Red Clay Board of Education Meeting: August 17, 2022

001good evening welcome to our board meeting today is august 17 2022. please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you may be seated before we begin we would like to take this opportunity to have a moment of silence for a red clay student that passed away on july 17 2022 nate harris passed away on july 17 2022 nate was a 16 year old and had been a student at first state school for three years despite medical challenges she lived every day to the fullest extent possible she was a hard worker and very creative she was kind and compassionate she had a great sense

002of humor and was a good friend to others and that's a will be deeply missed by all uh here at red clay our thoughts condolences and prayers continue to go out to our family let's please have a moment of silence thank you okay we're going to move on to agenda approval uh please take a board members please take a look at the agenda are there any recommended changes to the agenda or something that any board members would like to pull from the consent agenda i do have some additions okay before i add i just want to share in our board handbook a few things about agendas really quickly and so it in general items other than routine business which is uh the standing agenda that we see on the board on the on the website

003for under the board um these meetings are conducted through robert's rules of order revised version at the first meeting we are items are presented and discussed at the second items are discussed again followed by board action in the form of a vote so just to bring some clarity to our processes and procedures and help us to move through business appropriately i'll read it again so we understand what we have in our board handbook items other than routine business on which the board is expected to vote on will be on the agenda for at least two meetings at the first meeting items are presented and discussed at the second items are discussed again followed by board action in the form of a vote i know this may not have been always been our past practice but

004in an effort to have some uh continuity and clarity uh we are going to try to use this today and then have a board workshop so for with that being said i do have a few items to add to the discussion not to the action item list and that was we asked for any items submitted by the board that's asked every month and some in an effort to keep the meeting as short as possible we did not add each of the items that were submitted but we would like to honor that for those members who did submit items and give us time to have discussion on those items for this meeting so i ask that we add the following items submitted by dr bone in due time prior to our board planning meeting on august

0059th student survey about challenges word self evaluations school safety committee eliminating inequities and charters and magnets dress code uniform policy dates and updates public notice of board planning hybrid board committee meetings which was also from mr leonard and follow up on miscellaneous items which i have is there a motion to and i have a point of order i believe it's out of order to be adding things to the agenda at this point in time based on the open meeting laws and frankly it is not fair to our public because it is terribly non-transparent so i can quote the the open meeting laws which says it's got to basically be an emergency to add things to the agenda that's 29 delaware code 1000 1004. please quote those items were all known at the board planning meeting

006and they were not put on the agenda at that time i was asking to quote the open meeting law i did it's 29 delaware code 1004. so i'll bring it up so that we can hear it because i don't think everybody has that right looking at that right now yeah section all public bodies section e2 all public bodies shall give public notice of their regular meetings and their intent to hold an executive session the notice must include the agenda if the agenda has been determined the date time and place of the meeting an agenda provided under paragraph e2 is subject to change changes to an agenda may include any of the following additional items including an executive session which arise at the time of the body's public meeting and the deletion of items including an

007executive session yes and so these are arising right now as i am asking for them to be placed onto the agenda they arose prior to at the board planning which was over a week ago they did not arise by me they they arose to you well what we can do so for the to have brevity of time and not to go back and forth is that under the section in our agenda where we have excuse me for a second i bring it back up where we have our follow up on miscellaneous items i will bring those items back up because they were on the miscellaneous items agenda that i sent out i'm sorry list of items that i sent out to board members so can i have a motion to approve yes i recognize dr

008bone but i before before you go i just want to say to everybody here that we you spoke twice we're going to move on so we'll hear what you have to say that i need a motion yes so add art can you hear me no you have to speak directly into the mic so at our july board meeting i had all of those items introduced at the board meeting you can go back and listen to the audio and i also replied to superintendent green's email where he asked for all items to be submitted by the board i have that email documented by the time it was supposed to be presented so i did my due diligence in bringing those items up in july i bought them up to superintendent green in a written email that

009i have and i also spoke to president knee smith when i was in california prior to board planning and i mentioned all those items at that time so i'm not sure where in the process my items were lost but i have bought them up in three different occasions and in three different places and i do have the written correspondence and we can also pull the audio from the july board meeting to listen to all of the items thank you dr bob so just in full transparency because that's how i am um when you get into a new position uh you try your best to learn all the rules and sometimes things are done in different ways but we i like to try to follow the the letter of the law as well as our practices

010however we have some discrepancies in how we've been functioning so i will own the the mistake for this meeting and i'd like to just approve the get a motion to approve the agenda i will bring up those items after paul may have a motion to improve him please yes quickly okay last meeting we had uh two unanimous votes uh to put uh two items on the agenda and i don't see them on there one was uh public meetings digitally recorded and posted on this website that was unanimous to have that on this month's uh boat and also a distant work group uh uh meeting monthly that was also unanimous that had that for a vote this week by this month thank you so and so in full transparency again we have some cleaning up to

011do so what i'd like to follow and i ask all our board members to think about our um our code of ethics and and expedience of time for the for the purpose of functioning as a district if we can agree to move forward with the agenda that we have and then continue to refine our practices as we go forward is there a motion because we don't have emotion we're not going to have a meeting well i will go over a couple board norms before we go based on all decisions on what's best interest of all students in our schools and the good of the entire system treat each other with respect by listening attentively arriving on time and being prepared consider all points of view value the opinions of others abide by and support publicly

012the decisions of the board remain open to all voices of the community rather than just factions in order to foster a solid educational experience for all students maintain professional confidentiality and so we can prevent problems before they arise by be presenting a positive supportive image to the public treating all board members with respect support the will of the board not the will of individuals anticipate your responsive your response to negative reaction and develop your leadership skills we should act like a team never assume understanding of roles share concerns identify differences and plan solutions together identify differences look for win-win rather than win lose resist taking a position without full information avoid relying on hearsay evidence and be sure that comments relate to discussion so with that i humbly request a motion to approve the agenda

013as submitted given some of the discord and uninformed areas of the agenda because we do want to do the work of the district so that we can ensure that our students start the school year in a positive way i'd like to make a motion to approve the agenda with the outlined amendments noted for president nic smith's remarks is there a second thank you is there a second with those revisions is there a second second you came madam president you didn't have to take a vote i would just simply ask the board that we have several business items that need approval which is ultimately the business of the board and i understand the dynamics that are at play as we hold this public body in this public meeting but we do have matters that are integral

014to us opening the building opening the schools opening the district in an effective manner with the action items that have been delineated on this agenda so i would just again ask the board to at least come to a consensus where you approve the agenda if we get through nothing but the approved action items um that have been established on the agenda and again in full transparency we did hold a board planning meeting where we discussed the various items that were submitted by individual board members understanding that we had 12 business items again administrative approvals and such the certificate of necessity things that are matters before the board and to add an additional 15 to 20 items was a bit challenging and so um again i would just ask the board to find a place to

015at least prove the agenda so that we can get nothing but the action items completed because they are integral to us opening the school year um and we need board approval thank you mr reed and also as stated under the section d follow up on miscellaneous items i will follow up on all the items submitted by the board members so i'd like to clarify with my motion that the motion i put on the table is to include the revisions of the eight items brought by dr bone and the eight items brought by thank you mr leonard the items brought by mr leonard are action items and they absolutely have not been noticed and it's not permissible i find it just under the law i find it disconcerting that we can't approve an agenda this speaks

016to a second one thank you all in favor opposed [Music] maria please take a phone call dr bone no mr casper for the sake of moving this along i'm just going to approve it because i'm going to leave when i have to leave anyway yes no yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes ms thompson no they weren't noticed it's not appropriate ms knee smith yes four yes to know motion carries thank you next move on to approval of minutes is there a motion to approve the minutes from the executive session held on july 11 2022. so moved their second attacking doctor bone any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries is there a motion to accept the minutes from the regular session on july 11 2022 school board workshop so moved is there

