27th through the 29th in at the kalahari resort in the poconos and i expect springford will uh be represented there with with a uh you know a progressive and leading presentation on some topic so that concludes my report it's controversial mr debell yes yeah i just had one comment from mr schaefer don't try and get one up on mr rizzo i love it actually that that kind of made my night that you were already and not surprised by the way all right that's wonderful news that was my question for psba um okay mr rizzo it is your
048turn as acting super intended thank you just an update on where we are with uh covet mitigation orders as you all know early last week governor wolf announced the listing of the orders and while this information is exciting as it does mark the entrance into a new phase of community connection and normalcy it does come with a few caveats the order goes away on may 31st but the health code remains which is where the language regarding contact tracing quarantining and isolation resides according to montgomery county office of public health health we will still be required to contact trace and quarantine close contacts with no revised definition of close contacts the masking order is still in effect and they talk about that 70 of 18 plus being vaccinated before that gets lifted uh it is impossible
049um to know when who is and is not vaccinated in a crowd which does add a layer of difficulty for our staff during our end of year events and while although not mandated social distancing is still strongly recommended and while we have not while we have taken efforts to maximize spacing between students just a reminder to the board that we really only have guaranteed three and a half feet in our buildings which remains the expectation for the duration of the school year title ix climate survey the springford area school district is conducting a series of campus climate checks to obtain feedback from students faculty and staff about the many aspects of sexual harassment such as awareness of existing programs knowledge of how to recognize it and more this work is very important and will be
050helpful to the district as it works to keep our schools as free as possible of sexual harassment including assault and violence next week students in grades 7 through 12 will be sent the title ix climate survey the survey is optional and all responses will be anonymous parents wishing to preview the survey may do so by going to the title ix page of the district website under human resources there is no opt out of the survey since it is just an optional survey office of civil rights does require the district conduct a series of climate checks and this particular survey has been approved by the ocr uh parent advisor committee the board you know asked for some information on the parent advisory committee so katie davis um she's one of our special ed supervisors for grades
051seven through nine she's taking the lead on mission on this initiative she's attended a two-day patent workshop on family engagement she is working on gathering information from other school districts via speaking with other supervisors and reviewing district websites she is planning uh to gather information be a needs assessment from our families this year regarding how to best solicit parent input two ways she's doing that with parent focus groups and a google form that will be administered by the end of this year focusing on areas of interest and modality to receive information she's working towards building a more robust parent resource hub on our website for parents and guardians of students with special needs she's creating opportunities for parent meetings throughout the 2021-2022 school year either monthly or quarterly which could include things such as a
052virtual q a type session similar to some of the sessions we posted this year provide in-person meeting opportunities she's maybe looking towards bringing in some guest speakers throughout the year considering providing up maybe considering providing opportunities for student groups to get involved and assist with child care to increase participation in our meetings so that's where we are as an update with that we're very excited about what that might bring for us lastly i have for the board um i want to thank you for approving um and your commitment to our students by approving our 2122 school plan what this does for our community is allow us to move forward and take a proactive approach toward doing what is best for our students so much of what we have been through has caused us to be
053reactive this year and i've mentioned that before in terms of getting started we're really quite quite a bit ahead of the curve so i'm meeting this week this wednesday with the steering team and sub-committee co-chairs to discuss our needs and considerations for next year and further meetings may spring forward from that strategy session we're analyzing each need that i mentioned at the meeting two weeks ago by prioritizing based on a one to three system with one being the highest priority and three being a nice to have as a cabinet team we met last week to discuss the steps required to utilize yes or funds and we'll continue to discuss to ensure we follow the prescribed steps and as normal i will continue to update the board weekly on on as we move forward that's my
054report mr rizzo i just want to thank you on the whole parent advisory thing i brought that up uh two meetings ago and it sounds like the progress is as as i expected through your leadership is progressively moving uh and i anticipate that is the goal to have a functioning advisory group in place by the um the story of the school next school year or are you are you trying to do something do you think there'll be something sooner than that or what's your what's your foresight on that so the end of year kind of brings along a lot of activity so it's more about gathering information from our families to see how best to serve them in the next school year so our first meeting we're looking to be the beginning of next year
055that's great and if we can keep giving having updates even if we have a section on the uh on our website providing up updates to parents letting them know that as we're progressing forward with that initiative i think that would be really great um so i think that and having guest speakers and all that is it's a lot of you can see a lot of work has been done already so that's great it's all coming together so thank you for that you're welcome happy to do it okay thank you any other questions or comments from mr vizzo then do we have nurse smith on the zoo hello everyone hello um just to give you an update for numbers since the last board meeting the nurses have processed 27 positive cases since we last met uh
