Spring-Ford Board Meeting - March 22, 2021

001watch the left move on okay what happened there all right rich i don't need to start over do i okay good i think i would disappoint some people here if i did um and then our student reps we are minus allison in person but is she available on the zoom she is okay and ishka do you have any uh announcements this evening for us there are no announcements this evening okay thank you public to be heard on agenda items only anyone in person anyone on the zoo at this time there there were no hands raised okay we'll move right on then to the presentation mrs lease the director of human resources dr melissa patzke our principal and dr purcell whitaker the supervisor of special ed to provide an overview of springford's diversity and inclusion committee

002thank you we're excited tonight to be able to present a little bit of the information about the district's equity diversity and inclusion committee we were formed in september of 2019 with an initial group of around 25 members our immediate goals were to establish our mission and vision and to create a strong foundation for our work through board policy the school board showed their commitment to our work by adopting board policy 128 equity diversity and inclusion in june of 2020. the board adopted this policy to create an environment that fosters awareness and self-awareness of diverse perspectives and backgrounds to build a community where everyone feels accepted and valued and to be purposeful in looking for value in others using this policy is our foundation our committee has grown to well over 50 members at this point

003and our work has begun in earnest as leaders within this committee dr melissa patsky and dr purcell whitaker are here tonight to showcase the work that has begun good evening as a community we hold our educational success in high regard we work daily with staff students and community members from a variety of identities cultures and general life experiences we know how important it is to provide inclusive schools for all students the diversity equity and inclusion committee was developed with the intention to build a community where everyone feels accepted and valued and to be purposeful in looking for value in others it is important to be aware of differences whether it is race disability or sexual orientation and how these differences can impact our students social emotional well-being and academic experiences in addition it is equally

004important to create a professional environment that fosters self-awareness which will lead to understanding of our unconscious biases so following your lead in developing the policy 128 the dei committee evolved into a driven results oriented task force our work cultivated ideas and we generated the the need to elevate voices of marginalized identities we wanted to ensure that continuous purposeful growth and opportunities were for available for all and to establish a climate of bravery and empowerment we collected resources we held focus groups we divided work into multiple subcommittees so now our communication and media department has captured a brief video to help you see into that committee work so please listen in while some of our chair people will share the details of the work that's been accomplished by their committees thus far [Music] deanna and i

005are co-leading the professional development subcommittee for the diversity group we are just working to find out what our students need and then work to find out what's the best way to bring them professional development to increase our awareness of the diverse perspectives and backgrounds of our students and how to include that in our curriculum in our training to make sure that every student is comfortable we have had took the opportunity in both november and just recently at the end of february beginning in march to pull together small cohorts of staff representation on specific topics to find out what is truly happening in the springford area school district and where do we need to move that needle and move forward as our work progresses focus groups have been really exciting for everyone too because we found

006out there's a lot of staff who are really interested in this training and have already begun doing things on their own and then they're interested to share that with each other so i think it's going to go really well when we roll out the professional development we are the growth and learning module for how we're going to help people come together and do what's right for our staff our students and our community all these are touchy topics and you really just need to listen before you react to a lot of them i think that's kind of the hardest thing to do sometimes we want to engage students perspectives regarding how spring forward and staff are doing to ensure that all students feel seen heard and safe within our classrooms while also enlisting them to promote

007and increase equity diversity and inclusion within our entire district the cultural awareness club is going to be doing a pilot program potentially with brook elementary starting for next school year to help increase cultural awareness and cultural related activities for our elementary school students we have recently initiated a pilot survey distributed to 22 voluntary high school participants in grades 9 through 12 intended to obtain some information their student experiences and perspectives about equity diversity and inclusion students share that they have overall positive experiences with staff but there were fewer positive experiences with peers that lacked staff intervention they also identified curriculum as being an area that were lacking diversity so they would like to be able to see themselves being represented in what's actually being taught we want to look at the materials that are being

008used we want to make sure that they're realistic that they're respectful and really that they give portrayals of various racial ethnic and cultural groups we're currently looking at social justice standards and trying to create that rubric for what teachers already have in their hands those supplemental things that they might be using and also the curriculum we already have however that's just to evaluate okay if i'm going to teach a story about thomas edison in our journeys curriculum but i want to bring in a supplemental article about him to evaluate that article kind of on the fly to make sure i'm pulling in something actively it's the short-term solution to making sure that everything from this point on we pull in is appropriate we want to make sure that teachers have resources that help build empathy

009respect understanding and connection to others that are both similar and different because we're specifically looking at curriculum it's going to touch everybody in the district in some way shape or form it's going to have teachers reflect on their practices and what they're putting out to kids it's going to hopefully build unity among the student body and our staff to students just because they will all be able to recognize one another and celebrate those differences the community subcommittee is looking to kind of eventually reach out to the community as a whole at the level of parents and families but also eventually to businesses to other individuals that are in the community and kind of connect the whole springboard community right now we are doing very background steps and minor steps as much as everything can happen

010in school we need to also share that out to the community to help our students better the area that we live in and become more aware of these different lenses that we have going on we are more than just one specific look we have many different nationalities languages religions going on within our own buildings so we do need to represent those students and make sure that we have staff at our prison set we have our first virtual multicultural day coming up this is going to include any student in grades 5 6 and 7 who want to participate in this virtual event this is really an opportunity to show our community what's happening inside the classroom when it comes to edi each committee does kind of work together to some regard we can't we split up

011to be able to tackle more areas but as we've split up we have found that each committee needs to work together and build upon each other the community committee is going to be sharing out what all the other committees are doing three [Music] so as we as we move forward our committee is exploring local state and national supports and resources to foster self and social awareness we continue to strive to overcome conscious and unconscious bias participate and courageous conversations and create an inclusive culture that welcomes the diverse beauty of the entire springford community so this ends our presentation but we'd like to say thank you to the school board of directors to our administration so to speak and appreciate them three years [Music] our vision foreign you know one time i heard there was 40

012plus or more you know standpoint um this is a continuation of what we've been doing in the district so i thank you for everything that you're doing um i just wanted to say i'm very pleased about this initiative and the subcommittees i'm also pleased that it's being done comprehensively and very deliberately um because i think that's really important to actually make a change i just wondered is there an an hr human resources component to this because i think that's really important also so the hr component is underlying um a lot of what's going on so we are focused in my department on obviously recruiting and hiring a diverse applicant pool for positions that are available um that is part of what ms mcgill was also speaking about as far as the community piece um when

013she was referencing that a little bit as well we are spreading our wings to get information out as far as postings within the springford area school district with virtual interviews now i'm able to identify to attend job fairs that i typically wouldn't be able to attend so we are reaching out a little bit further as far as our recruiting efforts are concerned as well you know unfortunately this is it is a limited pool a limited pool of uh potential candidates and everyone's trying to do the same thing we're doing they're trying to modify the diversity within their school system so we're all chasing the same people and you know my kids have gone through the school district since 08. and i think as a whole the district is doing a good job speaking from personal

014experience they've done a fantastic job and just to go back to what i said as hot topic i mean that it's gaining more this movement is gaining more media attention there are more opportunities for us to become educated in this area but it's very good to see that springford is ahead of that curve you've been working on this since 2019 this is already something that that we're doing here and that i i hope you know that the board supports you in doing this so we're happy to see that growth that's taken place over that time and i i do think also like mrs fazzini had said it's a very deliberate very organized very well thought out approach to to this piece and i also think there are tangible and intangible resources that you're tapping into

015to be sure that the awareness and the education and the growth is taking place so thank you for all of that thank you for your continued support thank you miss kazowski you're welcome mr jackson we're moving on then to boarding committee reports ishika or allison on the zoom do you have a student report for us this evening oh yeah yes we do um all right so i am going to just presented so this is our march student report and ally's going to just say what happened and then i'll go with the what's coming up okay so some events that have been happening in march have included the winter keystones which were held from march 1st to march 12th the high school spring musical was live streamed on march 5th and march 6th the district string

016jamboree concert was held on march 11th and a hope for tomorrow presentation at the 9th grade center was also held on march 11th nsat was administered at springford on march 13th um an indoor percussion and guard senior night was held on march 13th royrsford elementary school virtual reading olympics were on march 15th mccc placement testing was held on march 16th and a home in school book fair at spring city elementary was held from march 15 to march 19th and i'll turn it over to ishika for what is coming up so we have some wonderful events coming up um i think the most exciting would definitely be spring break which will be march 31st to april 5th uh spring photos at roysford elementary school on april 7th a drive-in movie night at upper providence at april

017on april 29th the last day of our third marking period on april 13th the beginning of our fourth marking period and the last um april 14th an nhs induction ceremony for seniors april 14th the junior ones will be april 15th and act testing will be administrated on april 17th uh spirit week at the springfield high school from april 19th to april 23rd that will be ended off by a powderpuff event on april 23rd our senior decision day on april 28th and for our uh limerick elementary school the last day to buy your yearbook will be april 30th okay thank you very much for all of those updates anyone have any questions yes it's scott on all of those activities i know there's been some discussion and there was some information which you wouldn't have seen

018in the friday memo but have we determined where these activities going to be held is that most of these activities um if they are able to will be held outside but it just depends on what they are so for the bigger bigger events that are coming up for example the senior decision day and the the post-prom nights that we were talking about will be outside but besides that i'm not 100 sure okay i look forward to your report mr schaefer thank you i do would like i thought it unique that the um the most exciting one is being off from school so appreciate the honesty okay thank you ishka and um alison for those reports mr debello do you have a finance report for us this evening finance meeting let me shift around here finance

019committee met march 9th at the high school conference room we started off with uh going through our monthly executive reports um so we're from a from a cash standpoint we're at the same spot we were this year at this time last year or 1.4 mil or 100.5 million dollars last year include 1.7 million in lieu of taxes from nexulon and this year does not we will receive that money hopefully by the end of march if we haven't received it thus far the revenues real estate taxes and interim tax payments are on par state sources are coming in slightly slower federal fund funds are higher than budget due to the grant fundings that we reviewed and expenditures salaries are up to internal spring for cyber costs property services continue to be under budget due to not

020having full interstate cleaning staff on site at the beginning of the fiscal year other services are up uh seeing a transportation other services are up seeing a transportation savings approximately about 450 000 but is offset by external charter school costs which are up by 575 000 from the prior year supply costs are up due to cove expenditures of approximately 491 thousand dollars property expenses are up due to covert related expenditures about 335 thousand dollars if you take the cove expenditures out of the picture we are basically under or slightly under budget assessments we gain 0.2.3 million dollars since january and have three months to go to hit to go to hit our goal um i did question about where we're at with the the large development that's going on ridge pike and limerick but we're