017a second [Music] any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries is there a motion to accept the minutes for the executive session on july 13th 2022 so moved second any discussion all in favor opposed motion carry is there a motion to accept the minutes from the july 13 2022 organizational meeting and regular session so moved second is there a second dr bone seconds any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries thank you next we'll move on to student staff and community recognitions we don't have any at this time all right next we'll move on to public comment first we have rebecca brady welcome miss brady i will read something before you get started the red clay consolidated school board appreciates any member of the community who would like to make a

018public comment according to board policy 2006 the red clay school board allocates 30 minutes to public commentary each person may have up to three minutes to address the board and this time may be transferred this makes this time may not be transferred to or from another speaker the board generally does not respond directly to a speaker the board meeting is not an appropriate forum to raise complaints or concerns about individual employees upon request the superintendent shall provide the speaker with the procedure for submitting such complaints or concerns the order of the speakers is listed on the screen as you see your name please make your way to the seat near the podium or if you are virtual a mute when called to respect the time of anyone present tonight when you speak please state your

019name and organization if you are speaking on its behalf and the topic of your comment there's a timer on the screen that will turn on when you have one minute left it will turn yellow with 30 seconds left and flashing red when your three minutes are over i will thank you for your comments and call on the next speaker let's begin again with miss brady thank you my name is rebecca brady and i am a mother of four red clay children on tuesday january 25th 2022 my 16 year old son was in world history geography class according to my son the teacher and some of the students began to discuss class work that needed to be done and this ended with the teacher inviting the students to feel free and leave if they did not

020want like what was being assigned to them the entire sophomore class got up and left i received a text message from my son letting me know where he was and what he was doing at no point did an adult from the school contact me i emailed the teacher immediately and after getting after getting my son's text message and i waited for over a week yet i heard nothing from the teacher or the school i had to reach out to mr green on february 2nd before i got any answers on friday june 3rd 2022 my 8 year old daughter was left outside alone on the playground she pounded on the door crying waiting to be led into the school and finally gave up and pulled herself together and walked around the building to find help once

021again no adult from the school contacted me either i had to learn about this situation from my daughter when she climbed into my car at this missile that day i waited until 7 pm that evening i got no email i got no phone call so i began to email the school for the following three nights my daughter was unable to fall asleep in her bed because she kept reliving the event and the fear that she felt having been left all alone over the course of the 2021 2022 school year two of my four children in red clay were left unattended one at conrad high school and one at cook elementary not one adult involved in either situation reached out to me to let me know what had happened to the parents listening this evening are

022you sure your children are always accounted for at school i for one will be asking many more questions at the dinner table this evening and i hope you do the same two of my four school age children in this district in two different schools were left unattended this year this is proof that things can go off the rails at school on any given day and we cannot blindly trust that we as parents and guardians will be informed of any of it thank you thank you dr brady next we have christopher jackson on zoom welcome christopher jackson not there okay please forgive me though okay so next we have steven fairfield are you here welcome hi i'm steven fairfield i'm the athletic director at hp dupont middle school also 8th grade social studies teacher so good

023evening uh superintendent greene uh members of the board uh once again thank you for allowing me to speak on behalf of the professionals of red clay uh the primary topic i'll be addressing is the eber contract once again i spoke last uh last month about it as it relates to athletic directors and coaches here in the district in addition at the end i'd like to say something in a word of support to our dedicated administration also to reiterate the subject of last month's topic i'm here to ask to consider an amendment uh to the future and current hebrew contract for the benefit and equitable compensation for the professionals employed in our district as you're aware red clay is the largest district in delaware however on average coaches are paid greater than about a hundred percent

024less than other competitive districts in the state including brandywine excuse me applequinomic and colonial whose salary is nearly three thousand dollars uh with negotiations for a possible increase forthcoming as a reminder to you the season salary for a head middle school coach is around fourteen hundred dollars an assistant is twelve hundred dollars encouraging we have developed a committee led uh by mr mark pruitt of red clay to provide the board and red clay personnel with details and facts to prepare for future negotiations so following the last board meeting i received a great deal of positive feedback and encouragement from middle school coaches athletic directors and even high school personnel in agreement that an amendment is an order i urge the members of the board to carefully and equitably improve upon the current hebrew schedule and

025then finally i'd like to take a moment just to respectfully defend the administration of red clay in opposition to a comment made at the last meeting uh in my personal 22 years of experience uh administration remains steadfast in their support and dedication not only to the students and families but also to staff members their attendance and effort to assist the professionals in our district are unwavering thank you for your kind attention and working through the matter of increases for coaches athletic directors of red clay thank you next we have megan it's the log is that how you say it zoom no okay uh we have steven backenthal welcome good evening uh school board my name is stephen fackenthal general music teacher at ritchie elementary and president of the red clay education association i'm here simply

026to welcome everyone to the new school year i look forward to working collaboratively with mr green and his team my executive board and i had the privilege of meeting the uh with the 150 plus new hires this morning i could be more excited for their new adventure in our district but let's also remember that more and more folks especially those with five or less years of experience are more likely to leave the profession as we go through this year i am hopeful that we will have conversation on how not to only keep our new hires but current educators as well as you've heard me say and i'll can you repeat our working conditions are our students learning conditions and everyone plays a role in that from school board to district and building administrators let's start

027to have collaborative courageous conversations about how those working conditions impact educators and in turn our students and a positive role everyone can play to keep educators in our schools thank you have a great year thank you next we have kelly karuba welcome hi um i'm kelly karuba i'm the mother of two students and i better okay thank you i'm kelly krugman mother of two students in red clay i am here to ask your support for the proposed newcastle language school there are many students in red clay who will benefit from this mandarin immersion charter school this charter school already has a foundation started by parents of the students in the outgoing immersion program we have established a non-profit and a board for the school we have support from the community and have established a facebook

028page for parents where many have expressed interest in sending their children to newcastle language school we know that with red clay support this school will be a success we want every child to have the opportunity to become bilingual and globally minded citizens prepared for the ever-changing world immersion programs have a proven record to improve test performance enhance cognitive skills and can increase cultural sensitivity with red clay support the new castle language school will give students the tools they need to secure delaware's future both economically and culturally thank you thank you next we have deod knox on zoom we have mr knox or doctor can you hear me now okay i'll go ahead and submit my comment yes go ahead okay i too would like to express my support for the formation of a mandarin immersion

029uh school charters uh school and i think the best way to do this is through the new language charter school there are lots of kids in directly school district and lots of families who are interested in mandarin immersion but they don't come from a single feeder pattern this means it's hard for any it's hard to establish a strand mandarin immersion program that runs from k all the way through 12 and when red clay now starting at charter school with the support and help of the red clay school district and ira clay school board is a way to provide a quality education for these families who are clearly interested in the program without uh straining the resources of a single school i look forward as being part of the board members of friends of newcastle language

030school to working with the district and trying to make newcastle language school a reality please check us out on facebook thank you thank you very much next we have donna urban welcome good evening csw is looking forward to seeing our students return to the building for classes starting the week of august 29th over 350 athletes returned to campus on monday along with cab callaway band members we sent you our welcome back video yesterday and wanted to thank red clay personally for the summer enhancements a shout out to justin patel marcin mccl micholsky and the custodial staff who have been working tirelessly around summer camp to get the building ready when you arrived on campus today you saw the new curbs and the upper and parking alert and parking upper and lower parking lots were resurfaced

031we love the new graphics in the hallway welcoming our students and guests and our tennis sports our refurbished and our tennis team will be thrilled with that most importantly we appreciate red clay's assistance with the opening of our dedicated student center where students can decompress and meet privately or collectively with school counselors away from the business of a main office our faculty and staff have a new space to gather and relax and we are looking forward to their return next week so they can add the finishing touches we also want to congratulate our envirothon team they represented delaware at the 2022 national envirothon held in late july at miami university in oxford ohio our students competed in testing events with 40 teams representing 36 states and four canadian provinces thank you to coaches greg darone