05610 of those positives were potentially infectious at school and so that led to us having to contact trace and quarantine 75 individuals in those past two weeks and that's all we've got unless you have any questions and in the um realm of things could you tell us the numbers improving do you feel the numbers are improving what is the situation in the buildings we do we do feel that we're seeing fewer cases uh i guess right around spring break we were really busy and then after about a week things settle down a little bit and it's pretty typical for us um with if you're gonna take an average with each positive to have to quarantine about six to eight um other individuals as closed contacts so those numbers still look big but our number of
057positives have decreased so we're feeling a little bit of um of a calm which has been nice all right well thank you for that does anyone have any questions or comments for nurse smith near smith please confirm the number of nurses that we have in the district please we now have what we haven't all started but we have 18 nurses in the district 10 our csns and 8 are rns thank you um i had a question for uh nurse smith um if uh if there's a like a senior junior who has gotten the vaccine and they're two weeks two weeks past the second dose do they need to quarantine if they've been a close contact no they don't and we are tracking that we've asked um any parents or students who get vaccinated to send
058us their um their cards copies of their cards and we are putting it into our system so that we can track that two-week mark and then as long as they have no symptoms they can stay in school thank you all right good news on that front thank you for joining us tonight and mr fitzgerald you have a solicitor's report for us i i do and and briefly i just want to remind the board as we head towards june 30th that we're supposedly supposed to get a state budget um i think in years past we've gone like almost 300 days past that so i'm not holding my breath however it's noteworthy that along with the potential of a budget by the end of the fiscal year there are no less than i think 11 school code
059bills that are pending out there um along with multiple changes to the right to know law and a number of areas that they're potentially addressing with the charter school law i think the charter school issue may be coming to a head in part because if you've been reading the governor about 10 days ago effectively fired the charter school appeals board if if you understand what the appeals board does they are the officially the gatekeeper for the approval or denial of all charters throughout the state as it stands right now there is not a single member of the board to hear either renewals of charters um or any new applications except for one individual and that's the acting secretary of education so i think with issues we've talked about here for for many months and the
060fact that we don't have a functional charter system i think we may see some some interesting developments over the next 45 days thank you very much for that any questions or comments from mr fitzgerald okay with that then we'll move on through the agenda minutes a any questions or comments personnel a through i questions or comments oh i have a comment on um a two can can we object to that no i'm just kidding i i just wanted to say how much mrs fern we appreciate you and all the work that you've done and how much help you've been to me personally as a new newish school board member and i wish you every happiness miss vern i think there are going to be many comments as we get closer to the time we'll call
061it any other questions or comments on a through i finance a through m i want to point out with m it is up to 30 000 not the 25 that's listed here it will be fixed by next week yes before the before the voting or two weeks then i just wanted to ask about e with the budget are we still at three percent what is what is the status there where as directed by the board we're at three percent and the board wants to continue to move forward with that people wait now to ask it's a question okay we'll move on to programming and curriculum a through n questions or comments on a through n um yeah i have a question it actually is um really directed to mr debello on some of the um
062contracts with the iu j k and l can you talk to us um a little bit about the the benefits of the iu and the negotiations that go on for this type of purchasing that we can do as a consortium not understanding your question what do you shouldn't the question go to administration yeah i'm not i mean it's mr de bella doesn't make these decisions he's our liaison okay well that was just since she was aware of the functions of the iu as our liaison i was thinking that perhaps you could answer it but certainly i'm not going to say i'm not following your question my question is just to have an explanation as to why the benefits of purchasing the working at the consortium with the iu how that all works well it's pretty
063straightforward they the iu goes out and they negotiate uh best pricing with these different groups or these different consulting firms or technology providers or whatever may be and like any anytime any district or a springford perspective when we go out to purchase something we check with the iu to see if the pricing that they have already pre-negotiated and their buying power makes sense for us to continue working in that direction or we go out and get pricing ourselves for instance in the past uh the iu has negotiated transportation uh uh pricing and tried to group together to use all the same bus company but the work that we do with custer's and the pricing that we get from custer's garage it was better for us to stay outside of that as well as the they
064have a consortium in place for health care but our healthcare our self-funded insurance is is our pricing and all that is much better than if we would have been part of that so it's like anything else we throughout the district and i agree with mr schaefer why did the school district decide to go with those three through that uh working with the iu that would have to be mr rizzo's perspective but i would suspect well the e-rate comes from the state as the way i understand it so it's really j and k and apparently that was the pricing negotiated pricing through the iu that it made sense for us to work with the iu and get that pricing from that perspective than going out on our own so just a clarifying question on your question