021uh still gathering information regarding about when when that's coming online real estate transfer taxes were on pace uh to be collecting somewhere around 1.8 to 2 million dollars right now if things continue to go where it's going we will see a budget increase of roughly about 1.7 million dollars our earned income taxes we're still cruising and pacing to be around 11.3 million which is up um the didn't the cova pandemic from earned income tax didn't really hit this area as bad as some other areas um so because we are seeing uh an increase or over up about four hundred thousand dollars our self-funded insurance we're on par and we're within budget food services we are running in the black which is good we served 295 000 meals year to date compared to 346 000 last

022year a la carte sales are way down of course because of the low in person attendance and minimal choices as well we are working on getting a touchless checkout system with scanners for the safety and speed which will allow expansion of menus hopefully it is actually being piloted successfully in two buildings and we'll get more information in upcoming meetings regarding that high school project we pretty much are done there as discussed uh and we probably will be coming to the board next month to ask for a motion to move cap reserve uh move the money remaining in the high school project the board remembers last month i report it was about 900 000 and we'll be making a motion a request to make a motion to move that money most likely back into capital reserve

023so oh yeah the with the high school project we just wanted to make sure the property committee completely closes out the project and that way um we could act on it appropriately uh in april or may and close the entire project out not only from property but from finance as well well we might like to hold on to that money a little bit longer but okay well you could hold on to it but we'll just move it we did review the covert related expenditures uh right now it's anticipating that pennsylvania may be seeing somewhere between 10 and 15 billion dollars in stimulus money we'll see if that comes through and we will continue to look for grants that may become available but we have to be careful as we are talking about the budget and

024the next topic one time uh monies going into the budget is not something that we like to offset uh the normal operations with so we'll talk further about that later if any so we did have a budget update uh mr fink did go through um the budget model right now we are looking at about a 4.5 million dollar deficit which equates to roughly a 3.99 tax impact our index for this year is three percent um there are several things in the budget that includes hot new hires that were requested for instance at spring city that was deferred from last year that we said we would need to move forward with this year we also miss mountain questioned exceptions and mr fink replied that we only have two exceptions we've only had two exceptions for the

025last couple years and we're getting less and less uh qual qualifiers for those exceptions which really we're looking at if if als als in uh from the exception standpoint we're looking about a hundred thousand dollars for special education so what that means is that we could take advantage of exceptions to go beyond the index but because we're getting minimal acknowledgement of those exceptions there's not really much uh opportunity to go higher with the tax increase if this board sir chooses to go beyond three percent so where it was left from the committee was that i was going to report this evening that we are at a 4.5 million dollar deficit as of now i sure i know mr fink has been working on his uh sharpening his pencil but uh we need to shave off

026roughly a million dollars of the budget of that deficit to get down to the index um we will have additional budget meetings planned as we go into april so that we could adopt the budget in may where it was left was that i was going to come to the board this evening and ask the board to provide direction to the finance committee as far as what their overall goal or what they want to try to achieve for the budget from a tax impact because we certainly don't want to revisit what we went through last year with going up and down the scale and doing a lot of work and i know last year there was a lot of there was board members that were new to the process so it was a great learning experience

027but hopefully this year we're in a little bit better position to provide directive to the finance committee as far as what we want to do with the budget and then finally there was some other business we will be addressing the appeal for 451 restridge pike the settlement value was 3.5 million the taxpayer paid in value was 3.2 and the school district opinion was 3.55 so we pretty much uh have settled and we are looking at roughly a 9 000 hit on um per year and that was it any questions i i think mr debell i recall in the meeting you had shared that you wanted to kind of push up um this conversation to the full board and i know mrs earle had just asked for some clarification and i i don't recall the answer

028or i guess the more i thought about it i've been a little bit confused typically it seems that committees will make a recommendation or bring something to the board um and in this case it's kind of going the opposite direction so i was just kind of confused why as a committee that wasn't there's no at least starting point i guess for the rest of the board or no recommendation from the committee as a starting point the recommendation from the committee is get the index that's where it was left at the meeting and as discussed at the meeting there are three main areas that if the board wants to make changes to the budget it would fall under either personnel projects or curriculum that's where the majority of the 180 million dollar budget's at so for

029the finance committee i mean we're not going to just pick a number we're not going to run if you're going to tell the board to get the finance committee to get it to as low as possible that's unacceptable answer the the board has to take a position on what are they trying to achieve uh with this with this budget thank you i was unclear it when we left the meeting i was unclear that the committee was recommending an index so i apologize that that i didn't put that together you actually said it you said don't we have to get the index that well that was that was my that was my statement but that was not a committee recommendation and and you were very clear in that meeting that you didn't want to make a

030recommendation you wanted the board to tell the committee what to do which i was kind of confused with right but i agree with you that we need to we you know we have to be we're beyond the point of referendum on the ballot so we have to be at index that that we know as a member of the finance committee it's up to the board to determine where we should go from here so to be clear the recommendation from the finance committee is to get it to index and is the board is the board then supporting the recommendation of the finance committee well the board the board is at liberty to [Music] comment you know make you know stand up and make the opponent be vocal about it that's just a recommendation from the committee

031that's all it is that's correct and so is the board supporting the recommendation from the committee what are the thoughts of the other members of the board yeah i've been to most of those meetings i support going to index you guys got to speak up i mean someone's got to tell us what they're looking for i agree i'm on the committee so we're we're stopped we're going to index and stopping there is that sort of so in other words the board is fine with three percent tax increase is what i'm hearing no i'm i i'm not on the finance committee and i asked to solicit feedback there and i would say i'd like us to be under the index it's been a very difficult year for a lot of people in the community maybe not

032everybody but definitely our small businesses and our community have taken a hit and i'd like to see us go under index tom are there any other recommendations besides getting down to index i think we could get to zero i mean i don't know i mean it's i mean this is the this is it's there is no recommendation because we have to we have to make a determination on what we feel comfortable with as a board raising taxes on the community and as i said there are three major bucket areas that are related to either personnel projects or curriculum that's where the majority of the money in the budget is at i know we all like to say cut the wasteful spending there is no wasteful spending that's been done probably nine years ago so we

033are at a point now where we have to make a determination on what do we want to do as a board right and cutting one million dollars we have to cut one million dollars just index from those three areas that are very slim well that's i guess i wasn't clear that's a no that's nonstop i mean that's we have to be there because we it's too late for us to go to referendum on the ballot so right we have to we have to so we're at three we have to one million dollars has to be cut no matter what million dollars has to be cut out of the budget right now and and i'd like to go higher three and a half percent or more four percent no i mean the other way i'm sorry

034i'd like to cut the other ways now let me just not i don't want to be unreasonable i know that there are three buckets and we don't want to we don't want to do damage to the district or those three buckets or lose ground i get that it's going to be a balancing act and i'm confident that our cfo mr fink is going to be able to get this done with with minimum hurt let's be honest it's going to have an impact a million dollars not either way it's gonna have an impact a million dollars is a lot of money to to reduce out of the budget so um that's just the starting point the question is is that you know does the board have a goal of going beyond that or not you all

035know the budget we we go through this every month as far as expenditures and revenue so there's there's no secret sauce here i mean anything anything right now is going to have an impact on the district and we already know we have to shave off roughly a million dollars we know it's going to hurt i think you know it's it's going to hurt some people without question mr develo could you share i i don't recall if you gave specifics on the numbers but um kind of where we are from from a income tax perspective and what we're looking at and what implications we've seen across the district not give me i'm not following you so again when we look at from the time covet hit we've seen if i recall an increase is that right

036she wants you to repeat and how it's affected the income am i correct that the income across the district seems to have been continuously increasing and again i understand that that's not everybody but it is an indicator that there is a strong base am i correct mr jackson's shaking his head i believe yes i mean we're we're about four hundred thousand dollars ahead in earned income tax for i i don't know what the population of springfield is 39 000 or 40 000 people so yeah um i just also want to just revisit the fact that we just spent a lot of unbudgeted money because we're still in a pandemic and next year that's not going away things are getting improving but we still are going to have more than one educational model i don't know

037if we're going to have two or three we're still going to have a lot of extra costs that we have to do to keep kids in these buildings so i just want to bring that up i mean that's our reality what you made a comment i'm just reason for pause you said we're still going to have more than one educational model will it we haven't decided that i'm fairly certain no we've decided that we're definitely still going to have cyber at the beginning of the next year and it's on the table that we all probably have virtual though i don't know that that has been decided but they're going to bring that back i just want to clarify that we hadn't talked about i mean cyber was here pre-pandemic and will continue to be here

038right but it didn't cost the amount that it cost for them number of students that we it's a it's been a huge expense for us we often have to consider the cost right now and and um maybe mr rizzo can speak to that some about the amount of money that has got had to go to the the cyber charters and things this year we had a big jump in that as all districts did i think what we have to step back for a second and evaluate the budget what mr zhini says is correct what you said is correct however right now our impact is this budget and last year's mr debelli politely said we've been rounding around on this i would prefer that everyone's seasoned by now and we know what they're going to be

039some some cuts there's no way around it they're going to be cuts and everybody likes to sit at the table and pound their fists about dollars well we gotta we're gonna have to cut dollars there's no way around it um we go through this every month with what the expenditures are and we knew this was coming miss mr bell and i talked about this and dr wright when we were having to buy different items for covet which was required but we knew at some point in time this cost was going to raise this ugly head and here we are and as a member of the finance committee i just want to know what the board wants to do collectively well i i'm sure i speak for everyone here there's no one at this table who

040wants to raise anyone's taxes including our own um i think that finding the the 1 million dollars at this point in getting to index is um i'm in favor of that i know last year we went through a whole process where we kind of kept going back to the table and going back to the table and um that was a very difficult process i'd like to see us get to index and um and settle at that point so i'm i think it's been a hard year for all of us at the district and i think that that would be where i would be comfortable can we do mr fitzgerald can we do a straw poll on this piece if that's the desire of the board it's not binding it's just uh to give some level

041of direction today mr mr schaefer i'm with the committee's recommendation committee recommendation as a committee member the recommendation i'll go wherever the board's at i'll go with wherever the board's at i'd like to go under the recommendation under the index committee recommendation yeah i'm the same committee recommendation sorry as i said i agree committee recommendation yeah as a member of the committee i go along with that as well okay so that that's a general inkling then from the board general direction from the board that we'll need to get that budget to that so we will oh i'll take it so we will take this directive from the ward and go back and or i'm sorry give directing to the administration to make that cut for those cuts we're not going to make those cuts what

042we're going to do is finance we're going to talk with uh jim will come from with a recommendation from administration on where we could reduce a million dollars out of the budget and then we're going to bring it to the board for when we when we go to approve this budget preliminary budget next month i mean that's where it's at i mean it's i can tell you right now i i majority of money is probably going to come from projects um because i i can't i don't see where we're going to be able to cut staff but well when i say cut staff that means that there's new positions that were planned for this year and we'll have to do evaluation on and see if if those positions are still necessary which i would suspect