032and sun boy for traveling with our team csw plays 14th overall in the nation and sixth in the oral presentation we will extend an invitation to the board to come visit us in september and thank you and have a good evening thank you next we have mike matthews on zoom welcome mr madness there we go good evening everyone i am mike matthews i'm a teacher at the cab calloway school of the arts i come to you tonight for um a topic related to the strategic plan but i feel i would be remiss if i didn't kind of wonder what we just saw at the beginning of this meeting that has caused me great concern and a number of people a dozen so far that i've received messages from i think the community needs an answer

033i think we need an answer as soon as possible because to arbitrarily or not arbitrarily decide to keep certain items off of the agenda is is concerning to me um i am someone who has attended board meetings for the last 15 years and some of those board meetings have stretched beyond midnight and even into one o'clock i understand that it can be painful but this is the job all seven of you are elected for and the job of district administrators that they're paid for to do this work so i think we need an answer to see what's going on here i know we heard a bit of it tonight but there needs to be a fuller accounting of the timelines here so you know as a tax paying member of the community and as an

034employee of this great district we need answers sooner rather than later so the real reason i decided to give comment tonight was i know that the district well first off uh i know that the district is going to be undertaking another strategic plan very soon and you know in just these five short years our world has changed so dramatically um i was at new higher orientation today where we welcomed 160 plus new educators to red clay it was such a welcoming inviting experience and i want to give a shout out to the district district um administrators tech you all did a really great job accommodating rcea with this endeavor so thank you thank you but what i i and i know we still have probably a dozen or more positions that are still vacant so

035folks are still coming in uh when i looked at the last two strategic plans i didn't specifically see anything about teacher retention um a lot of things about test scores and student performance and they absolutely need to be front and center in our strategic plan i would please urge this board for the next five-year strategic plan to make a goal surrounding teacher retention and because we cannot have student success and student achievement if we continue to drain 15 to 20 percent of our educators every year it's not going to happen as part of that we are going to have to talk about working conditions for our educators as well as ensuring we have a competitive salary in red clay for our educators that as well i'd like to see exit interviews become par for the

036course to get that data for the strategic plan on why educators are choosing to leave our district i am hoping you will consider this in the next strategic plan and i hope you all have a great meeting and great school year thank you thank you next we have melissa bundy on zoom welcome here we have my name okay wonderful um awesome so i am here also in speaking in support of the newcastle language school i have two childrens who are currently i'm attending lyndon hill elementary school and my daughter is in third grade she is in the immersion program and we are really hopeful that we can continue this program past the fifth grade level and that's our main goal and then i also have a son who just entered kindergarten and i would really

037really like for him to also be a school student and i think that this program would be really good for red to continue i know we've had capacity issues in the past so i do think that maintaining a school kind of on a separate entity would be the way to go so i just would urge the board to please accept new applications for charters and hear us out thank you thank you next we have marilyn de amico welcome hi um thank you for letting me speak here um my name is marilyn d'amico i'm a resident of sherwood park 2 and i have been working on speeding issues for years with dell dot one of my biggest gripes is the school buses that are speeding including the ones where they were just training new drivers that

038needs to be addressed i spoke a couple years ago at another meeting because i see it every single day and i was calling in bus numbers to kelly shahan to let her know i look forward to working with mr armand back here which i just met tonight something needs to be done because you can talk about all the things that have to get done but you can't educate a dead child and it's not just speeding it's running red lights and blowing through intersections like there's no one else there so i hope that something is done just make it a little bit safer for everybody on the roads thank you for letting me talk thank you he's online if he can speak i know he had trouble connecting chris jackson there's one zoom you see them

039okay welcome you can speak now mr jackson you have to are you there mr jackson i am can you hear me yes ah wonderful thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is chris jackson i'm the father of five wonderful children three of whom are students in the lyndon hill elementary mandarin immersion program i understand that the district does not have the will to continue this program within the confines of traditional red clay school but it would not stand in the way but it should not stand in the way of those that see mandarin immersion as a way for our children to have greater opportunities as adults language immersion produces children with higher achievement scores and a greater understanding of the world in which they will live as a committed parent of three

040immersion students i do not believe the district has given these kids a fair shot and pulled the plug on their program for undisclosed reasons these children deserve a good school that will immerse them not only in the language but in the chinese culture because of these beliefs i have been working as a member of a group of parents that are committed to starting a mandarin immersion school within the red clay district our mission is to develop globally minded citizens who have the knowledge and skills to affect positive change in our world focusing on dual language immersion and advanced curriculum newcastle language school will inspire students to perform to the best of their ability and be lifelong learners equipped with the skills needed to make an impact in both their local community and globally all we

041ask is for the opportunity to build a school that will support the children currently in the program at leg and future students to receive an incredible education and a dual language experience thank you next we have a superintendent's report we would like to welcome our student representative today alyssa katrona who is a student at the charter school of wilmington and um superintendent green you can say anything else further hi everyone i'm very happy to be here um like she said i am a senior this year at the charter school of wilmington and i'll be all student body president this year and i'm happy to be with you all for this school year thank you so we want to welcome alyssa and again alyssa is one of several student leaders who will serve as student representatives

042to the board um the board can anticipate at least five presentations um from student representatives so this is this is opportunity just to come to give a summer introduction uh as i'm sure she's looking forward to the remaining days of summer before it officially kicks in although she's been fairly busy with her summer a lot of activities going on and she's a cheerleader as well so welcome as a student rep and we're looking forward to working with you thank you welcome so thank you madam president i just want to um again briefly begin by thanking all of our staff members both educators and support staff who did amazing jobs not just you know throughout the pandemic but over the past summer we had several programs that were running so i do want to give a

043shout out to all the coordinators teachers support staff district departments that supported the various summer programs that we had campus connect our credit recovery program drivers education our famed stimulate program freedom school smart summer program which was housed here at cav spring into learning and again our wagner program specifically thank you to dr bond and miss rhonda carter who led it from our district office our summer program coordinator ms val hall and then our specific program coordinators our campus connect miss ebony maya at warner elementary christine moyer at shortledge our spring into learning coordinators gina paranti at ritchie elementary christine prasanti at baltz cynthia ellison at baltz rachel mcneill at richardson park elementary amber bowling at moat and then our fame stimulate which was also a virtual program miss nikkiyah brady at heritage uh christine

044segis at cook elementary and elizabeth spinelli at northstar and also to christine murphy who was our driver's ed coordinator ms joe mr joe montebell who was the wagoner coordinator of credit recovery and then our cavs smart summer program which was miss nance stedum so a lot of our students had wonderful opportunities i presented to them this summer and i also want to acknowledge ms taran smith from brandywine springs and margaret economos from linden hill for all of their hard work and effort so thank you to all of our administrators coordinators again support staff for a job well done providing summer opportunities to our students as ms urban mentioned here at cab and other places across the district um you know the buildings are bright and they look anew fresh with wraps shiny floors different lighting

045so we want to thank our facilities custodial department for all of their efforts and just again to be mindful we have 2 000 excuse me 2 million 786 thousand 372 square feet of building in our district that's a lot of cleaning that's a lot of preparation so thank you again to our facilities department our maintenance department for their efforts and their work again in some cases there were multiple locations we had a lot of site work done as mentioned additional parking lots two schools were fully painted two schools received office renovations seven bathroom seven bathroom renovations two loading dock replacements and again i think these are the things that go unseen but you need loading docks to deliver food for children to eat and so again a lot of that work goes on behind the

046scenes that goes unnoticed filter water dispensers in each cafeteria and faculty lounge two new gym floors will be finished three roofs replaced uh sections were replaced wellness center edition um i do want to make the board aware we have a new additional wellness center at baltz and have a meeting on friday where we actually have the opportunity um to add an additional elementary school-based wellness center at ritchie elementary and we want to thank our partners at newcastle county for their support so that fourth additional elementary wellness center is being sponsored or supported by a new castle county grant we had school steps masonry repairs done eight chiller replacements uh five are complete four prepped and waiting uh delayed deliveries again there are still a number of issues relative to the supply chain nine boiler replacements