065so you're not familiar with your question about how educational service agencies support school districts i don't understand what the sincerely i mean i don't i'm sorry i don't understand your question you're right so the like why why wh what's the purpose of an iu is that is that your question they negotiate on behalf of i mean in the state commonwealth of pennsylvania they they negotiate it's typically county based in the more populated counties i would think you you know this that's why i don't understand why i was asking for clarification not just for me but for the rest of the board and for the community that's fun hey any other questions or comments related to that was programming and curriculum moving on then to conferences and workshops a through c questions or comments other business
066i'm going to break that down a are um policies that are on for a second read 1 through 13. you also have b and i believe we did something similar before when we did this with a student who was request requesting permission to personally transport or the families was pers requesting permission for this for them to personally transport their student from the child's home to the approved trip in orlando we did that before there are parameters in place for that mr fitzgerald we've done this a number of times in the past and i do recall within the last year or so we've had something similar in a similar arrangement so that's not an unusual request it is not okay and then we have one for mr fink and one for mrs fern on there also
067any questions or comments related to any of those four items under other business a quick question although i'm very upset to see miss fern leave uh in september but she's duly well deserved to enjoy uh her retirement how would this work from a board secretary standpoint as far as of if because i believe that's june 30th we always appoint a new board secretary right yeah you you're uh right if it's i guess do we could we appoint a temp temporary board secretary not necessarily as miss firm but could we point it temporary until until um her position is filled in the future does the person doing her job becomes i mean i'm just trying to understand how this would work uh with her it's a one-year appointment right for the uh secretary of the board
068uh excuse me mr fitzgerald it's a four-year appointment oh excuse me four year for four years this is the this is the year that board secretaries are elected then we could likely have do we didn't we approve one time and well like an acting um when when you were out for for a particular reason um we could we could do that um subject to um filling it permanently so i i would have no the person you would ultimately hire for it would fill the four-year four-year appointment well that's well i would think that's what we would end up doing i'm just asking there's a there's a difference between june and september and miss fern's right it's it's a multi-year appointment so um so i guess that the answer to question is that we could have
069a we could appoint a temporary uh board secretary for appear do we have to put a period of time when we just say appointed a temporary subject to the board uh permanently filling the position okay all right thank you for the clarification uh moving on to board comment my question for mr rizzo is if there is any update on graduation tickets i believe uh dr caller sent out collier sent out a notification last week to our senior families that the number's not going to be two initially when we were in the middle of our pandemic we didn't see where we could comfortably have more than two tickets per graduate we now know that number can be a little bit higher um we are somewhere in the four to six range it really comes down to
070how many we can comfortably fit we still need to be cognizant of social distancing to a certain degree and we also have to be aware that there are some families that still lack some comfort in crowded spaces so to try and consider you know how many we can offer and still provide what families need to be able to be comfortable is what we're working through right now but we know that number's going to go up um beyond two for sure all right we'll take that for now and look forward to hearing more definitive information when it is available but i thank you for that is there any other board comment this evening just clarification on the so if the i just need to i'm just you know i'm sure this will get twisted somehow some
071way but i'm just asking for a clarification question i know what you're going to ask right if if if there is if the restriction for capacity is lifted when i read through it i might have missed it but i don't believe that there was still uh social for outside social distancing that still needed was still required so i just want to get clarification so that we make sure we're communicating the right thing you are absolutely correct and that's um that's again that comes down to required versus um recommended so social distancing to a certain degree is still recommended we don't want to just kind of willy-nilly say okay everybody come on back in we're all good and jam-packed by the same token we also acknowledge that there's a lot of people that are vaccinated that
072were outside um so there are some things we're working through but but to your point our capacity right now in our stadium is 4590 seats or whatever that actually is if we would give six tickets for example to each graduate that gives us a total number of in the ballpark of about oh doing my math about 3 700 maybe 3 800. that gives us some space we might be able to go up to six we could go up to seven per uh per graduate uh but again if we have a small contingency of families that still want to still want to have the option to be there because their graduate their child is graduating but they still want to have some space do we allocate a section for people that want to have some space
073those are the things we're working through but you're right as far as the mandate is concerned social distancing is not mandated at all it's an issue of just um you know do we want to provide an opportunity for those who might not have some comfort and i'm not i'm not questioning that at all i just want to make sure that the message that we're delivering is not conflicting as far as what's being stated by the governor and what's coming out and what's being stated is that outside the capacity mandate is lifted and there is no mandated distancing so and if we want to still provide some i i i don't have a problem with that i'm just trying to make sure that we deliver the right message so that people understand you know that we're