043they are um and there's you know um there's other positions that we may have to add just just keep in mind when you're collectively when you're talking about cutting projects that's impacting the district right no i know that i never know yeah everything everything we do is going to impact the district but we don't have a choice i i mean i i mentioned this way back when about talking about referendum because when that time has come and gone and um so we are at a point where there's going to be three a reduction of a million dollars and it's gonna come out of it's gonna come from somewhere and um we'll fi i'll find it we'll find it i'll get it down to three percent and and my goal is always to try to go

044as low as we possibly could to get and uh and i've had this budget all the way to the point where we had a zero percent tax increase a few years ago and we've been averaging roughly around 1.8 to 1.9 percent increase over the last several years so unfortunately these times are stretching us a little bit mr develop you also raised a really good point which is you know kind of ties in um mr rizzo to what the education models are going to look like and mrs fazzini alluded to it as well i i think it's important because we may you know we may need to add staff if we're looking at virtual classrooms or if we're looking at those kinds of things and so while there are staffing you know requests or targets for

045the car upcoming year i think it's important that we have a better understanding of what administration's direction is is and and what those needs are and make sure that they're identified and built into the budget as we move forward well i know that we know the administration is currently meeting with the subcommittees to determine what next year is going to look like um but unfortunately that's gonna that final decision is gonna be closer to april may same night we're gonna make our recommendation the same night you have the preliminary budget presentation april 12th oh good luck with that so i think that the point is just to make sure that as you're going through that process that those needs are are built into this budget model because we don't want to kind of start down

046one path and then get tossed and kind of have to go back and forth and back and forth all right and with that reference to cuts to projects we'll then turn to mr jackson for an update on property maybe i just don't even do bug i won't do property because we don't have a million dollars i'm just telling you there's a million dollars in property i'm sure you can find it okay property it used to be the most important committee in the district but since you're looking to cut it out um there's a meeting yes it is i take everything personally mr schaefer you know that um meeting was held on march 9th update was provided for the bard building or as miss fazzini likes to say reuters ford's library our engineer consultant barry islett

047and associates has provided three solutions to the current structure we're showing uh floor just issues we have option one is a wood cribbing foundation support to address the concern at a total of 121 which is just an estimated cost from the consultant the second cost is a concrete foundation support to address the comprised area and that option is right around 213 000 and would require a structural inspection every two years option three is a concrete foundation support for the comprised area um which would include the remaining two thirds of the building this option has an estimated cost of 473 dollars and we'll require structural inspections once every ten years so when i say to you it's important that we take care of our buildings this is an example uh we also discussed if we decided

048to replace the building at an estimated price of three hundred dollars a square foot on a masonry structure at a usable space of ten thousand five hundred square feet would would cost us roughly three million dollars or exactly three million one hundred and fifty thousand dollars um the next step for the committee is we're having options one and two priced up by our contractor uh to see where those numbers actually fall out uh the next important topic that was discussed was the mcnally stadium occupancy update and i'm just going to give you the dates i know and that's why i asked the question mr schaefer uh regarding what activities that we were looking at for the stadium as of right now the contractor is pricing up as of march 17th the cost to perform this

049work we hope to get the contractor notice to proceed on march 29th on march 31st we would obtain approved permits from the limerick township and april 1 we will start construction june 4th we will complete construction on our about that time frame and on june 7th we would hope to have the occupancy permit in hand so we could have the graduation there so if you look at this big picture graduation right now is targeted for june 14th 15th so that gives us plus plus or minus you want to repeat that a little louder i think a lot of senior parents want to know that date no i'm serious we we have we have a seven day window right now if everything goes correct and stay with the the the oversight of mr hunter and we

050get no rain days no impacts we should make it by the 7th of june if we don't if we have rain we lose 7 days we're not going to make it we're going to do everything we can but there are only certain things that we control and unfortunately weather is not one of them we will keep you posted um i'm just dying i'll share all this with you these are the dates we're working with mr hunter and his outstanding team has this in place limerick township is working with us so we're doing everything we can to make this happen but those are the dates that we're working with another cost item on the gotcha farmhouse rental property we looked at two options um for replacing the septic system and hopefully rent that out so option

051one is to repair the property for a tenant to reoccupy and obtain rent on that the second option is demolition of the structure the third option is to make the repairs to the property subdivide and sell you know the district is not in the real estate business so what we what we're doing now is we're putting together a cost analysis summary for all three options i'm sorry we put together um a summary that was provided to all the board members on friday on this night there will be three items for board approval at the 567 center we will be replacing three boilers at the upe we will be replacing two rooftop units to keep the kids nice and cool and at evans 567 and upe we will be providing led exterior lights and that will

052be on the board in general for tonight and with that i will that's enough for property since we don't have any money but mr jackson i have a question for you about the rorschwart library yes ma'am um i was in a meeting with a couple of townships of upper providence township supervisors and um i was not aware that a a library is on their agenda to be built within the next two years kind of across from where the township building is right now so if there's a new library facility going in in the region um would we continue to support the the roars forward one considering it's falling apart and would we maybe combine the resources instead or has that been discussed um royal fort is totally separate from upper providence i am familiar with

053that project i have my own professional opinion on their project which i will remain solid on so there's been no discussions with the upper province supervisors if speaking of upper province if you go as a resident you can't even ask a question so to my knowledge there's been no discussions with the with upper providence regarding the bart library is something that the district has maintained years as a commitment to the community and my position would be that the bar library stays separate and whatever upper province does they can do but they answer the question is earl i'm not aware of any conversation but if you would like to take it and talk it out for providence you're welcome to do that if i can if i can help you out i will but today there's

054been no discussions without for providence okay yeah i'm i'm in contact with them in the 10-year planning commission so um i don't know it just seemed to be something that yeah i served on the upper province planning zoning hearing board for five years and there was never any discussion a little separate group but there was never any discussions regarding the two and that library has been talked about for a while it's starting to come to life now but and you know the question is how many people use the library you know but that's a whole separate issue so but if i can help you out with something please let me know so the thank you the the library in rowersford um is a community center point for a lot of the residents that are used

055to walk to the library um i mean we it's it's not a very large library but it's it's been sufficient to they actually years ago a few years ago looked to trying to see if they could expand the library but that didn't occur but the whole goal was to stay within worshford because of the residence and the communities of the library itself it serves a lot of people that may not necessarily have the means at home to have access to the internet or have access to computers or whatever it may be or and right then they are able to walk to the library um wouldn't have transportation to get to upper providence yeah i think that walking is to it is an important thing is where upper providence is planning there is it's you're not

056getting there anyway but by a car right so i would i would not be in favor of of of i'm totally in favor of continuing to support the community confu continue to support rorschford and do what we need to do to enhance we've been maintaining that building for years it's our building we rent it to worshford library for a dollar because we have to have something in place i guess from for legal standpoints but yeah i just want to also say that a lot of students that i know personally walk from the high school or the eighth grade building or even the ninth grade and then they they study together or they hang out there if they have to have some time after school before they go home so it also is a walkable for

057and a resource for many students in springfield and miss earl you know these are estimates that came from the consultant we will get numbers that will come from the contractor i will stick my finger in this to work these numbers with mr hunter the best we can to get the best bang for the buck okay yeah i just i just want to make sure we weren't like throwing keep throwing money it's something that's continuing to fall apart that's the impression i'm getting and apparently i'm mistaken no that's why you will always hear me bang the drum about investing this is perfect timing investing in the district and the buildings and maintaining the district i'm sorry you're just like your committee but i do do want to repeat for all senior parents that you heard it

058that the graduation date is tentatively scheduled no we're not done all right go ahead mr rizzo do you want to clarify my thunder here don't steal my thunder no we will come to that's part of my report but we do have a tentative date set for that we would like to have a motion on the board tonight uh for june 15th for graduation in person one ceremony that gives mr hunter eight days that's it guys and this this schedule is tight and he is busting his hump and his staff to make this happen we're gonna do everything we can but that's an eight-day window so that was one of the questions that i had i also wondered was there any further discussion about the deter fields because i know that the turf issue was brought

059up at a previous meeting and there was a presentation done where are we on that we were nowhere on that there was a presentation that was provided by mr mcdaniel and that presentation would have to be factored into the 10-year plan that's uh okay thanks and then the other the other question that i had was that um you were i did see what you were talking about with that that property there and three options that were proposed and they were in the board memo where what direction is the property committee going with that or recommending for that or where where do we go from there the cost summaries that you were referencing that were in the uh you're still in process then yes a cost analysis summary for all three options were provided to the

060board members at the request of clinton jackson so you should that should be on the agenda tonight unless i'm wrong mr hunter i thought that was on the agenda the cost options that were on the board agenda on friday are for further discussion to to finalize the decision uh at next property as to what we're going to decide to do with the property okay so they were in the board memo they're not on the agenda they were in the board memo and you're continuing discussions in property that's correct we had the final piece was the estimated sale value of the property being subdivided which we were able to we talked about those numbers uh at property meetings so we have all three thank you mr hunter for me thank you that's all i had and

061i want to be clear again because you know things take on a life of its own here at springford there was a presentation as mr jackson referred to regarding just a summary or an overview of what was presented a few times to the property committee regarding the possibility of of adding additional turf fields in the future if so desired by the board but we also know that when we're looking at our capital projects plan which is spread out over 20 years a lot of conversation would have to occur before that even works into into that 20-year plan and if it if it would work into that 20-year plan um so i i think that's where it was basically left at the the report i'm sorry the analysis and the report that was presented was from

0622006 so before we would do anything we would have to do another field study didn't you give direction to them to i had only come in on the end of that meeting but i thought there was some direction given to go back and find out more details of where and what would be more updated because that information was older i asked them to submit the report to all board members and said before we could move forward we would have to do another analysis that analysis is 15 years old before we would do anything else we would have to do a study that would have to be a determination of the scope it would have to be a determination of the fields what the fields will consist of what the design of the fields would consist

063of and then there would need to be a report that would need to be presented to the board to the board and then that go through the review process and just to refresh my memory that presentation was done was that done in property or extracurricular it was done with mr schaefer and he kindly sent it over to me so the presentation was done in both of them no it was a joint effort maybe that's why it was a little funny okay thanks mr shaffer you look like you want to comment jackson at this point we're not doing anything we don't have any money all right are there any other questions or comments from mr jackson one last thing i will continually support and commend mr hunter and chief boyer they work in tandem like no

064one i've seen in a long time a lot of a lot of the success that we have in property and you see it reflected throughout the district is a commitment to those two gentlemen and i would just like to say thank you for everything that you do okay thank you to you both thank you to all and mrs earl do you have a policy update for us this evening yes um a policy committee met on the 15th and we put five policies on tonight agenda for final approval and 12 policies on the agenda for a first read the committee further approved and sent on to our solicitor 16 more policies for approval and they'll come to the board in april um i think we've mentioned this before this there's policies in the 300s that are