04714 schools have hvac controlled upgrades again which helps promote higher efficiency as it relates to air quality in our schools grove's adult education program has been relocated so that we can have an additional space at our pre-k center at the early years program over at central two special service office reconfigured an additional warehouse supply warehouse was moved again many of you heard during the public comment a few months back with regards to additional space at our eyp center so this is an opportunity to expand that space for our early learners so thank you again to dr amman our facilities department marching i see matt in the back all of our staff members do the facilities in custodial department for working on our behalf to make sure our schools are ready for the opening of the

048school year as you also heard we have approximately 172 new hires as of today it was 165 yesterday so we continue to hire and add additional staff members we hear nationally regarding teacher shortages and educator shortages we still have some holes to plug but i do want to thank our hr department dr keenan dorsey miss lauren fleck for their diligence in turning around requisitions helping with our schools fill those holes so we are committed to supporting our educators working diligently again not only to hire but make sure that retention is a major part of who we are and what we do here in red clay so that that message was received and we also have 15 year long residents we do have a residency program where we have 15 year long student teacher residents who

049have received their placements as well and again so we're excited for all of our hires not only our teachers but our custodials staff our peer educators support staff and ultimately the administrative positions that you will be approving shortly just professional learning again just mentioned although school may take a summer recess the professional learning and opportunities don't so we've had several educators again give up their own time over the summer as well as our building admin to sharpen their souls as we look to continue to support our students so we had avid summer institute many of our schools went to kagan training which deals with collaboration and engagement with students literacy training our science educators participated in open science ed and amplified trainings we have a group of teachers who are actually we'll be heading in

050september here shortly to a national conference on mathematics our administrators continue to work through the card or change management i think one of the things that we learned through this pandemic is obviously change is inevitable but it's how we manage the transitions sometimes they're often curveballs that get thrown at us so really making sure that our admin and building level administrators are a student and change management process as they look to foster meaningful relationships with with their staff and then more importantly how we interact at a district as a district with our respective schools new employees our new employee orientation started yesterday as mr fackenthal indicated that rca had an opportunity to engage um with our educators we had over four we have actually over 45 different engagement opportunities that include our hr department benefits

051department helping them understand their benefits through our technology department english learning supports and et cetera so today administrators also collaborated and worked alongside classroom teachers on phonics trainings so the board conference room was full of um administrators and uh educators working side by side to to learn the proper skills to ensure that we're doing all we can to meet the needs of our students so thank you to kelly harkins and bell hall who facilitated that professional learning opportunity just to all of our parents and community again i know the nights are late and the mornings are long as our students tend to want to sleep in it's time to break those habits and get into a new routine um you know we are going to be grouchy for a couple weeks as we get back

052into the swing of things but monday august 29th marks the first official day of school for students uh grades k the sixth and ninth grade we do have a staggered opening and the relic early years program we'll have staff in service and our kindergarten has a split week and then the first official day for everyone will be august 30th grade 7 8 9 10 through 12 report on those days and that will be the first day for our littles for the early years program that will be their first day of school also want to make point of note september 10th um from 10 a.m to 1 8 1 p.m excuse me we will host our back to school block party at stanton middle school this is a red clay event so all are welcome then

053to continue to look for yard signs and the information that's provided and again to just celebrate really a foundational and a pivotal year for us i think everyone has endured their fair share of challenges as it relates to the pandemic but we're looking forward to this year the 2022-2023 school year being a pivotal foundational year for us to springboard off of and just briefly um i know that information was released last week as it relates to student achievement data just a general snapshot trends indicate learning laws from pandemic to current year however the context is important our 2020 data sets did not exist for smarter again we did not have any state testing during the 2020 school year 2022 excuse me 2021 data sets were incomplete because participation statewide was low and then this past

054year was really the only year which still was a challenge because we saw low participation rates or lower participation rates than normal relative to state of test assessment so this assessment is a late early march in the time where many students and staff members are still dealing with co-research so it was very challenging whether it would be our testing coordinators our educators relative to to really trying to focus on state testing again in the midst of a pandemic but our smarter data represents the first time that red clay has been at or above the state average in ela and math and smarter balanced testing and the smarter balanced testing error um so we were actually equal to if you looked at smarter ela 42 was the red clay average 42 was the statewide average i

055think it's important when you look at numbers and if you extrapolate and pull our average data out of the statewide average and look at it solely based on red clay to the state um when compared to the state average it only includes our average is actually excuse me exceeds this the state average math again was was similar we showed higher rates of achievement as it relates to social studies so we will again hold board workshops we know there's a lot of interest amongst the board relative to that and those are one of the discussions that we said we would have at the initial board workshop so just a snapshot we do have mr golda here um if board members have any initial questions um i just wanted to include this to make sure as that

056information was publicly released last week um as mentioned we are heading into a strategic plan with the goal of having a post-labor day survey go out to to the community to begin that process we initially thought about having it earlier but we know folks are obligated busy there's a lot going on in preparation that we want as wide participation as we can get district-wide as it relates to that and then finally the wilmington learning collaborative again another hot topic for the board just a general update that the june 2nd initial draft of the mou was revised on july 8th we had until july 22nd to provide provide a response which we did with the goal of receiving something back on july 31st which we haven't and then there's a request for a combined board meeting

057um with the potentially impacted districts to have so we're in the process of um coordinating that with red clay i mean excuse me with brandywine and christina as it relates to a combined board meeting so that concludes my superintendent's report madam president thank you we'll move on to action items the highlight of our evening first one is administrative appointment assistant principal for the early years program yes so it is the recommendation that the red clay board of education approved ms shanique royce excuse me as the assistant principal of the early years program start date to be determined salary will be commissioner with the approved salary administrative schedule was there a motion so moved kathy thompson is there a second dr bone any discussion maria can take the phone call dr bone yeah mr casper yes

058mr leonard yes mr matthews yes miss thompson yes this knee smith yes unanimous motion carries congratulations ms royce welcome to reclair congratulations welcome next we have administrative appointment assistant principal at ai dupont high school it is a recommendation that the regulatory board of education approved ms caitlin vargas as the assistant principal of a.i dupont high school effective august 18 2022 is submitted salary will be commiserated with the approved administrative salary schedule is there a motion no move dr bone second second kathy thompson any discussion roll call dr bone yes mr casper yes mr lantern yes mr matthews yes ms thompson yes miss neisman yes unanimous motion carries miss mark congratulations next we have administrative assignment assistant principal brandywine springs school it is a recommendation that the red clay board of education approved ms noor wolford

059as assistant principal of brandywine spring school effective august 18 2022 has submitted salary is commiserate with the approval administrative salary schedule is there a motion so moved kathy thompson there a second dr bone any discussion roll call please dr bo yes mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes ms thompson yes ms knee smith yes unanimous motion carries congratulations next we have administrative assignment principal at ritchie elementary all right we have assistant principal mckay okay i'm sorry it wasn't the one ahead of me she jumped ahead i need glasses okay administrative assignment i'm sorry administrative assignment assistant principal at mccain high school it is a recommendation that the red clay board of education approved mr tyler downs as assistant principal of thomas mccain high school effective august 18 2022 as submitted salaries come miserably

060with the approval administrative salary schedule so moved there a second dr phone any discussion roll call please dr bone yes mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes thompson yes miss neisman yes unanimous motion carries congratulations now we can go to richmond yes it is a recommendation that the red clay board of education approved mr greg johnson as principal of ritchie elementary school effective august 22nd 2022 has submitted salaries commiserate with the approved administrative salary schedule so moved second is there any discussion roll call dr baum yeah mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes ms thompson yes miss neisman yes unanimous motion carries congratulations congratulations next we have administrative assignment assistant principal at meadowwood it is a recommendation that the red clay board of education approved as julia tolic as the assistant