074not instituting our own mandates that are are outside of are different than what's being done from the state because we've always followed the state in the county that's correct so i just want to say that i just want to make sure that we're continuing to do that so if the mandate's lifted then we don't we don't want to institute our own mandate fair yes has the county weighed in at all because i do recall that that the lifting of that mandate was contingent upon the county um kind of requirements and if the county decided to maintain that same tightness you know over occupancy they that we would still be obligated sure so that's a good question and and we all found out about it last week at the same time and we were all sorting
075through what that actually meant for our end-of-year events and there wasn't a whole lot of clarity they're still working on getting clarity right now montgomery county is saying that they're going to follow the department of health and the uh and uh pde's recommendations so that's kind of where we are right now but again we're going to get oh i just got an email today we're going to get another update tomorrow mr fitzgerald can you add to any of this well i think it was actually rightly described at this point and this is true of i think a lot of things both in the short term such things as graduation and i think in the long term we're going to see that government oversight over what we do will likely be more a local decision now
076we're going to get far less mandates for various reasons but this will all be at our discretion how we want to define what mitigation efforts we want to put into place at this point so mr rizzo what metric just throwing this out for overall analysis what do you think we're going to use to determine a separate group so that it's segregated for lack of a better word from the rest of the body what square footage or it's a really tough one for us to gauge we don't really know yet we just we just know that we want to at least consider it we don't know what that looks like yet though but we are working quickly and daily on it mr rosa a quick follow-up question do we know how how many tickets were given
077in years past progress six or six has always been the max let's go going above six is a little scary for us in a normal year so we never really anticipated going beyond six but six has been i believe our standard in the past yeah because i always had to trade and find and i know six was the match saying there's a secondary market for tickets there is definitely a black market i've dealt in it three years running and this will be the part i just quick comment i missed this um i just wanted to acknowledge administration and faculty for the summer rams program um administration for putting this together and for the teachers that have signed up for it i once was told i'm not saying this that the three best reasons for becoming
078a teacher were june july and august pause for giggling anyone faculty nothing all right so thank you for the i'm sorry 56 that have agreed to come in and work over the summer and and and help our kids so i just want to say thank you it's an excellent program that's coming together uh for our students and it's you know it's his first it's the first start to that whole learning loss and everything that we've been talking about as well as additional resources that we're going to be looking at for next school year uh to deal with the social emotional so things are starting and it's in like i said it was presented a curriculum and it's just all kind of coming together and it's it's really again mr originals leadership is just really uh
079phenomenal in this area as well all right thank you for okay now i would just would like to to say that i had the pleasure of attending the teacher impact awards last wednesday right here um and maybe mrs you can talk a little bit more about it but it was it was really lovely to see so many of our teachers honored by our students um it wasn't the event that it normally would be because of covid with the meal and things like that but it was really you guys did a wonderful job honoring our our teachers i think there was about it's about 200 of them yeah it was very it was very it's a very exciting evening um so the idea of the impact awards is that um students that are graduating seniors um
080they identify a teacher a staff member a custodian anybody that has really impacted their lives in some capacity and uh and then that's the night they come in and that individual gets recognized and the student comes along with them so it's a really powerful evening the fact we would have it in person in this space was really really pretty exciting and it was a lot of energy in the room and they rotated all around they were all over the place it was very very cool we were safe but we were definitely social so it was a good time and the pictures from impact and also from decision day have been out there the links have been out there with all of those it's just heartwarming to see the smiles on the faces and and people
081celebrating their children's accomplishments so it's great to have that up those opportunities to do that and i know that there are more coming as well okay um any other board comment this evening before we move into public i got a couple of things um i feel like there's some misinformation that's circulating in a wonderful community regarding motions and i want to try and make it pretty basic so everyone understands it i can make a motion right now that we terminate mr fitzgerald's contract it's not on the agenda i could justify it but it's not on the agenda i can make a motion that we'd stop zoom and just stay with the live streaming it's not on the agenda but i can make the emotional justification i can make a motion that we stop using laptops
082and go back to pencil and paper it's not on the agenda but i can make that motion with justifications so i want everyone to understand every motion is not on the agenda and i've heard a lot of there's misinformation going around and around about this so every motion is not an agenda and those are three motions i can make right now that's not on this agenda thank you all right thank you any other comments then we'll move on to public to be heard i believe we do have someone in the room thank you for holding your comment at the other time please come on back up to the podium there good evening anthony frigo again i circulated a letter today apparently there are blm stickers in the school in the seventh grade center i have