065administrative employees 400 or professional employees and 500 are classified employees and these policies are redundant they just change what we call who the employees are so um i'm not quite sure how many there are altogether mr rizzo did roughly how many are i have the spreadsheet i'd have to look it up but we're probably combining threes fours and vines we're probably talking somewhere in the 40 to 50 policy range so um we're it will be on tonight's uh it is on tonight's agenda for a motion to approve to send these to psba because it's they're the ones that have uh already i guess done this and they will provide us with the the policies we had talked about a few of us reviewing them but then they'd still have to be reviewed by the solicitor

066so the total cost is gonna be like sixteen hundred fifty dollars and there's no way the solicitor's office is gonna review that many policies for that amount of money so anyway so um that'll be that's on tonight's agenda for a vote um uh when we when those are done uh it'll complete our review of the policies that date back to 1991 through 99 mostly from 1991 and uh we'll be moving on to those dating from 2000 so we're gradually creeping into the 21st century so um that's where policy stands it's great that's been a long review project that's been going on that's great that that work is still happening and mr fitzgerald we're fine if you review all those policies in fact you would have been yes we'll go no with to increase it oh

067no i suggest pspa in this regard i think it'll be very efficient utilizing them all right good and uh also we'll we'll get to that later in the means anyone have any other questions or comments for mrs earl okay mr schaefer extracurricular all right let's do it so um with excitement i'm able to somewhat co-present some announcements from mr rizzo with regards to end-of-year events and as we've already uh shared graduation in the stadium uh june 15th i'm gonna read through seven events that uh to my colleagues on the board will certainly be in the report these are end of the year events all have been scheduled or are being planned for in person with live stream access for those not in attendance um may 5th the impact awards to be held in the stadium

068may 15th a senior event which is uh these are my words here somewhat of a prom replacement if you would sort of a social event that's may 15th again held in the stadium senior academic awards the honors banquet held in the gym on may the 20th may 22nd held in the stadium is a music night may 27th will be a commencement awards the location is still being worked out there june 1st senior athletic awards to be held in the gym june 4th is the music awards location to be determined so i'm just excited to share that with the board and the community and thank administration and leadership for uh their extra work in that mr rizzo do you have any anything to add to that portion i would just simply say that dr collier and

069his team have worked incredibly hard to try and find to work this all out may is typically a very challenging month anyway at the end of the year but to be able to come up with venues in person venues to do this and then have rain dates for whatever we can have and backup plans because weather has to be as perfect as possible to be able to make a lot of this happen uh they've just they've done a lot of work on that so i congratulate them and thank them i also thank them for the in-person events that will be taking place in april i don't want to overlook those at all either but i know mr debello and i had both asked about nhs and thank you very much for making that happen for

070the seniors and juniors in person all right so just a brief you know what uh the the committee uh has a sort of a standard sort of run through we'll we we get a a sports update and then an activities update so the brief uh sports update and again this is as of march the 15th so um i mean we've had a heck of a winter sports season here at springford so i'll start with wrestling so they're packed champ pack champs for the 11th time um and uh first time ever uh southeast regional champs for this wrestling program which has had a lot of really great teams and um and then for the first time in springford's history we we crowned us a state champion so joey milano won gold medal in hershey at 189

071pounds and that that's just extraordinary so we also had a second place finish with jack mcgill at 160 pounds so the wrestling team coach seislov um we have you know extraordinary year and uh we'll obviously have an opportunity in the future to recognize those student athletes um girls basketball so can we get an update is that a victory okay wonderful all right so um they continue to climb towards the state championship hopefully um it's a four-peat for the girls basketball team to be pac champs right and this is the 10th championship so it's just extraordinary these student athletes what they're doing um and uh and that continues um notables here within swimming so we had two school records uh ashley gutshall um in the 50 free at district one championships finished fourth but she broke

072her own school record so that's kind of neat um and then uh brandon baganski who finished second in the 50 free at the district one championships also had a school record and so wanted to bring that to everyone's attention my last uh update is on the high school musical so i think everyone was aware that we had guys and dolls junior occurring during the week of march the 5th alex defeli and the entire cast and crew did a fantastic job so a couple of things that just wanted to share that i thought were really unique so there were over 1 000 links sold and this was viewed from people uh not only in the springford community but also sort of around the country all the students who wanted to participate you know were able to

073perform safely throughout the musical season that included acting and singing lighting and sound design set construction and props and um it was a joint effort between the theater music and audio visual departments and this was really a neat um a neat event where so many people came together and um next year's musical will be mamma mia there will be a quiz on that so please remember that and that will of course be held in in march of next year and that concludes the update on uh from our committee with any questions or comments and mr wizard please if i missed something add in i think you did a great job questions or comments from any other board members okay uh mr dabello personnel mamma mia that was a long report that he just gave [Laughter]

074well you said i worked in mamma mia didn't you like that personnel committee met last week and unfortunately because of most of the conversations that occur personnel are usually kept in confidence uh because of uh specific uh i mean known reasons you know you're not allowed to discuss personnel items although what we did discuss were we met with three groups last week we met with the maintenance group the instructional assistants and the registered nurses um we the purpose of meeting with each of those groups is we call them meet and discuss because uh we are in the process of renewing their uh agreement that they have uh with the working agreement that they have with the district uh we did meet an exec session and we went through the specifics of that agreement and once

075all those are ironed out they will be on the agenda for approval and once that is done uh those agreements are available for review we did uh commend each of the groups for all their hard work especially over this last year dealing with all the unknowns and all the uncertainties as well as uh dealing with um the pandemic itself and hopefully at some point in the near future we could stop saying you know because of the pandemic you know i don't know if that will be in 2021 2022 or beyond but hopefully at some point we'll be able to save those wards we won't have to say those words again but a great group of people great staff that we have here at springford and they are just amazing and they're all came in and

076they're thrilled to be part of such an amazing district and then the other piece that we did discuss was um if the board recalls at the last meeting uh i brought up that we had um an unexpected death within the springford community and [Music] not knowing this for prior years but it was brought to you know some of the board's attention that um when a when an employee passes away unexpectedly within the district they do get their uh accrued vacation time paid out but they do not get their uh sick time uh unused sick time that they have uh banked over the years i brought i said to the board that i really believe that we need to provide um that sick time to the family uh when we have an unexpected uh death within

077within springford uh within our employees so with that uh the personnel committee worked up language and it basically would read like this which in this language would go into all the existing agreements that we have in place or the new agreements that we will also be working on that i just mentioned and the languages as like i said the personnel committee recommends that should a springford school district employee die while employed to the extent available by the law the surviving members will receive payment of employees unused sick days these days will be paid out at the same rate as employees who retired and are paid out for unpaid sick days these rates are identified in the professional agreement the act 93 agreement and all other support benefit summaries days would be paid out to the

078surviving family members and will not be rolled into a foil 3b as is this you could tell this is language because this is a legal language was a tongue twister as is the practice for employees who retire the practice will be retroactive to july 1st 2020. so um and mr fitzgerald i'm going to ask for your guidance on this do we need to vote on this or how does this how would this language get worked into each of the agreements as mentioned you do need to vote on it uh and once it's approved uh that language will be um placed into each separate agreement um there's a few more hoops with regard to your your unionized uh group but with all the other groups it would just be added into your meet and discuss plans

079but and i make a motion that we we take said language and and added to the agreements as mentioned i second any questions or comments on that okay so before we go any further we need to take public comment is there any public comments specifically related to this motion in-house or on the zoom at this time there were no hands raised okay thank you so all in favor then say aye bye anyone opposed okay that motion passes that ends my report thank you mr develo moving on to mrs melton for legislative thank you the montgomery county school director legislative committee met on march 17th um we were joined by representative tracy i'm gonna butcher her name i apologize um penny quick from the 147th legislative district she represents southerton boyertown pv upper perk and potts

080grove miss penny quick actually is also a signer or a sponsor for um house bill 7 272 which is the charter reform uh bill it is a bipartisan bill um so it was really nice to hear kind of another side who also has that same goal to support reform again that was the primary focus of our meeting discussions were around potential savings to school districts and specifically um within springfield we would be looking at over a six hundred thousand dollar savings um should house bill 272 pass and keep in mind that would be prior to the increased expenses that we have seen in in this current school year um so um again the certainly a bill that i support um i hope others will as well um many of you may recall last year i

081brought forward a resolution specific to charter reform and charter funding reform which was focused on charter payments not being based on actual costs but rather they varied from district to district and special ed district funding so for our school district we may be reimbursed based on a high medium or low needs assessment but there's a flat fund um funding for charters so again if a child currently um me you know goes to a charter school and requires speech therapy we're paying a full uh special ed fee for that so these are some of the provisions that would be included within this house bill 272 and also recovered by the resolution i would like to raise to the board that we reconsider the passing the resolution i think it's really important that we continue to focus

082efforts on improving the environment this is an area where it will not have any impact on school choice for any of our residents but it will help minimize some of the payments and keep in mind charters are for-profit entities so where it may cost us eighteen thousand dollars to educate student ex we may be paying 38 to a charter school and it's costing the charter school maybe 20 000 so they're actually profiting 18 000 off of that student so keep that in mind this would provide some limitations on those costs and those expenses so again i urge the the board to reconsider the passing of the charter reform resolution is that a nomination or like making a motion or what you're just well we've brought it up a number of times it's been it you

083know it has been um members of the board have have felt strongly that it was added no value but i think it's it's definitely something that we should show our support for and and get behind continue to provide education to our community on this issue um again you know this six hundred thousand dollars in savings we're talking about needing to cut a million dollars out of our budget well if we could save six hundred thousand dollars that's a huge chunk of that right there so these are the kinds of things that we want to work through um the resolution i think i can certainly um mr rizzo i believe you have a copy of that resolution correct that is correct i do have a problem perhaps we can circulate it through to um in a

084friday memo so that the board can review it and then add it to um an action item for next month's meeting yeah i don't recall but that doesn't mean it wasn't we've had a heck of a year so um it sort of comes actually before covens right dc yeah i mean those are the kind of things that i'd like to surface and have visibility into because it is it's a for-profit um element that ultimately our community bears the expense of and it's sort of not uh known probably by the average household and so i'd like to have that circulated thank you and my recollection is are our liabilities from a charter perspective have skyrocketed as they have in in all districts around the state um and around the country for that matter but you know

085certainly to the extent that we can get behind this and try to minimize some of that and try and try to kind of put it closer to the expense as opposed to um providing these additional large profits i think that would help you know minimize what i'll call is the charter tax which is really what we're looking at this million dollars is really very close to that charter tax right now okay thank you for that any other questions or comments then we will look to see that uh resolution in the board memo and take a closer look at that i just i reading throughs um i know that mr ceresi or representative ceresi has i don't know if it got out got a committee yet or not but i know that he's been working on