061principal of meadowwood schools start date to be determined at a later time salary is commiserated with the approved administrative salaries there a motion so moved kathy thompson second phone any discussion roll call dr bone yes mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes miss thompson yes it's me smith yes unanimous motion carries stella congratulations next we have a certificate of necessity yes so that includes the administrative appointments now it is a recommendation that the board of education approved the submission of the certificate of necessity for major capital improvements totaling two million six hundred fifty thousand to the delaware department of education two hundred sixty five excuse me 265 million thank you to the delaware department of education it's a big number yes is there abortion so moved kathy thompson there a second second any

062discussion there is some discussion so there's a point of clarification so for those of you who probably know i said on the facilities committee and our committee specifically has worked on the certificate of necessity very heavily and has been involved over the last couple of years to provide the community with some contacts last year we approved and submitted a certificate of necessity to the department of education which we were denied for unfortunately the process and infrastructure that's currently in place to approve these kinds of things is being looked at by legislators but hopefully this year we'll have better luck there are some adjusted adjustments that you'll see in the certificate of necessity as inflation continues to rise and that's no known secret to anyone in the community there is one item that i did want

063to clarify um and it has to do with our bus yard situation um for the next upcoming school year um that has been added to this certificate of necessity um and i wanted to ask ted um who is the chair of our committee our facilities committee to provide just a little clarification for transparency sure thank you as we've heard over and over with with all the supply chain issues and inflation numbers i can tell you about 98 of that increase from last year to this year is a result of going through 800 pages worth of improvements and looking at what the current market conditions are so that is the vast majority of it the other changes are we had some roof work that we removed because we were fortunate enough to get some roof work

064done through esser funding that was meant to improve air quality and obviously if a roof is letting moisture in that becomes an issue so that was something we took out and then we also had to include include some additional funds for house bill 49 which has to do with school security uh it's a relatively new bill and as the division of facilities management starts implementing that we're finding that the cost to do some of those things are more extensive so we we updated that and then the last thing that that jose referenced is um as many of you heard over the last couple of years our bus yard we've certainly outgrown the space that we have as we've brought more and more routes internally to be able to handle them ourselves in addition our lot

065was we rent our lot it was purchased by a a an additional party who has um double just about doubled our rent um and as we look at the future we're certainly going to need to find a more adequate place as we get into electric buses and the infrastructure having to charge those buses and those things so there is a line item in there um to to fit out some space once we find some some land for that thank you thank you is there any other discussion this certificate of necessity is absolutely needed in our district i know we've been waiting and waiting and waiting i really hope that we are able to pass this and get this this time because our buildings generally are older i think that facilities committee in the district does

066a great job of maintaining older facilities but when you look throughout the state there are many with brand new buildings and we're maintaining ours as they are so i appreciate all the work that's being done i absolutely support this certificate of necessity and i hope we do all we can to ensure that we get some kind of traction in dover this time thank you any other discussion just madam president if i may just to give context our oldest building which is ai middle school was built in 1894 and our newest building is cook elementary which was built in 2015. so even our newest building is starting to age as relative to new construction that's taking place across the state thank you any other discussion maryland are you ready for the question roll call please dr

067bone yeah mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes ms thompson yes miss neisman yes unanimous motion carries next we have the fiscal year 23 preliminary budget is the recommendation that the red clay board of education approved the fy 23 preliminary budget as submitted is there a motion so moved kathy thompson there a second second any discussion we heard about this this is kathy thompson we heard about this last month i believe jill's put together a great budget for our district and i wholly support it so thank you any other discussion i echo those sentiments of being on the cfrc uh the very diligent record keeping and and use of our other public funds so thank you for your diligent work we'll call please dr bone yeah mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr

068matthews yes ms thompson yes miss neisman yes unanimous motion carries next we have a student handbook formerly the student code of conduct is a recommendation that the red clay board of education approved revised student code of conduct which will now be referred to as a student handbook slash code of conduct that's submitted and again will require further policy change but that's the recommendation before you know is there a movement kathy thompson yeah is there a second sure discussion i have a question but i'll wait anybody else have discussion or questions okay so you said that we have to change the policy because we're seeing handbook and in the policy it references code of conduct so for this year until we can just actually go back and revise the policy to reflect just the simple wording

069of a handbook so it's nothing to do with the actual document just more of just aligning it based on the work so then the board policy committee will look to work on that policy to change for the next year for the 23 years yes and also i just want to clarify that the code of conduct is reviewed every year by the board policy committee and so not every single piece every single word or every single section was revised so we'll continue this is the living document that will continue to revise each year are there any other discussions or questions okay with the work that was done by the committee and the student code of conduct i think they produced a good product so i i fully support it um i just have one other discussion

070item and i don't know i don't think it's coming up later with regard to the student student code of conduct in there we have also the dress code policy and i just wanted to reiterate to maybe our superintendent and administrators to take a look at if you have a specific dress code policy for your particular school that it's aligning with what is in there and that's something that the board policy committee will continue to work on but there may be some things that need to be updated in your own dress code policy at your school so just taking a look at that and being proactive to make sure we have alignment and i will say our buildings are aware of the fact that their policy can't be out of line with the code so that

071that's already been at a rate um stated and it's known throughout our schools thank you if i could say one more thing about the code of conduct uh on the consequence grids uh i don't know if we want to stay with k-12 for everyone to start for the uh levels of consequences i know it's the same for elementary as it is with high school uh one example i pulled out was the gun free school violations it starts at three you know even for elementary which uh i i think we need to re-examine that a little bit in the future so there are star state laws and regulations federal law that for some of the aspects of the code that we can't simply deviate from it it has to be aligned with law and statute so

072it has to be every grade level has to be the same is that correct within specific ones i'm not sure what particular one you're referencing but i would just say if there are things again because we look at this as on an annual basis to just raise those issues but bring them before the committee but generally speaking if it's something that's universal or consistent it's likely because it has to align with a law statute and so we can um maybe uh connect with mr pruitt about how we went went forth with all those submitted notes as well but thank you for bringing that up any other discussion please call the vote dr bone yes mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes miss thompson yes miss neisman yes unanimous motion carries next we provide

073for policy 8013 school choice it is a recommendation that the board approve the revised policy as written is there a motion so moved kathy thompson is there a second second any discussion yeah this does what i think we've been looking for for a very long time it ensures that red clay students get first choice into our schools and i think that's what we as a board have been after for a very long time so thank you to kim williams for working so diligently on the legislation that allowed the preferences to be reordered a bit to allow the red clay students into red clay schools first um and i fully support this policy any other discussion hearing please call the vote dr baum yeah mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes miss thompson yes

074miss neisman yes unanimous motion carries next we have revised board policy eight zero two five physical restraint sorry is the recommendation that the red clay board of education approve the revised board policy 8025 physical restraint has submitted is there a motion so moved kathy thompson their second second any discussion yeah we um and mr leonard knows that because we were both at the board policy review committee where we discussed this um and mr leonard's son was there too who was working i think on behalf of the rca um i think the policy is a good one it was needed it was identified as a need through the spec ed department due to the fact that we're getting in so many high needs children that need some other kind of way to deal with it and

075the concern that was raised was dealt with which is we wanted to ensure that teachers who were restraining students that were in some kind of altercation in school were not captured under this policy because there's a whole review process that has to go on before the restraint can be applied um dr broome was able to deal with it and i think the policy i think it's a good policy and i fully support it any other discussion um just wanted to reiterate that as well that we want to uh create a safe environment for our students and so i appreciate the hard work one based policy uh we want to do what we can to make sure that students feel that they that we can to address their their needs the best way possible in the

076least restrictive way so thank you for your hard work please call the vote dr bone yes mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes it's thompson yes it's me smith yes unanimous motion carries next we have bus driver salary scale it is a recommendation that the red clay board of education approved the bus driver salary scale estimated so moved kathy thompson is there a second dr bone any discussion please call the vote dr bone yeah mr casper yes mr leonard yes mr matthews yes ms thompson yes ms knee smith yes unanimous motion carries next we have curriculum and student achievement board committee so it is recommended again the board is recommending that the red clay board of education initiate a curriculum and student achievement board committee is there a motion to move is there