083no comment about blm but i don't believe it is appropriate that such things are in the school i believe it's unconstitutional violates the first and fourteenth amendment and i was wondering what the school would do about that this is the first time i'm hearing of this and i will share this with mr rizzo and mr fitzgerald to see what course of action if any canada should be taken uh in relation to that are you saying like a bumper sticker or something no i believe it's a sticker on a door to a classroom and i also believe that there's not a sticker about the constitution next to it nor one without the declaration of independence which is what the school should be teaching so your preference would be we just remove the sticker excuse me your
084preference will be we just remove the sticker yeah okay i i'm seeking redress i'm not seeking um i don't add punishment here i don't disagree what you're saying it shouldn't be there any more than a confronted flag sticker or anything else it shouldn't be in the school district so i support your position thank you requesting that it be removed okay and i will hear the results of this at some point mr rizzo do you have do you have this individual's contact information uh i do yes if you if you could address the thank you and then share that yep i believe that you know me okay mr rizzo is going to address that situation and then he'll follow up with you with that thank you thank you very much appreciate your time sure any other
085comments from anyone in the room i do want you to come back to school board meetings when when you don't have an issue okay all right so be michael oginski 2005 will drive just before i start my public comment just a point of order uh i don't recall hearing a vote on any of the proposals finance curriculum etc not this evening it is a work session there were some action items in the beginning that we did need to address other than that there will be motions for the other items that we just reviewed uh at the next meeting okay i stand corrected thank you i'm here tonight to talk about undeserved trust and its impact on our students on the heels of last week's updated cdc and pennsylvania department of health mass guidance chester and
086delaware counties which share a common department of health announced that masks are now optional for athletes when training or competing school boards including westchester neshaminy council rock central buck souterton and many more have voted to make masks optional for athletes as well despite this springford student athletes are still required to wear masks why because springford is following the outdated guidance of the montgomery county health department why hasn't springfield follow the lead of many neighboring districts that have proven they can safely compete without masks is the compliance with the health department justified let's examine if the county has been honest and forthright with spring for deserving the trust in an email dated october 14th 2020 montgomery county commissioner valera couch asked for case numbers for public school sports coveted transmission michelle masters who you will call
087was a guest speaker here in the fall when she interrupted her board chairwoman three times responded that only 12 cases were found in account over a period of six weeks stating and i quote these numbers are not as powerful as i was hoping seriously not as powerful the person in charge of disease prevention and control in our county the person advising the springford board and administration says she's disappointed that the cases weren't more numerous among our athletes but that lack of substantiating data did not discourage commissioner cruz from lying to school districts in an email to upper dublin superintendent dr steve yanni dated october 29th only 15 days later commissioner cruz states and a quote i'm hoping our community will cancel all indoor gatherings and even be more careful with sports these are our two
088highest risk activities highest risk this completely contradicts the data that her own team provided her and finally in an email dated the same day october 29th denise wallin asks if there's a plan to close schools over thanksgiving michelle masters responds not at this time we are not seeing transmission in our schools there is a concern that if we move schools to virtual we will see a higher number of cases because of the need for parents to work and kids to get together unquote yet despite this clear position a mere two weeks later both valor crews and michelle masters attended a zoom call with the county board health the same meeting that mrs zasowski attended to defend us and made statements that directly contradict their own data and own concerns [Music] the board administration is to
089think about whether they should continue to trust the people who have lied to them thank you hey thank you mr sarah i got a quick question for you even even though um chester and delaware county has made decisions because it's a it's a joint uh department of health within the our montgomery county department health still has not made any changes from a mass mandate correct as as from my last review which was last week so we no matter what our personal feelings are one way or the other we still require to follow those mandates as at this as at this point correct yes and also whatever the the pac has decided to do and what they're there for i'm not the pack is a whole other i'm i'm just talking about in in short you
090you will be guided by montgomery county right so we even if i mean even if we wanted to follow the lead of chester and delaware counties we're limited to as far as what we can and cannot do from a school district standpoint based on what montgomery county is putting forward that is correct okay when is the county or do we know when the county is planning to meet again and have these types of discussions do we do we know that at all in terms of when they might change it that tends to come out of out of the blue they don't necessarily uh the only thing they really advertise and they really had trouble with that was back in november when they decided to mandate schools to close for two weeks but other than that