086a a bill to uh actually make veterans day a school holiday um and we talked about it and that was something that over the years i've every every year i would bring that up at the board table why are we going to school on veterans day and that's something that he's actually working through in harrisburg and obviously it would be optional but it would be it could be recognized as a school holiday where we could put that in our calendar so it'll be really interesting to see where that goes as well but um i never quite understood why why schools go to school why we're in school on veterans day but we'll see where that bill goes yeah i don't want to overstep but in western pa it is observed i know yeah i know

087so you're you're blaming cersei no no he's no he's actually not claiming he's putting the bill in the way it's actually recognized throughout the state is what we was talked about thank you for the clarification sir oh you're welcome [Music] okay mr rizzo acting superintendent do you have a report for us this evening i absolutely do thank you a couple of very quick things first pssas i just want to give you an update at the board level uh pssa letters began going out last week which has has no surprise cause some concern for our families just want to remind our community and our board that this is not a springford thing pde makes the decision and we need to follow those assessments other options that pd we did get you know there was a we

088were allowed to apply for extensions which meant we could have given pssa's this summer or we could have given pssa's in september neither of those were ideal so we opted to move forward with testing this year at the national and state level the idea is to gauge that learning that idea of learning loss and again i shared when mr developer brought this up last meeting my opinion is that the data we collect won't be useful anyway given the year where where we tested and the relative discomfort that many of our families are experiencing just with even coming in the building my choice would be to use that time for instruction rather than for assessing um at a standardized test and i'm not negating the importance of standardized tests i think we're missing the mark a

089little bit this year by by putting those in place um it's just my thoughts on that um as i promised i will be giving you little trailers of our 21 22 school year planning our subcommittees our four subcommittees have all met at least one time with other meetings scheduled uh 21st century learning just a couple of quick things about that um they've identified they're working towards identifying what that even means what is 21st century learning and how does technology fit within that so they're talking about the barriers to learning this year talking about iste standards i mean the discussion is leading towards iste standards and if you're not familiar with those that stands for international society for technology and education i'm talking about the the four c's or the six c's in education critical thinking

090collaboration communication creativity citizenship culture character education and connectivity all things that we all value second subgroup is data collection analysis and we're talking about what data are important as we make that decision um the fact that we're making great adjusts or making great adjustments in skyward the distribution for the first two marking periods this year as compared to prior years failure rates of students especially your students with ieps just as an example of a few i don't want to name all of them but just looking at data to help us make that decision for what's going to happen next year virtual cyber focus group discussions are doing a great job of objectively discussing this past year both the pros and the cons and just a couple of pros independents small groups have worked very well

091in some situations a lot of flexibility with the asynchronous environment and our teachers really have adapted pretty well our students have adapted pretty well uh by and large some of the cons technology troubleshooting in the moment whenever teachers are meeting students and they're at home lack of accountability of screen time managing multiple environments a lot of the things we've heard before and again they're working towards identifying best practices um so that whatever we do next year we can do it better and more informed and provide appropriate pd uh the next um the last subgroup special education subcommittee today was their their first meeting i did stop in as they met and they started engaging in a really great discussion about the pros and cons of providing special education services in multiple settings and when i

092get more information i get their notes i'll have a more detailed report for you for the board member this upcoming friday coven cdc updates just to let you know um recently uh april 4th the allowable capacities increased uh 25 for all outdoor gatherings i'm sorry 25 for indoor gatherings as of april 4th and then 50 for outdoor gatherings you also know that the cdc recently updated social distancing to reflect three feet rather than six feet excuse me at this point pd and montgomery county office of public health have not endorsed this but i suspect we will receive an update later this week excuse me i should drink get a drink of water i got it here hold on thanks while he's taking that drink if i recall mr fitzgerald at the last meeting you referenced

093that that attestation form could be going away and there was also a reference in here uh in bob's update to us in the board memo about that is that going now so long as the county uh stays in a moderate transmission level for two successive weeks then the the form theoretically goes away so long as you stay in that level if if we go back to a substantial transmission level then the form comes back into play so that's my next bullet point yeah that's all right so in the last five weeks ah much better thanks in the last five weeks montgomery county has been moderate three of the five weeks we did have two weeks in road moderate which did take that attestation form away this past week we were back in substantial so if

094we have two consecutive weeks of substantial i think it is then back in place correct yeah but it's really at this point a distinction without a difference because yeah we we're following the two things that you have to follow and that is the masking order and that is if there needs to be a closure we are guided by what the health department says so it really is immaterial at this point to the district yeah and i will say overall the trend is down oh wow we were cautioned last week and our superintendents mean that we might see a slight uptick in numbers but nothing to be concerned about just that there could still be an uptick and as long as we're still engaging in our mitigation strategies we're going to be in a good place

095a couple of a couple weeks ago the board requested that we gather information some technology so we did get some prices on document cameras as well as standing desks the docu cams first they were back ordered they are now available they were about four months ago there were 15 that were ordered and we just received those this week they're about 210 each we do have about 53 elementary virtual teachers all told all 354 teachers across the district are teaching virtual in some capacity um so you know if we go out with that interest that could range anywhere from 11 000 to 75 000 and again we wouldn't just buy those for everybody we'd have a conversation about who would need them and who would want them standing desks we got two prices um one at

096the low end of the 331 dollars each the high end is 505 each and again that same same formula 53 elementary or 354 total you're going to have a range of expenses there as well i wanted to provide that information to the board as you had requested that graduation is planned tentatively for june 15th pending board approval which we're hoping that somewhere right it's like deja vu so it's planned for june 15th pending board approval of course with rain dates of june 16th and 17th at this point again the capacities as mr jackson alluded to if our project is done if our renovation project in the stadium is done that extend makes our maximum occupancy in that 8 000 capacity which would then allow 4 000 tickets for graduation if it is not done then

097we get 50 percent of our seating capacity which is 45.90 or 22.95 2295 tickets either way we are able to have a one ceremony graduation the question comes down to how many tickets we can offer our families and that is still to be determined based on how that all shakes out so if we don't make that eight day window then we will still have a graduation outside pending good weather and it would just be fewer tickets per family which we would communicate as soon as we possibly could and june 15th is a tuesday i just wanted to mention that we have to have an earlier in the week graduation because we cannot do an indoor rain date kind of a thing so we have to have outdoor rain dates so we're going to leave wednesday

098and thursday the 16th and the 17th as a just in case so at this point i would make a request that the board consider a motion to approve graduation for june 15th i'll make that motion that we will spring forward will host graduation on june 15th second questions or comments so i just oh quick question mr rizzo is that the earliest the graduation can be no more pressure mr hunter no i'm just there is a lot of support for maybe a you know i want to see what bob hunter can do let's say may 31st let's see how that goes yeah no i'm not i'm not talking about his date he's going to be done probably two three weeks [Laughter] i just want to because this will be a question that will will come up

099and i'm not even referring to what the project of mr hunter is is that the january june 15th that that's the earliest that we could have graduation at this point per satisfying the state requirements that that is correct that's what that's what i'm trying to get to yeah unless you wanted to you know the other most important june event is our board meeting on the 14th if you wanted to cancel that for graduation on monday we could you know stop you're teasing right june 15th is the date that we're landing on so is there no possible way to keep it on june 11th so that was not in the middle of the week i'm sorry what is there no possible way to keep it on june 11th which is a friday instead of like doing

100it in the middle of a week no you keep have graduation on june 11th yes because it's a friday so that way we're not having it in the middle of a week sure i understand that um i talked to dr collier and then the 15th was the date we landed on i think in the past that there have been times where families for whatever reasons with people coming into town or what have you have and and more right more reasons but those definitely have wanted it um on a weekend but as mr rizzo said in his presentation i think in his discussions with dr collier that it has to be outside so we need to have a couple of rain dates available to us and that just wouldn't work on a friday going through the

101weekend so we're gonna have an event we're gonna make it work and and i think that's what we're going to go from there so there is a motion on the table there is a second and are there questions or comments from the board related to that nope another is there any comment public comment related to that specific motion in house or on the zoom no one on zoom at this time what was the date again june 15th so with that all in favor is that another that motion includes the rain dates of the 16th and 17th as well correct that is correct uh miss fern do you want to read the motion administration recommends approval for the springford area school district graduation commencement to be set for the evening of tuesday june 15 2021 in

102coach mcnelly stadium the rain dates for graduation will be wednesday june 16 2021 and thursday june 17 2021 thank you for that very specific language final questions or comments all in favor say aye any opposed that motion passes thank you i'm sure dr collier in the senior class thank you very much for that motion the last thing that i have is retirements we have three retirements up for up for vote tonight karen boyer custodian head custodian in limerick elementary school she's been with spring ford for 18 years carol gannister pims data and reporting specialist has been with spring ford for nine years and kathleen strange secretary at the flexibility the fifth sixth seventh grade center and she has been with springford for 13 years and we thank them for their service and wish them well

103in the next chapter of their careers and that's my report i i do love how you bring that out and remind us of of their years of service because when you look at that all together that's a tremendous amount of time okay um do we have mrs smith available or does anyone have any other questions or comments from mr rizzo before we move on i have a quick question um for the what do we where we want to go what's the recommendation if any as far as i'll start with the the the mobile death not the mobile desk but the whatever it's called that's the i know them as varidesks and you're talking about the ones that just sit on top of a desk they sit on top of the desk and then they're accordion

104they can go up and go down so do we do we know how many uh virtual teachers that are spending 100 percent of their time teaching virtual um yeah we do that that number is 53. and how many do we know would want that desk i i have not asked them because i don't want to offer without being able to deliver because the difference between the reason i bring it up is the difference between that and the teachers that are teaching virtual while in the classroom is those teachers are walking around and they're up and about because they have students in the class so the whole point was when they and maybe they want one i don't know i mean that could be something that we could look into i was just specifically talking about

105the teachers that are the elementary school teachers that are teaching virtual you know the whole day sitting at the desk and i you know saw it as an opportunity for where they would be able to stand and continue to class you know as they're teaching that was the whole the gist so could we find out i mean we're getting closer to the end of the school year but i guess you know it's going to become a moot point i guess at some point um potentially but do we know how many would actually would like to have that desk i would imagine a few i mean i can't i can't speculate exactly what the number will but i can find out pretty easily if you would like me to do that i mean again i i

106hesitate to throw that out there to everybody in the event that we're not prepared to pay for that you know well that's what i'm saying but yeah if you're yeah i can do that the point was for the teachers that are sitting at their desk all day at a computer screen teaching virtual and have the ability to be able to stand and and continue teaching and racing deaths and raising their screens that was the whole and then the document cameras um maybe there's not such a quite like i know there's less expensive versions out there that we could potentially just again focus on the teachers that are teaching virtual as a tool for them right now they're you know we don't necessarily have to get cream of the crop sure so at the 210 dollars