077a second second discussion did anybody want to be recognized for discussion i have discussion okay so i um i have a little bit of problem with this motion as it's presented so with the district already had so first of all we're trying to create a board committee and we haven't created a charge statement part of our policy and what we have worked on for a very long time in retreats and whatnot is to make sure that we have a policy statement a charge statement whenever a committee is created and we've done that for the last two that have been created setting forth what the goals are what the desired results and products are the scope of responsibility the level of authority the communication linkages the timeline the resources available and the expectations of members none

078of that has been outlined here and i think we also need to understand the current curriculum processes in the district and how this committee would or would not interact with those processes as everybody knows curriculum and student achievement are two different topics i'm not really sure why we're mixing them in one committee the district already has curriculum processes and a curriculum adoption program that works seems to work well it's completely teacher-led and the selection is done by experts plus the state has a listing of curriculum for ela at least and ongoing processes for reviewing curriculum for subject areas again led by experts how this committee of non-experts would operate with curriculum and with student achievement i don't understand that i would need to understand before i could support it um what expertise in district leadership

079do the authors would these people have what credentials what are they going to do also student achievement is clearly a board issue it is what this board part of a big part of the reason why this board exists we talked recently about having workshops on student achievement for all board members and the public to attend i would think that that is the better way to do it than a committee when only three board members can attend because i know i as a board member want to know how our students are achieving and thank you doc mr green for providing that data today because it shows that some whatever we're doing in the district right now is working to you know it's working at least better than the state and better than our our sister district

080so that's a great thing um board policy 7001 places responsibility in the superintendent for this curriculum issues must also align with our contract for the curriculum which can be seven or more years in length so i don't know how all this would work out the committee makeup itself in what mr leonard had proposed previously was overwhelming with over 100 people on a committee there is i don't know what could possibly be achieved in a committee with over 100 members including members from our elementary middle and even high schools and pre-k sitting through these meetings i don't understand what the auditing would be about who would write these extensive reports why discipline is reported on charter school update is reported on diversity equity and inclusion is reported on mtss has reported on and why there are

081report outs from different school principals in a curriculum and student achievement committee so for a long time red clay has developed a playbook for success that should take that takes us into the strategic planning process and onward i would think our strategic plan deals with a lot of these issues as well so from my position without having a charge statement and really understanding what this committee is all about what it could do and how all board members can participate in it because it is at least student achievement is absolutely a board issue i can't support it is there other discussion yes i have some discussion recognize mr leonard uh i apologize that you don't understand a lot of things kathy but uh it was all spelled out there what we need uh and these these

082numbers are great today unfortunately we have a tale of uh two districts here you have our high achieving schools are doing well it's great and they've always done well but we have a most of our students are not doing well in our district uh with test score and so forth and we don't know this unless you look at those scores the state scores and we don't discuss it at these meetings lines the last seven meetings i've listened to i have not heard one thing about student achievement here on this board uh and that that uh upsets me as a former teacher retired a year ago two years ago that we're not discussing this we are not just anything about student achievement so we need to have an honest discussion on what's going on in our

083district like i say it's great what we're seeing up here but if you take out the wilmington charter and the conrad those numbers are not good so and we need to know what's going on where we are where we need to be and what we need to do to change that and i don't think that's discussed in any of these uh committees that i've seen and i haven't seen it mentioned once on this board so i have a passion for this being in the classroom i know it's not being discussed and i apologize to any board member who doesn't understand that but if you're in the classroom but understand what's going on here we need something right in here we need to have updates what's going on and as far as 100 people in the

084committee that's not what it's set up to be and you know that's not true it's one principle per year per school comes out and gives their report not every meeting so that was misrepresented of the whole committee so i i moved that we go on to vote for this and uh it's it's definitely needed in on this uh board so we get monthly updates of what's going on with our kids thank you thank you is there any other discussion from other board members i have something but i'll wait okay uh thank you for first i'd like to say thank you for raising the issue of us as a board focusing on how our students are performing i know that mr leonard i appreciate your hard work in submitting some information about what you were proposing

085i know at our board planning meeting we discussed possibly just initiating a committee and then during a board planning or sorry a board workshop deciding as a board along with the administrators how this committee would support the work of the district so even though you had submitted some things to us as a board is my understanding that we would create the the parameters for this committee in concert with administration is that correct i believe it was we were to vote on it here to have the committee and then refine it in workshops work groups and so that is my understanding for any clarification um that's why it was worded the way as initiate a committee and not necessarily just take what you put we want to work together in coordination and also to to reframe

086our focus on the things that are most important which are our students and a lot of times we're in these meetings and we're talking about a whole lot of things that may be important issues but not necessarily as pertinent to the needs of our students in our schools so i support a collaborative approach and what i hear you say is that we want to have information and be updated regularly about specific data points or this or specific curriculum initiatives so that we as a board are made aware of the work of our district in a more substantive way and so that's how i understood the committee um as we go forward and so if anybody else has any other comments before we take the vote i'll recognize you yes miss talk yeah i still think

087before creating any committee there needs to be a charge statement so if the motion is amended to say we would work together to create that that's a whole different thing than actually creating a committee at this point because the committee exists with no purpose no purpose so there's no charge and we at retreats and many of these board members were here talked about we would only create committees based on a charge statement meaning something the committee was going to be charged with doing so i wholly support and i think we can do it creating some kind of process or something where we talk about this stuff because i didn't say we shouldn't talk about it in fact if there's one board member who keeps raising it it's me but um i do i do think

088student achievement is an entire board issue and not a committee issue it's a board issue [Music] last thing if it's so damn important why hasn't been talked about in the last seven or eight months on this board i haven't heard it i haven't looked at these uh meetings if it's so important to you why haven't we talked about it simple as that he's a just a chair yes so so the question is of importance so yeah it's important okay so i call the question i'm sorry yeah thank you so we we have we have a motion on the table and we had a suggestion for an amendment uh who moved you moved who will you entertain an amendment to the to the motion what a mineral is that uh miss thompson could you please share

089the amendment that you recommended oh i would amend it to say that we would work to create a charge statement to consider the formation of a curriculum and student achievement committee no i think we vote as is and we will amend that at workshops okay call please call the vote dr boehm yes mr casper no mr leonard yes mr matthews yes thompson no miss knee smith yes four yes to no motion carries thank you next we have action consent matt can i have a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented so moved there a second so is there any discussion okay please call the vote so all in favor always forget about them sorry opposed motion carries thank you next we have school board committee reports uh we had a board policy review committee

090on 714 who is going to present the report for that yeah i i don't really need to give much report mr leonard and i both attended the board policy uh review committee we approved the minutes from the prior meeting we discussed board policy 8025 the physical restraint policy it's exactly what i said before spec ed thought it was needed especially as bringing more high-need students it's needed for safety reasons differently differentiated in it anything that's required due to kind of disturbances and fights in the buildings and then in 8013 it incorporates what red clay this board has been sought after seeking for a long time to ensure that our red clay students get first preferences into our schools so um nothing more than thought about that yeah mr leonard okay all right next report uh

091the next committee that met with the diversity committee it was a summer kickoff on 8 10 20 22 i know i wasn't able to attend because of work i think miss thompson attended is there anybody else who attended yes the board member that attended yeah so i have to give kudos to dr bond it was an outstanding meeting dr bond of course shared our board policies that the committee has worked on 1002 the diversity in equity in public education and 8005 the transgender and gender diverse student policy dr bond shared the work done last year last school year to affirm lgbtq plus students the student data card update has been updated to include preferred name field alternate student name and email address can appear in schoology and they drafted the transgender policy dr bond informed