091they really just issue something and then it's it's new and that's what we've dealt with consistently for how long now uh 15 months thank you i was that was rhetorical thank you um thank you mr fitzgerald okay all right are there any other comments in the room yes i'd just like to announce that cameron moore and john perdin per gene are packed doubles champions nice congratulations [Applause] okay and oh we do go ahead please state your name and your address hi good evening erica hermans 204 abbey drive in rogersford so one of the key responsibilities that is entrusted to a board is the hiring of a superintendent this is a decision that has wide-reaching and long-lasting impact it's wide-reaching because last i checked we have over 800 upwards of 800 employees in the springford school
092district that this individual would be responsible for and it's long lasting in that our last superintendent was in this position for close to 10 years and so i'm sure we all agree that we want to find the best candidate for this position someone who has an eye on the current needs and future needs of the students in our district and frankly i would not be surprised if that was in fact mr rizzo because mr rizzo you have done a phenomenal job leaving this district especially since dr goodin's absence and with all of this said it would be a dereliction of this board's responsibilities not to put should we move forward with this approach not to put mr rizzo up against any other candidates because up until two weeks ago there was an understanding with this
093community that the board would be partnering with the iu to go through the process of trying to find the best talent and so the motion that was made at the last board meeting in the manner in which it was is simply careless to have no executive prior executive conversation and to have it not reflect on the agenda is careless because our public looks at these agendas to make informed decisions as to whether or not they want to attend in advance and whether or not they want to make comment public comment in advance and so mr clinton i respectfully disagree just because strict legal procedure is followed doesn't make it right just because you can do something doesn't mean you should and i want to thank dr wright for being the lone dissenting voice at the
094board meeting two weeks ago because i know it's not easy to always stand up for what you believe in when you hear overwhelming majority opposition and so thank you for that i'm going to have to respectfully disagree also um i felt that in the last 15 months as mr fitzgerald has pointed out um this board we have struggled we have struggled to be the leaders that springford knows us to be we have struggled with so many different aspects um and yes covet related and how do we respond do we react are we proactive that was a motion that was made which can be made as mr jackson pointed out and it should have been made why should we be wasting any more of the taxpayers dollars any more resources any more time or effort on
095looking for what it is that we have and i feel very firmly about that i feel strongly about that i also stated very openly that i would not be the one to make a motion because i work in sync with mr rizzo on many many items and i felt that i knew him maybe better than the other members of this board so that i did not want to be the one to make the motion but would i support it a hundred percent if the board wanted to continue and go through the process i would support that too not for a very high fee as some of the firms had offered but the iu would have been less money there there was those still resources attached to that there were advertising costs there was time and
096effort and resources that our personnel would have had to dedicate to going through that process so if we know that that's not where we're going i felt that was the right decision to make and not to waste time and resources looking outside of that how did i know that i felt that way and i thought that way from my experience but that was also indicative of the lack of response from other board members when feedback was solicited by our hr director and by mrs fern on multiple occasions the feedback that came in was very limited and only provided a little bit of direction we needed a lot more than that and it wasn't forthcoming so when the motion was made i was very happy to hear it and i was very supportive of it and
097i stand by that position a hundred percent my only comment to this and this is what i love i love that the community comes out and they engage with the board i'm not a zoom person i don't like email i like to deal face to face so with that being said each individual at this table made a conscious choice to run for school board or they allow someone to talk them into it which is a whole separate story each individual this board got petition signed each member of this board went through the entire process of being elected to school board we are nine individuals of a conforming bro conforming board there is a president and the vice president and then at the end of the day they facilitate a meeting there is one vote per
098person so there's no one here that has pixie dust or put someone in a trance or forced someone to vote and the last time i checked the vote was eight to one so my point is if you look at it from that analysis the board voted where they wanted to go the same way dr wright stood up and shook her fist or shook her hand any other board member could have done that any other board member could have voted no any other board member could have tabled the vote so when you look at the vote being eight to one that says something it has substance it wasn't a five to four vote it was an eight to one vote so i look at it from that perspective of simple logic and analysis is that that
099is the direction that the board wanted to go yeah i i find it really interesting and and thank you for your comments too that this is not really supposed to be a back and forth this is an opportunity for the community to make their comments and yet we hear people say all kinds of things and this is the thing that that you know that we choose to dwell on it you know you took another opportunity to explain why you felt that you needed to vote the way you did that wasn't her point right the community member's point was that she thought she was expressing her point of view about the way it was presented and she validated your comment about it being legal she just was expressing her point of view that it is if