107just so you can talk is have an idea about numbers 210 53 full-time virtual teachers you're talking about eleven thousand dollars if we gave all of them uh as far as the standing and i would recommend the lower end not the higher end model at 331.53 53 teachers you're talking about 27 thousand dollars so all told out the door by about thirty eight thousand dollars well that might be one of the things that we could talk to mr frink about because that that might be one of the things that we could put into the uh to the grants that a cover related from the stimulus package because there are very specific rules on what you could spend that money on and this might be something that we could actually spend the money on because this

108would be covet related so it's just something to look at as well okay i just had one thing mr rizzo and thank you for a great report as always with the subcommittees and these steering teams are we comfortable with the april 15th date to make a recommendation for next year so uh yes because here's where we are because they are providing a lot of input we are doing a lot of work and and quite frankly we're going to make a recommendation to the board but that doesn't mean we're done working and planning for the fall so those subcommittees are going to be in place beyond the the april 12 presentation just putting the best experience forward for our students and our staff so i'm comfortable and i believe they're comfortable giving us the information that

109you need to make a decision and then we'll continue our planning beyond that date all right thank you sir okay are there any other questions or comments for mr rizzo mr rizzo did you want to comment at all about the progress of the antigen testing i'm not sure if you wanted to comment on that i know we brought it up at the last meeting just to give an update on the progress there sure i'm happy to uh chief foyer and his crew have been working mondays and tuesday mornings between six and eight for interested staff members numbers have gone down a little bit a little bit i suspect that is largely due to the fact that a lot of our teachers are now vaccinated so they're not as concerned about getting that weekly code or

110that weekly coveted test but again we're going to continue to provide it as long as we have people that are interested okay thank you mr rizzo and thank you chief boyer for that and and your team that are providing those efforts and with that do we also have mrs smith nurse smith on the front on the zoom hello hello oh hello thank you for joining us again tonight thank you for having me do you have an update for us this evening i do in the past two weeks springford nurses have processed 18 positives so that is down 10 of those positives were potentially infectious at school and that resulted in us contact tracing and quarantining 50 close contacts so when you say infectious at school can you just discern for us potentially infectious at school

111but not an in-school transmission correct it would only be an in-school transmission if one of those close contacts that we sent home ended up testing positive and there was no other reason for that positive but what this means is that the we when we determine that a person is positive and they were in school within the previous 48 hours when they are infectious but not showing symptoms that's when we have to do contact tracing for that time okay and the nursing staff in general are you still as i don't want to say for one but working so hard have you streamlined the contact tracing process or any of the other process disease that you're using to get this going and completed and moving on to some of the other responsibilities of which i know you

112have many we have refined um some of our processes we have not completely done that yet we have some some goals but it will require educating the public a little bit before we make some some more decisions i think overall what has happened is we've gotten used to it and lately for the most part we feel that in the past two weeks the numbers have dropped a little um i think a lot of us have seen a little bit of an uptick end of last week and today believe it or not but um i think it's become a little bit more of a norm for us so practice makes it a little bit a little bit easier to deal with each time if i could just follow up on that a little bit um and

113what ms smith is is referring to is we do have we have constantly been talking about how we can streamline and make our process more efficient and provide our families with as much information as possible what we don't want to do is switch systems without clearly communicating with our public so that they think that we're possibly hiding something or skipping steps because we know the board does not is not interested in that they're interested in doing things thoroughly but still efficiently so we're going to communicate that information out and then we're looking at a possible shift in how we do things for the beginning of the fourth quarter still doing our due diligence but doing so in a little bit more of an efficient way well thank you for that clarity and uh mrs smith

114thank you for your report i would like to say to the board that if you notice when we do other uh boarding committee reports that they take place once a month so there's a bulk of reports that take place at the work session and a bulk of reports that take place at the board meeting not that it's starting to normalize but maybe with tensions easing just a bit i would ask the board maybe for direction or to consider if they would be willing to have mrs smith report out once a month to us in much the same fashion as the others i for one wouldn't want to forego the report all together because we are still in the midst of a pandemic and i think it's important to have her perspective represented at these meetings

115but i would propose that we consider going to a monthly meeting rather than bi-weekly reports and then hope to to have some really substantial information coming from that sector that will help guide us as we continue to get through this this issue what is the direction of the board there maybe um something could be put in the board memo each week instead of her having to present in person well i do believe mr rizzo is um capturing what's hap correct me if i'm wrong you're capturing what's happening from that perspective is that right i have not been including that as much in the board memo but i can if we'd prefer to go that direction just to provide the board an update it's up to you either way i think it's important that this information

116is conveyed to the board and public and the public um they are critical to everything we do so i for one would i mean near smith is at home relaxing so i think she's fine doing the report from home i'm i'm fine with that too i'm just do we want that still twice each month at the work session and the board meeting or would be we'd be okay with one report much like the others are policy finance property what have you given once a month would we be okay with that at this point what is it well well numbers have improved i don't think they've improved enough for us to back off of that that information and communication at this point i think maybe there will be a time that we could move to once

117a month but right now i still think it's important for us as well as the community to understand where we are and to see where those impacts are and to understand a little bit about the trends within our communities and within our buildings so i agree with christine absolutely for christina for now i understand your point but i i think we're not quite there yet so i think for the time being we should continue you know and if it turns out that there's no change from what she reported at the other meeting then we can start backing off some more now i thank you for suggesting that though i know that you're always looking to get our meetings you know as efficient as possible um and i'm open to the idea that once um maybe

118trish smith feels that um she has is able to just give it one one meeting that once a month then that's what we look for so so so maybe we that's that's a great idea and mrs smith what what is your position would you because we don't want to limit your access to us or to the community in any way and any important information that you need to share we're absolutely here to hear it um what is what is your position right now though do you feel that it's important to remain on for both meetings and that's absolutely fine what is what is your position i don't necessarily have a position on this um to be perfectly honest i am happy to be here i think that you have um the board has supported us

119and the community has supported the nurses and so i am more than happy to be here to give any information that's needed whenever you need me to be here um that being said if it's just a short report of numbers i could always give that to mr rizzo but if there are particular questions i'm happy to be here right now i i really would take the advice of the board and i would go with whatever you you requested a true politician well it sounds like when the majority go ahead we could always split up miss smith time we could she could prepare one report if she wants to have another nurse provide information that way it's you know everything doesn't fall on her shoulders that's true i think we're gonna i think it's the flavor

120of the board to keep you on at both meetings right now which perfectly fine with and um if you want to share that with somebody else that's fine too and uh yeah because we do look to hear more than just about the numbers but we want to know about the trends and what's happening with you and the nurses we know that you're leading a lot of this effort to keep our schools open our kids in the buildings our teachers in the building so um we want to we want to hear from you we want to support you so we'll stay with that at this time and maybe consider as things trend downward in the future we'll consider at that time moving to uh a once a month um opportunity okay any other questions for or

121comments for mrs smith before she goes may i add one thing sure um i'm the one that you see each time but i just do want you to know uh mr jackson i'm not the only one i have a lot of support in these numbers that i give you uh it is a team effort and if anybody had anything particular you wanted us to talk about i'm sure the nurses as a group would uh come up with any information for board presentation if you were ever interested you let us know thank you miss smith all right then uh mr fitzgerald solicitor's report uh yes briefly uh if you recall about a year ago we received our first round of federal emergency relief and stimulus through the cares act and the ffcra with that came what

122i would describe as significant legal implications over the last year with regard to those first rounds of federal stimulus and emergency relief ten days ago we we just had the american relief plan passed which has a significant number of stimulus dollars attached to it but luckily at least from a legal perspective the impact seems to be relatively muted upon our initial review um there's impact as it relates to cobra responsibilities there are tax credits that would allow for the district to continue ffcra should it so desire um i think the biggest impact with the federal stimulus dollars will be the impact of with all that federal money now within our system procurement and bidding requirements that will now attach due to federal dollars and that's going to be a very important consideration as the district

123must provide for compensatory and additional services to students over the next several months and maybe years and what obligations we have under federal law as it relates to bidding and procurement requirements so we'll be keeping an eye on that and working with the business office to make sure that if those services must come from outside the district with contractors that were adhering to the federal standards not just the state okay questions or comments for mr fitzgerald all right thank you very much for all the reports this evening we'll move on through the rest of the agenda at this point and the minutes a and b is there a motion second questions or comments oh in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion passes personnel a through r is there a motion to a move

124second questions or comments one question under the professional staff as special education teachers there were six or there were additional staff recommended from the work session or added from the work session new additions h h g and h just curious mrs lease can you comment on that sure those are more individuals needed for esy and we've got their paperwork given so we were able to add them on this agenda all right thank you hey any other questions or comments on personnel a through r all in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion passes finance a through f is there a motion so moved second questions or comments mister is it sorry mr fitzgerald is there any updates on item e i'm sorry the new finance yes sir i i think i believe mr dibella

125broke down the um the appraisal um our appraisal versus the taxpayers appraisal the settlement herein is reflective of our appraiser's value of the property [Music] thank you any other questions or comments on finance a through f all in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion passes new property a through e second i have a question um on e for mr hunter on the um the bottle filling stations i had two questions um are they freestanding or do they have to be built into the walls they actually go in place to existing fountains okay and the second question is i looked at some of them online and and some of them have a little uh drinking fountain thing on them too besides the bottle filling these aren't going to have that are they yes they

126will there's actually one right over in the corner there it's the exact model the okay model so how do you prevent students from drinking out of it i mean what's the difference if we already have fountains why don't we just use the ones we have if we're gonna allow that what's the difference between well we already have drinking fountains that you go over and drink out of so if we're going to put in new things that you fill bottles but you they can still bend over and drink out of it you've kind of defeated the purpose well it's going to have a bottle filling station and we'll just isolate the uh the spout until covet restrictions are lifted and then they'll be back into service as a regular fountain okay thanks i i also had

127a question mr hunter the um expectation on that grant money when do you expect that to be received that this is actually a mr jackson question completely because you always ask you don't like the money to be spending i would agree prior to the grant money coming in so that's my question on that um what's the expectation on that sr2 grant i'm gonna have to defer that to mr fink it's a good question i'm boxed in needed to get up from that chair anyway um that comes in uh it comes in as a cost reimbursement so after it's done then we can file for the cost reimbursement and you're gonna ask well how long is that gonna take probably as long as the last one took which was a few months but you do fully

128anticipate that that will happen there to cover that oh absolutely all right any other questions on new property a through e questions or comments all in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion passes programming and curriculum a and b so moved [Music] second questions or comments all in favor say aye any opposed motion passes conferences and workshops a through g a lot of this i did notice was back to what mrs lease had referenced before about the title nine um so that continues to happen so are there any other questions or comments i think we have to move second oh okay sorry any questions or comments there now okay all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay that motion passes other business let's take that separately a which is in reference to the