092the committee that red clay has a k-12 lgbtq work group and they she had sign-ups available for people interested diversity champions stood up for recognition and they deserve that recognition because they're bringing everything into our schools and it's kudos to all our diversity champions dr bond outlined which i thought was fascinating the red clay diversity journey in 2018 they did an equity and diversity survey that was conducted by hanover research there were over 4 500 respondents parents teachers and staff and it set the work going forward the recommendations included collecting analyzing and utilizing data district and school data as it pertains to equity improve communication with community regarding with the community regarding diversity initiatives designing and coordinating admin pd in the area of equity and social justice streamlining connections between schools and community-based systems for

093our schools increasing and improving cultural awareness of all admin teachers and staff develop student engagement and learning opportunities regarding diversity teacher staff prep and professional development recruiting hiring and retaining minority teachers administrators and staff and they worked on all of that since 2018 and have had quite an impact in 2019 they worked on the student sense of belonging survey that was conducted based on outcome from that base that was conducted by the university of pennsylvania catalyst at upenn um they asked students to what extent do students feel they belong in the community they engaged catalyst to conduct the survey of all the students and school belonging was defined as the extent to which students feel personally accepted respected included and supported by others in school they collected basic information from students as part of the

094survey and results were not linked to individual students students remained completely anonymous the students self-reported data has been used in database decision making as well as policy creation giving students voice and representation 2021 there was an equity audit conducted by equity and beyond understanding staff perspective about equity and inclusion in the district there was a huge response late rate and it's helping with our strategic plan there's qualitative baseline assessment to help students school and district administrators understand important percent perceptions from staff and teachers about diversity equity inclusion in our schools the purpose of the survey was to inform training content as well as to set improvement goals for 2022 we're working on restorative practices and mtss alignment pd so there's tier 1 and tier 2 and with mtss and tier 1 and tier 2 and

095diversity champions they worked on board policy 8005 and drafted it it was recognized as a big win there was a history unerased training the the introduction to lgbtq plus history language and identities they talked about language history fear and pushback and strategies for community support there was jedi diversity training for our custodial supervisors building chiefs and staff humanizing bias courageous capacity how to talk to each other and it was viewed as a huge success there was entity domain pd in five schools with six sessions focus groups about recruiting and retaining educators of color what we can do to hire retain and promote folks that look like a look different from and like and represent many of the students in our buildings and there's the lgbtq plus work group that i mentioned so how to support

096this expanding group for this year we had the summer kickoff meeting there are going to be committee meetings every other month starting in september um and then there are going to be four diversity dare champion dare continuing pd sessions kind of every other one on the every other month from our our meetings there's uh d diversity equity and inclusion school pd professional learning time is incorporated into the district's pd meeting for both secondary and elementary there is equity and beyond anti-racism inclusion diversity and equity diversity champion workshops there's four of them there is a delaware affinity facilitator fellowship so we've hired they're they're going to play a key role in cultivating and leading racial affinity groups within the district led by educator leaders we've hired these affinity facilitators and we're working with centers for black

097excellence we're working on this with colonial and we have a there was a kick off in august and the the affinity kickoff is in january and then of course the legislative updates with er which everyone knows about hb 198 the black history curriculum and then hb 318 the holocaust and genocide curriculum there is an effort to diversifying classroom and school libraries to ensure that all students see themselves on the bookshelves in their classrooms they're diversifying k to five mathematics vision um and um meeting hb 198 for younger folks there is also and i thought this was interesting a secondary mathematic teacher math study book so there's four books that secondary math teachers are able to choose from for year-long book studies and all four books address student voice classroom culture and teacher beliefs we did

098a reading assignment and paired with others and it was great our equity and diversity committee and initiatives are really the first and leading in delaware we're making huge leaps and bounds in our red clay schools i give huge kudos to dr bond who is a terrific leader facilitator and champion she absolutely makes all feel welcome included and valued the different perspectives were explored and tolerated so kudos to dr bond to our red clay diversity champions and to our district thank you very much thank you those extensive report and it sounds like a lot of the work and things that people brought up today um are embedded in that committee so that committee is really transcending a lot of the work that everybody is doing so thank you for that report miss thompson there were no

099other committees that met this month before this meeting is there any other discussion on committee reports hearing now we'll move on to items requests from board members the first one is charter school applications it's my understanding that according to delaware code that school districts must accept a charter school applications by september 1st um not specific any specific applications um and i know that um there was some discussion on this does anybody like to start the discussion yeah i have a motion i move that the red clay school district board of education agreed to accept submissions of charter applications for this year i have a point of question i have a question about that so in effort wait is there a second well before you the motion there has to be a second is there a

100second sure okay here's my question and maybe i'm just confused and this is what i'm trying to bring together because we have some work to do on this board in terms of how we conduct business everybody knows that somebody's going to talk about it so in terms of action items anything that we would act upon would be under action items so if we make a motion it can't be we really shouldn't be able to make emotion when something that we commit to so that and then i i know i've made a mistake so i'm i'm just going to put that out there i had one meeting before this but if we make a motion on an action item that's not already listed as an action item i'm confused about how we might be able to

101do that and like for example even adding those agenda items for discussion was wasn't wasn't accepted so there's i don't we don't have a parliamentarian here um i do have our robert's rules of order but it's under the open meeting laws and it just has to be on the agenda so the the um it's on the agenda it doesn't say it has to be under action items we have in the past always operated and we did even last month operated taking action items that were dooring items submitted by the board but they are listed and that's the real key the key under the open meeting laws is that it is listed so that the community can know what we're going to talk about and the community can then have input and and i hear that

102however i have the it doesn't say that specifically in the open meeting laws so i'm trying to be as fair as possible to all board members who have items and this seems to be i know we have past practice but sometimes we could be doing things wrong and not know it and i might be wrong right now even bringing up the question but i know that if you have an action item that is what needs to be publicly noticed and so if we make an action could you please i obviously matter if you notice it on the agenda you're publicly publicly noticing it and in this particular case since it was noticed again i i think the clarification specific to this particular item is it's not committing the board to accepting charters um so i

103think that's also not a point of clarification and and the idea of adding extensive things on the agenda to therefore by giving the board the opportunity to just take action is part of the debate right how many actions how many items can you just simply put on an agenda before it's not an effective or an efficient business meeting and i think that's where the board ultimately has to decide and that's the purpose of board planning how do you prioritize the the agenda items to make sure that it's an efficient and effective meeting and then more importantly how do you prioritize it because when you act we have to deliver and so if there are 30 items on there and again coming from individual board members it can ultimately become maybe competing and conflicting so if

104you notice it and the board can have discussion on it the board can in turn take action on it because you noticed it that's my general understanding again but and so what i am trying to do as a newly elected board president is to get the back straight and so there is a lot of interpretation of laws as we know that um and so according to my research on the delaware the foia which is delaware foia laws you can add anything to an agenda but you can't act on it you can discuss whatever you want to discuss but you can't necessarily act on it and so what doesn't make sense to me is if in our agenda we have action items to be voted upon and then we put items submitted from the board what

105is that that is that an action item to be taken or is that a discussion item because in our board handbook we talk about the having things on on the agenda for two meetings prior to taking action so therefore if i make a motion on something that just was placed on the agenda and it hadn't been there for two meetings and it requires an action to be taken by the board then we we're not following that this is something that has to you even when you read it and i can pull it up it's if if it's a an ongoing if it's a regular item this is different because under the law we have to act by september 1st you are you are correct about that but when we set the agenda we did not

106put that as an action item and so therefore we it's null that we can't even vote on it and my and and the way i read the law i've read it i've looked at robert's rules of order i've looked at our board member handbook we cannot unless we had changed it before today we cannot act on that because it's not under the action item the law doesn't require that miss me smith there's no section in the law that says it has to be placed under the action items that's what the open meaning laws no it doesn't i'm looking at it right now we're going to argue about this forever we are because it doesn't say that so so i would like to i'll recognize dr bone so i don't know if it's a five but