100it's on the agenda it is better for the community and then and that was it but this is something that you know it's not a back and forth and frequently community members say all kinds of things that we don't we don't have to feel that it needs to be a discussion on you know but this was it this is what you chose to try to agree with dr wright and this is we've said every board meeting i've been to this is not a q a it's a board comment it's a community comment time you make a comment they have questions they need to be submitted i suppose in writing ahead of time or address to an administrative person who can answer their question and that we we established forever this is not a q a
101i think that we when we were in the thick of it it was definitely not a q a there were things coming at us from all different places if you look back at the meetings the last several meet meetings um mr rizzo has responded to a number of inquiries that have been made board members have responded to a number of inquiries that can be that have been made if there there is an answer to a question i don't see a reason to withhold that no we're not going to invite miss herman's back up to the microphone we're not going to engage and go back and forth and i believe she understands that but if there is a response i think it is okay to to do that um when we were in the thick of
102it i i don't think it was climate has changed she didn't ask a question though she was just stating her opinion i agree that there's a question that mr rizzo can answer so are we good to move on i i think we've heard a public comment folks have responded to it do we have five board members who agree that it's we should move on we should move on okay so if we have a majority of five or more then we will move on um are there any public comments on zoom at this time rich do you have anything else i'm sorry i didn't see you here actually okay yes we have not gone to the zoom yet so yes we'll go ahead abby deardorff 204 collin court in royersford um since there has been multiple
103administrative updates regarding diversity equity and inclusion um i know this is not a q a forum but i was wondering if feedback could be provided to the community why a black lives matter sticker is inappropriate or if that's what the district feels thank you if i could could i give a comment on that i i answered the question to the gentleman i'm the one that said i find that that it should be removed yes i said that any other any other political or or sticker of controversy should not be posted anywhere in school same way i said with a confederate flag or or or if it's a bumper sticker black lives matter blm yeah it shouldn't be on school property any more than a political sign should be on on school property i understand where
104you're coming from but there was a statement saying that it's unconstitutional according to tinker versus des moines in 1969 it is not unconstitutional and court cases ruling the first amendment in public schools any um school official cannot censor student speech unless it's disrespectful to the education system which right now it is not i don't think it was a speech it was a bumper sticker any form of protest including like armbands and stuff because thinking doesn't tinker versus des moines was an armband situation okay so this is a great conversation but i would i reiterate that in the past that there were other stickers or other things like like mr jackson mentioned a confederate flag that was removed if you allow one and this was the position all along if you allow one you have to
105allow them all so as soon as you as soon as you cross that line and say this one is okay but this one is not and you could be 100 reasons why that's the case but as soon as you allow one type of group or a presentation of some form like this then you have to allow them all so that means and that's from what i understand mr frazier could correct me am i wrong but we've tried to limit that uh throughout the years as far as this expression in the halls and that what's taught in across classrooms is curriculum based but things just can't appear in the hallways there was other things that have been removed over the years because it goes back to again once you allow one you can't pick and choose
106the flavor of the month and say this one's allowed but i don't like that one so that one has to come down i i think we should uh caution on discussing this information until we actually get a fuller background i i would i would ask that the nine of you stay viewpoint neutral on all this and we'll look at what what the information suggests and certainly as an update is warranted that will be provided thank you mr fitzgerald any other public comments in the room and moving on to the zoom rich comments jennifer brown please unmute yourself state your full name and address on your public comment to be heard jennifer brown for ashford way i would like to take this in a really positive direction and express my support and thanks for the progress
107being made on the formation of a special education parent advisory committee or alliance a special education alliance is a win-win situation for parents students and the school district it will facilitate positive communication collaboration parent training and self-advocacy skills for students i've been involved in a special education alliance in another state in another school district and i saw firsthand all the benefits parents in springford are interested and enthusiastic about this possibility so i'd like to thank mr debello for bringing this to the board mr rizzo for being open to the possibility and miss davis for all the work that she's done so far and that's it thank you thank you do you have other comments go ahead ruth hansen please take your full name and address and your public comment to be heard unmute yourself please
108um yeah ruth hansen i'm at 84 bartlett drive in springsville and um yes i would also like to voice my support for the formation of the special education alliance to the parent advisory committee it sounds like a lot of plans have already been made and are in the works and that's very exciting to hear it's going to provide an excellent forum for communication between special needs families and district administration it's going to be a very valuable resource for family families and educators throughout the district uh thank you to tom to tom de bello for listening to our needs and bringing it to the board and to mr rizzo and katie davis for all the work that has been done on it so far i look forward to seeing more in the fall thank you thank