129policies no yes the policies that are submitted for approval there are five of those are there any question or is there a motion second questions or comments all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay so that motion carries a new other business b so moved second questions or comments just a small comment i'm really thrilled to see this happening mr schaefer would you like to explain to our small audience what is happening in that just as a well um this is an in-person event that is being scheduled and they're attending it not just in person but it's in orlando and i believe they're inviting the school board president to attend they're not they're not okay they're not all right there you go i think this is the third the third attendance this this

130would be the third time that they will have done this this specific trip it's music in the parks um there's a big competition a number of schools come down they perform they compete um if you look um over by the music um wing you'll see you know all the mickey mouse trophies and and it's a wonderful event um the students you know and it's every every part of our high school music program is involved um so it's really just a great activity and event for for all of them it's really an opportunity of a lifetime and they are talking here about it's being scheduled for this time next year it's just great to see like that that's a normal a normal activity an event and um really hopeful that that there will be no nothing

131to to hold that back so so do we have a motion on that is there a motion is there a second and uh any other questions or comments on that i would agree this is amazing every single year it's a great experience for all the students last year we last six time we brought home both gold silver and bronze to all three and the students get to go in the park so for the students that's never gone it's awesome and i think they're doing universal as well this year which is new it's great okay so all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed that motion carries see are just the policies here that are submitted for our first reading one through 12 and we're on to board comment um i did mention earlier we're

132not going to do that about changing that committee or board report but um i did want to ask the board committee meetings um as you know with the zoom as it is here for our general meetings um are typically recorded because they're available on the zoom too and there's been some question if we make those committees committee meetings that are recorded available i guess for the sake of consistency access for board members for chairs to go back take a look at that information and see that just to be transparent i did ask in the board presidents meetings which are continuing um i did ask what what the other districts in the area do and they are doing that as well so i was able to get that feedback but what what direction would the what

133our board like to go in going forward with committee meetings typically as i said they are recorded because there is a virtual piece or a zoom piece to those do we want to make that available what does the board want to do there is there a legal implication either way to the recording of the meetings to recording and then posting those meetings for later access like for the committee meetings the only legal implication that i i have in in my mind would be a a destruction protocol for those documents or for those recordings i don't want you to have them in perpetuity so if it's meant to give access to either the community or to board members so they can have access at the subsequent board meeting i would keep them available for no no

134longer than 30 days and then they would they would go away yeah because again timing wise you know something may happen in one meeting a month later you know you've moved on to to further that and somebody may just information overlap and cross and that kind of thing could be confusing i guess my question would be what's what's what's driving this whenever and and i love you right but whenever i hear the word transparent what's happened what was done what was said to [Music] make this a concern it was just um there was some discussion about it in there before just with using zoom i kind of i think it it really came out of are we going to continue to to do the zoom we have the the the whole live stream piece still

135are we going to continue to do the zoom if we are to be consistent and oh yeah another benefit would be that other um board members that maybe can't attend those meetings but want to observe them could look at it and so could chairs if they you know want to make sure that they caught everything that they're supposed to be doing in terms of their needs for our next meeting they could go back and and be able to look at that too so i really think it came though more from you know what are we going to do about zoom and and live streaming and can i maybe ask a question that maybe we ask the administration if this provides them more work or it's burdensome or cumbersome for them i just think they have

136so much going on the staff that i don't want to add anything more so that's my one objection to that if if it's not a big deal i'm maybe i'm okay with it but if we're just adding it because as it is i fee i feel like there's not a lot of people that attend in person or on zoom to the committee meetings so i i don't see a high demand for it but if it's not extra work for them i don't object but if it was a lot was the administration that had asked and i went to the board presidents and asked them talked about the zoom talked about um live streaming and then you know wanted to figure out what it is that they're doing not to add to anybody's workload especially during

137this but you know for the sake of consistency and the opportunity for if it's if it's a chair of one of the departments that wants to double check something or a board member that wants to do it then hey i'm okay with it if that's what they want i'm not certainly not opposed to it i i could really not gonna die on the cross on this one either way if you know what i mean that this isn't this isn't one of those i agree with mr zinni um and we serve on two committees together and we don't we don't have people on zoom they don't ask questions people don't come i mean and property is the most important committee in the entire district you know yes we know you love property clinton but i agree

138with swizzini i i don't want to put any additional burden on them i mean i would love to stop zoom personally like you know try to we keep talking about getting back to some sort of normalcy you know that's tied into it maybe for a further discussion but i wouldn't want to put any additional burden on the administration i i don't want to and mr rizzo do you want to weigh in on that is that something that you would want or not want or where are you where are you and so at this point internally we have access to those recordings if we need those if i need to go back and view them we do have those if the board would see a need for those or would want to go back and review

139you know a lot of work is done at the committee level so if you in preparation for a voting meeting or a work session want to go back and review you would have that option if that's not important to you i guess i could go either way i'm used to having them posted uh that's kind of the culture that i came from um it's not a tremendous amount of extra work for for aaron and her and her crew pun intended um but it is uh you know there is the hole if it's going to go up one day and then come down 30 days later there is the the managing and monitoring to make sure that it comes down in a timely manner um i think we could go really either way on that it

140just comes down to whether it's a good tool for the board i i agree with with miss fazzini and mr jackson i don't necessarily agree property is the most important committee but look i mean we we're we're going to add it's going to take work because you're going to the the video's going to have to be put up then somebody's going to have to monitor then just have to have an end of life video i mean what are we actually doing what was the question administration asked what was what was what's the problem we're solving because it doesn't sound like we're actually solving a problem which is creating more work and you know we we don't accept we don't approve meeting minutes we accept them there's a big difference between the two and i'm concerned

141about what these videos could become you know long-term you know it's it's just we're we're just adding more and more to the mix that and i'm not sure what's the value what's the problem we're trying to solve it doesn't sound like there is one i agree with the three of you because i mean we lived fine without these before when we had the meetings over at the district office and they weren't recorded as far as i know and you know like you all said there's not much attendance and somebody's that vitally interested in what's going on go to the meeting or they could still be recorded i mean they could still be on zoom if if we must and somebody can watch it but you know if if you're posting it and then you know

142mrs crew has to uh like okay it's time to take this one down take put it's just more of unnecessary so it sounds like most people are don't think it's necessary at this point in time if we have folks who want to continue the conversation maybe we could otherwise i think yep that's fine it sounds like the general consensus is we're not going to be interested in doing that and adding to anyone's workload which is fine so we'll move on from there um just a couple of reminders i know that the um financial statements are due um our background checks need to be many of us need to update those and there were some psba um there were some training that needed to be done for re-elected candidates i think that was both mr schaefer

143and myself and then for the new candidates there was some new training that needs to be that that's that's overdue at this point and then there's also some professional development that mr rizzo shared with us in an email and also in the board memo that's coming up this week if you can oops if you can jump on to any of those trainings that's all i have for board comment anyone else have any board comment this evening i have a couple of comments if i may um we talked about the budget and you know we're all in a jovial move but i really want the board members to think about the tasks that's coming down the pipeline um we went through this last year and i just asked you to really think this through because i

144would really like to hear i would like to get this process started and completed so if there's a way that we can get it done quick and move on i would really appreciate that from being a a finance member um my next item we're having the vaccinations all weekend and i heard they went great i guess my question is because my understanding was we were going to work with this vendor and they were going to provide all the necessary volunteers and support but then i'm seeing staff and maybe the staff is volunteering are seeing the police department which they can't be volunteering so i just wanna someone can just give me uh a 35 000 view of what's happening since this is going to occur for the next three or four weekends sure so we

145worked with the medicine shop in boyertown to establish a vaccination site and it started out with um helping once with our teachers whenever they became one a's getting getting vaccinations to them and our community members specifically focusing on our 1a population that are 65 and older the idea was that we would work with the medicine shop to establish a process a procedure protocol provide a site help them get up and running and now we're in the process of transitioning responsibility kind of from us to them in terms of the physical plan side of things so this week aaron and i spoke at great depth today on on what we need to do to make sure that you know we have a a bundle um ready for the medicine shop to kind of grab it and

146take over the reins and run with it so that's a yes or no as far as staffing i guess i rambled and forgot the question um i would say that we are you know like anything else we have volunteers we're not asking our staff to do that we're offering it to our staff if they want to do that but essentially we are providing opportunities for volunteers but we're not staffing it but we we can't provide volunteers for the police department either they're on or they're not that's my understanding they can't be we can't volunteer their services i'm not sure that's 100 accurate i don't know enough about that to be able to say that i i know that there are local restrictions and things that that might preclude them from volunteering in that capacity there

147are other ways they could volunteer if they wanted um i i don't know enough about it to be able to say that maybe mr fitzgerald does if not i can certainly work with chief to get to the local authorities again it comes down to um us handing it over to them they're they're completing a use of facilities and they're going to decide what they need what they don't need and we're going to provide a venue for them but let them run the run the program oh agreed i think it's a noble act i just want to make sure that our people are being taken care of if they're out there exp specifically the police department i i agree people can volunteer at their will but i think if the police department is out there since

148they don't have facilities to monitor that traffic flow and adjust that traffic flow that shouldn't be a volunteer item for the police department that's all okay i wanted to just bring up that i attended the online advocacy day um today and so did a couple other board members um just wanted to bring up a few talking points with the state legislators we discussed basic education funding and trying to use a new updated fair funding formula was one of the big talking points the very big talking point of course was charter school reform which is just a huge cost to public schools and then the broad mandate relief hopefully trying to get backing behind passing senate bill 73 so those were the main talking points i thought it was very productive was that recorded by chance

149was it recorded no they were zoom meetings i don't know if it was i don't know that it was recorded okay thank you miss fazzini for attending mr rizzo i want to i just want to go back to uh this past weekend um it's really great that what the district is doing you know partnering with the medicine shop and the community involvement and you know we're doing something special here at springford to get you know as many people vaccinated as as quick as we as possible as far as getting the number of vaccines in but i you know standing off of what mr jackson is saying we also have to be careful of when large groups of people start to assemble in a in a one area things start to occur that are against school

150policy that we have to make sure that don't occur and that is you know where you may have groups starting to advertise type businesses or whatever or political events or campaign materials or whatever none of that could occur on school property and we have to make sure that that is reiterated while these things are going on as well because we don't want to turn this into a free-for-all agreed i completely agree with you because i don't want to lose focus of what that day is for right yep all right any other word comment i have one very exciting announcement and there's no sarcasm here and i've written it down so i'm happy to announce that on august saturday saturday august 21st let me start over all right first off if i'm gonna make an announcement