109you kathy morris please state your full name and address and your public comment to be heard please unmute yourself thanks cathy morris 420 church street in royersford um just like the last two callers i want to thank mr rizzo and um his team for putting together some uh background work on having that special needs parents alliance it's obviously going to be very helpful for the school the community um and our whole demographic um my other comment would be to uh i guess not challenge the administration but maybe kind of give a heads up that i know a couple parents have had talks with their iep team regarding competitory education and so far um i know i personally and another parent was told we haven't even started those evaluations yet to see if kids qualify um
110and that is something that you know we have state regulation about and and whatnot so i would just challenge them to kind of get the ball rolling on that because we don't really want to waste any more time for services that our kids have already lost unfortunately do the pandemic thank you so much lee and graham please get your full name and address and your public comment to be heard please unmute yourself i can hear me this is leanne graham 136 oak creek drive um limerick i just want to echo the callers before me jen and ruth um and first off before that i wanted to just thank the um the staff and and teachers the administration from the special ed department my daughter's in ninth grade and i will say that the teachers and
111the administration went above and beyond this year for my daughter um i've been blown away with the amount of support that they've given her and the flexibility as she is high risk but the flexibility they've shown and have worked with me over the last year has been unbelievable so i just wanted to first of all say thank you and second i'll say um thank you mr rizzo for your report on the parent advisory committee for the special ed mr dabello for bringing that to the board um it's been a long time coming i think i've been asking about this for so many years i know back in the website probably a few years back i asked about the special channel for for this exact thing and have been told that had been retired for for
112many years so i'm really excited i personally um i'm i go to the mathactin special ed alliance meetings have found them so helpful over the years from training to conferences they just had an incredible inclusion conference seminars for free to anybody in the area their staff parents it was really awesome with dr jenna ruffo dr julie costin about inclusion so i'm really looking forward to having something from a parent advisory committee and training for for springford and i'm happy to volunteer in the focus groups uh with mrs davis so i'm looking forward to an update at future board meetings and again just commend uh mr rizzo and katie davis for taking the lead on this thank you james goldsmith please state your full name and address and your public comment to be heard at this
113time there were no more hands raised great thank you one and all and is there a motion to return oh i was just gonna say last week was teacher appreciation week that we we didn't really mention okay well we don't have a second so we did periodically tonight thank the right teachers but if we could officially acknowledge those um you know in all of their efforts uh just in a normal year and beyond well i mean we have an amazing staff here and they and what they've done like you said not only this past year but as i mentioned earlier with our national rankings and all that and all the hard work it's it's definitely demonstrated that um it's paying off for everything that they do for our students uh they definitely go beyond the
114call of duty as well as mr schaefer mentioning the 56 plus teachers that are going to uh work this summer uh in this program uh which is just amazing itself because at first we we didn't know before you know how many teachers we're going to get and that for 56 to step up uh we should be able to really make a a good headway on on the number of of our students that we could touch this summer as far as addressing some of this learning lots that may may or may not have occurred so this is this is really great like i said we have a it's a great staff here and i just want to make sure that we uh uh point that out and you know doing appreciation um this week is uh
115national recognition for our police and and uh as as springford we have a great great school police department huh and school nurses i mean this is and property and well property committees but i mean we you know a couple years ago we started out to create one of the top-notch uh police school police departments uh in the state and we have done that and and chief boyer and his team have done an amazing job they're well respected within the community uh all of the adjoining uh the boroughs of the townships that they work with the police departments they work with the kids the students they love uh their presence in the buildings they've made a positive impact so we just have an amazing staff within our police and as well as with our nursing uh
116as ms smith uh mentioned that we're up to eighteen and they you know we should give a special recognition to them as well because over this last year not only do they have worked extremely hard over you know prior years but this last year uh uh they really stepped up and and uh took on the challenge and and helped us navigate through some of these uh interesting times and and provided the protocols and the policies and procedures to ensure that we're able to um you know take care of our students uh make sure that any contact tracing was done it was done efficiently and very effectively as well as working with mr rizzo to work through the processes and procedures that when we had positive cases within these buildings we got to the point where
117we didn't have to close the building because they got very efficient in doing all the contact tracing necessary and working with mr rizzo making sure all the cleaning everything was done so that we could keep the buildings open so they've been a tremendous asset as well and i think that's why we as a board agree to add additional stuff um and so it's really i mean it's just amazing what we're doing here at spring force i just want to take a couple minutes to make all that recognition and it's all of these pieces together that has us where we are right now so and it starts with you mr rizzo at the top right now so thanks second did you second okay we're done