151we're gonna do it right okay saturday august the 21st the the springford edu education foundation is putting on our blue and gold golf event pause for clapping and um i'm giving our board president and my colleagues on the word plenty of time to get working on your swing so that come saturday august the 21st atlantis creek at 8am you will join me in supporting um our ed foundation so there will be obviously more communication aaron that will be coming out about that but this was just voted on earlier this morning or this morning this happened very tired right now um and so i want to let everybody know thank you thank you thank you very much for that okay and on that note we will have public to be heard is there any comments in

152the room oh please state your name and address abby deardorff 704 collin court in royersford i just wanted to give a little bit of feedback about the recording of the committee meetings um so there may not be a value added that you all may see but as maybe one of the only people that do um call into those meetings i have learned a lot just in the past few months where i started attending them where in these meetings it's a very brief overview of what is discussed in those meetings but the meet and the bones and the work is done in those committee meetings and i've learned a lot and have shared that with other people that are interested as well so obviously i would never want to add any more work to all the

153things the administration is doing but i do see an extreme value in that and you know covet has brought a lot of negative things to us but allowing us these virtual platforms to extend our reach and community involvement i think is excellent so i would recommend the recording of those thank you okay thank you hi i'm karen weingarten six dorothy circle i just wanted to say i was at the vaccination event on saturday and the comments we got back from the community and the thankful hearts and the joy i saw on people's faces was remarkable and it was no easy feat mr rizzo aaron pulling all those folks together this is the one comment i want to tell you a gentleman came in and he said he felt like he waited in line at disneyland

154and when he came out the other end it was so well executed and the logistics that went into it in the planning people were sincerely grateful so to have an event and i realized there's some complications and some changes you want to make to this going forward but to have someone tell you compare you to the user experience of disneyland you deserve a pat on the back for that so i thank you and i thank you for letting me be part of that i appreciate your effort i do want to send um also extend a thank you to all of the board members um karen board members too that were there on uh saturday to volunteer um i think mr schaefer and i served at the same time as well as mr debello and dr

155wright was there and if any of you had been there at other times just want to acknowledge all of that too it was a great effort i realized that it was the medicine shop coordinating that at springford but i thank all of you and all the other volunteers who were there to support those efforts on saturday i understand mr develo i also did see mr ceresi i understand uh you two really brought back the team so thank you and i missed the water ice somehow that i missed that we weren't we weren't serving water ice but we were there together earlier and had a lot of fun as usual but yeah we were you know getting people through as quick as we can it was a great a great day i like i said earlier

156it was it's it's something for the springford community to be very proud of that we're able to partner with uh with uh you know the medicine shop but yeah it was a few people commented oh you you and joe together again you know great combination but that's always a lot of fun but it was a great and aaron and as mentioned aaron and mr rizzo and everyone that was involved it's just it's just amazing that they were able to get through a thousand i believe was a thousand vaccines this weekend and and we were out of there by what three o'clock yeah somewhere yeah yeah i would also like to say that i live in an active adult community you know where these older people have really been struggling to get both doses of their

157aqua and they have raved about the event at springford on how well it was coordinated organized that everyone was so courteous and helpful and they love seeing the students volunteering the board's volunteering i get my second dose tomorrow and then i'm going to volunteer for the rest of the time that they're there but they they were just absolutely amazed and could not thank spring ford and the medicine shop because they have been calling and driving seven hours away trying to get their vaccines so to be able to come up to spring for was just incredible to them and they're very very thankful to everyone involved well i would like to thank all the current board members that were there and i hope next week you're there too and i will applaud you on a different

158time but one note um mr rizzo there was discussions of the staff that that fell within those definitions of folks who were qualified to take the test or to to get the vaccination has all of our staff or is there do we have any baseline on where our staff is as far as getting their vaccinations the ones who are eligible including all the teachers the the police department the custodians just go with big pictures sure that's a really good question and at this point i'm very very happy to say that everybody in springford school district and that won a vaccine has had an opportunity to get one great that's the best answer thank you okay we were actually in public comment so are there any other public comments in the room any on the zoom

159then okay rich you want to start those for us hi michael please unmute yourself state your full name and address on your public comment to be heard all right good evening can you hear me yes michael lebejinski 2005 willowa drive royersford i had a concern i wanted to raise around the current quarantine process i understand a group of 10th graders were pulled out of their classroom today and had to be picked up from school because a classmate received a positive covet test result i'm just hoping to understand why that occurred since the beginning of the school year more than 2 200 springford students and staff were similarly ordered to quarantine for up to 14 days due to presumed exposure this means no in-school education for them and no sports during that quarantine doesn't sound like

160a big deal right it's just temporary but i'd ask you to consider the impact on a student athlete whose future opportunities in life hinge on a college athletic scholarship not being able to play for 14 days is a big deal or a student athlete whose team is competing next week in the state championship for them this disruption is potentially life-changing so did the quarantine really keep them safe why exactly is springfield ordering these students to quarantine is it because they assume that the exposure to covet occurred and they want to prevent future spread i can see that it's a very reasonable health and safety plan so let's test that presumption against the actual outcomes that's what we do in science right we start with a hypothesis we collect data and we adjust our actions based

161on the observed data so how many of these 2200 students and staff actually contracted covid from this presumed exposure and the answer in all cases is none zero zero of the 2200 actually contract the code from the exposure not a single member who was ordered to quarantine actually contracted covet including over a thousand families in the 567 center that had suspected but not confirmed in school transmission in february we know very clearly from the science and a year's worth of data that school-aged children rarely become seriously infected with coven because they lack sufficient quantities of the h2 receptors to which sars code 2 binds and therefore rarely transmit cova to others so why does springford continue this practice of quarantining when our own data confirmed by worldwide data shows this practice to be futile and

162highly disruptive why have they not looked at the hypothesis and adjusted actions based on overwhelming data is it because the district is following pde and montgomery county office of public health guidelines secondly i noted that tonight was the second time that mrs smith has used the term infectious which sounds very scary right i wouldn't want to be in a room with an infectious person i think what she meant was theoretically infectious not confirmed infectious so just like a clarification on that and finally please consider the disruption and the potentially life-changing impact of the current quarantine response consider updating the health and safety plan to be reflective of the actual results have not delivered thank you john norwood please state your full name and address and your public comment to be heard john norwood 6 madison

163circle collegeville i heard earlier about the 3 proposed tax increase and the 1 million budget shortfall both those numbers are significant i'd like to understand how the federal stimulus packages impact those numbers do they include the nearly four and a half million dollars that the district is scheduled to get from the latest package and what about the previous ones i think the taxpayers need to know thank you erica hermans please state your full name and address and your public comment to be heard good evening erica herman's 204 abbey drive i want to first thank the dei committee for presenting tonight because i was very much encouraged by what i heard my goal tonight is to raise awareness on march 9th local leaders in were seeking office across montgomery and tusker county presented a statement in

164support of our asian american and pacific islander residents condemning racist rhetoric and violence against any person or group of people in our communities it is no surprise that there has been an aapi violence since the start of the pandemic and it was stated earlier that this movement dei is gaining more media attention and to be clear that is a direct result of the 3 800 reported cases of anti-aging violent crimes and incidents which are disproportionately affecting women and the elderly the most vulnerable members of our communities as i understand it roughly 10 of springboard student body identifies as asian so i am asking this board and other local community leaders to make a unified statement in support of all underrepresented and marginalized communities i urge a board to consider how the privilege of holding elected

165office can help advance exactly what your dei committee is seeking to accomplish they want to have every student feel expected enhance peer-to-peer interactions to feel respected treated fairly to be reflected in the curriculum being packed diversity does not represent a person it applies to teams communities ecosystems and as board members all nine of you directly influence the extent to which the district does or does not embrace and embody these initiatives so i urge you to be careful when you promote springboard as being ahead of the curve because doing so puts us at risk of complacency it is not a time to be complacent there is no finish line for inclusion nor should we be congratulating ourselves for acting in a manner that should be commonplace i assure you the vast majority of your underrepresented populations

166and their allies would acknowledge that there is much more work to be done thank you do we have any other comments this evening jill please state your full amendment address on your public comment to be heard okay can you hear me yes okay thank you i couldn't hear you so one of the observations i have listening to this meeting tonight that has me a concern she needs to identify her address sure i'm sorry jill shadler 247 hafner road in roors ford pennsylvania apologies one of the observations listening to this meeting tonight that has me concerned as it hearkens back to meetings from the past where the topics become very hard to discuss are board members at the table still not engaged on the topic of budget as a taxpayer of the district i would like

167to see that every elected member sitting around this table whether you're on the finance committee or not has reviewed the budget can speak to the budget and will come forward with suggestions on how to address it i'm sure i can be echoed by others that the expectation of performing as an active board member on tough issues the bar has been raised you all hold your position until you resign or elected out and should be fully committed to contributing to this very important top priority the time you are needed is now when things are hard it's easy to be a good board member when things are good it's tougher when things and hard decisions need to be made i also would like to raise the question perhaps for an answer of a comment made by a

168board member of increased cost for the virtual school model i'm unclear as to what increased cost those would involve given that we went to that model this year these decisions are not short-term they are for the long-term district and i'm watching and listening very closely my last comment relates to covic communications my own child had a very confusing experience related to this we received a general notice about a covet exposure on a bus with no reference to which bus my children are in a dual custody arrangement and ride two different buses without that information it is very hard to direct my children on uh their concerns and their anxiety when they received uh the notice to the family so i'd like to ask for additional information and clarity when those things occur thank you tom

169mcgonagall please state your full name and address and your public comment to be heard hi can you hear me yes uh tom mcmonagle 26 gaily way limerick um i just wanted to to call in i appreciate the preliminary discussions about the budget um i think bringing it up early is better given how things went last year um the one thing that's concerning on a couple levels is to jill's point kind of stole my thunder on the last call but um how quickly some board members are to give directive to a committee um to go to a three percent tax increase three percent would be i don't have the numbers in front of me i believe the largest tax increase in spring ford in the foreseeable past um three percent is also the highest pennsylvania index

170in the past ten years um you know three percent is a pretty big number from an index perspective indexes usually range between two and two and a half percent over the past five years um so kind of convenient that index is at three percent and we're approving a three percent tax increase the the two should be separate identifiable factors that the budget should be built to the best of the district's ability um and not necessarily aiming to get to a number set by the state um you know i know the number is there for a reason we don't want to exceed it we don't want to go um to a public vote but i think that just going to that number blindly without all the facts and numbers especially for non-committee members i think is

171a little irresponsible um especially when this affects every taxpayer in the community so i think just you know to clinton jackson's point two during the end of the meeting making sure everybody is reviewing the budget every board member whether you're on the finance committee or not you have to answer to the public to this tax increase at the end of the day so just be prepared have the numbers in front of you understand what you're voting on understand what's in that budget because three percent is not a laughable number when it comes to this district so um just making sure everybody's educated thank you at this time there are no more hands raised okay do we have a motion to adjourn so moved second meeting adjourned