107in our board handbook page eight paragraph two the information reads quote in general items other than routine business on which the board is expected to vote on will be on the agenda for at least two meetings at the first meeting first meeting items are presented and discussed at the second items are discussed again followed by board action in the form of a vote thank you dr phil that's what i was referring to so here's the thing we're messy we're going to clean it up we're going to get it better but we're not there yet so i personally just want to bring some some coherence and some uh decorum and all of that to our board to not take things personal and to not be labor the points but we're gonna have to come to consensus

108through using i would suggest and this is was going to come up later a board workshop and i know we have a motion on the floor but i i don't believe that we can we can vote on that motion and i don't because of the fact it's not under it was not properly noticed that we were acting on it that's not what the law says so i pointed out if you could please read it that would be helpful to all of us absolutely you want to read what the agenda needs to say on the open meeting laws all we have to do is list items on the agenda so a public public all public bodies shall give public notice of their regular meetings and their intent to hold an executive session closed to the public

109at least seven days in advance the notice must include all of a fall all of the following the agenda if the agenda has been determined the date time and place of a meeting including whether the meeting will be conducted under a hybrid meeting basically an agenda provided under paragraph a2 is subject to change and it goes into what changes could be but nothing says that it has to be in a particular place on the agenda so interpretation i have that here so that what you just read um section three an agenda provided under paragraph e2 of this section is subject to change changes to an agenda may include any of the following additional items including an executive session which arrives at the time of the public bodies meeting the deletion of items including an executive

110session all public bodies shall give public notice of the type set forth and section in paragraph e2 of this section of any special or rescheduled meeting as soon as reasonably possible but in any event no later than 24 hours before such meeting and then it talks about a special meeting it says that they have to be publicly known as then in section five public notice required by this subjection shall include but not be limited to conspicuous posting of said notice of the meeting all of these things none of this talks about action items and voting correct it just needs to be on the agenda so when we try to add agenda items at the approval of the agenda you can i ask the question are there any amendments to the agenda there's nothing in this

111law that says that we cannot add items to the agenda but what we cannot do is add an action item because of the open meeting walls and so therefore with with the motion that's on the table that has been moved and properly seconded i find it problematic that we can even have that motion because it is an action item well but there's nothing in the law that says it has to be an action item nothing we just call them action item what the law says is it needs to be on the agenda and it is on the agenda what about our policy that says it needs to be on there two months like well yours yours wasn't even we voted on yours and again for just for the the board's intent and purposes on this

112particular issue because i think this and again is a singular issue um in that there is a a date associated with this particular item whether or not the board chooses to or not take action on it is obviously the board's prerogative um the issue is noted on the agenda and how as to how the board wants to proceed with ensuring that items submitted by the board or by board members it gets included on the overall agenda moving forward is i think the debate that's happening but if you look at what the singular issue is focused on this the board doesn't have to take action on it the motion fails and then the group that just spoke about their um hope to be able to submit something this year they just don't get that opportunity so

113you know the the purpose of this meeting is for the board i know public is is here and public can hear the public can have conversations about it but this meeting is really for us so that we can get our business done and we're not going to be able to get our business done well if we don't know how to operate so i think that in my effort what i'm trying to do is be consistent and there are some mistakes and there's some things that we have to clean up there were some things that were voted upon last meeting that didn't make the agenda and it should have so i like i said at the beginning of this meeting as the new president who is learning i'll take responsibility for all of it up until

114the point of after today because we're going to we're going to move forward but i think it's it would we would be remiss if we didn't have a discussion about how these things are happening because we already know we kind of go back and forth and so in the effort of in the next 11 months for us to really focus on those things that we think are important like student achievement and and our school district we have to get we have to figure this piece out so at this point we have moved in second i disagree with how we have it set up if for that reason we shouldn't even write action items anything can be acted upon so the way that we set our agenda shows what we act on and those were the

115consent action items and the action items anything else we really shouldn't be acting on that's how we set our agenda and i guess that isn't how we've done it in the past i don't have any problem having the discussion i think it's worth having the discussion but it is not how it's been done i understand and i said at the beginning that i'm trying to follow what boya says the record our board handbook robert's rules of order i've done some i'm not there yet but i've done some extensive work around where the mistakes have been made with regard to last meeting with that i ran and previous meetings and so going forward i'm trying to get us to a point where we have a shared understanding of how we're going to conduct business and if

116i just go just to the board handbook we've made some mistakes even today but this is not an action item that was that was but it's already on the tape i don't even know how to move forward i wish there was a parliamentarian so you have a motion and you have a second and you can either move to accept the motions i know dr baum has dr bone please so i just have a question i've been on the board for nine years and i attempt to do my due diligence and follow the board handbook at every opportunity so my my question tonight is are we if we move forward with this does that mean we're not following the board handbook anymore because the board handbook clearly states what i just read a few moments ago

117but we didn't even mr leonard's motion wasn't on the agenda for two meetings his curriculum committee was discussed last month in july and i listened to the audio and but that was an order it wasn't on the agenda point of order you are correct other discussion i'm trying to figure out what to do because i don't want to have this every month well i think we move forward and we discuss it we have a board workshop and we discuss how how we want to do it but based on past practice based on the law based on the fact that it's been moved and seconded needs to be voted on and based on the fact that we just violated our board policy and we've done it many times where things have not been on the agenda

118for two meetings and we vote on them before we move on to take a vote on this if we are going to allow a motion in this particular meeting and not thereafter if we are going to allow emotion to be put on the table from items from the board then any other motions can be made that were written on here especially under section d which was miscellaneous items and even though the public did not see those miscellaneous items the school board members all have them because they were sent to you via a google doc that is what is under miscellaneous items so if we accept this motion and properly motion and seconded we can properly motion and second any other item that was submitted on that document and i just want to help us understand

119that because we're going to do it for one we're going to do it for all well there's a difference this was noticed the others were not yes there was notice it says miscellaneous items and those miscellaneous items are the ones for which you have recipes for the public this meeting is i understand the public side of that meeting laws is about it's about noticing for the public we i'm i am i'm the chair right now and i'm saying i will entertain any other motions today based on this agenda and those items those miscellaneous items are the ones for which you have received a document from me based on i listened to the last school board meeting i listened to every single request and every single motion that was made i wrote it down and i

120sent them all to you and i also commented on how we might go forward with them using google docs comment feature and there was some discrepancies that maybe i should have put all of those items onto the agenda because of what our board handbook said so what i am doing now is i am trying to fix the problem even if it doesn't look good no we cannot red clay have a great school year thank you so we are going to fix this problem because people are already talking about how our board is a mess and how we can't get along so i'm putting i'm talking about it here so we can get along and we can figure it out otherwise we're just wasting everybody's time i think it's more appropriate to handle the disagreements in

121a workshop and not at the public meeting workshops are public meetings workshops are part of public meetings but it's very it's different they don't have an agenda they don't have an action items this is where we are we have a motion i will entertain any motions for the remainder of this meeting i'd like to make an amendment to dismiss the notion of the table do you accept that i didn't hear i didn't hear i'd like to make a motion to dismiss the motion on the table i don't i don't accept that maria i'm calling the vote i have a question i don't know what we're voting on are we the motion was to accept charter applications to submit some to to accept submissions of charter applications that's the motion dr bone no mr leonard no

122mr matthews no miss thompson yes three no's one sustained motion fails next item on the agenda the computer welcome to learning collaborative updates do you have any updates mr green i share updates to my superintendent report that we're in the process um as president smith is aware that the three districts that are being considered for the willing collaborative or now in the process of trying to establish a combined boards meeting to have any questions answered since we have not received any formal response in terms of a document or update to the july 22nd feedback that was given to state officials do you have a date for the the meeting i believe the tentative date is august 31st at 6 30. the location to be determined i can circle hold on let me just pull up

123the camera tuesday august 30th at 6 30 p.m michael christina's houston christina let me confirm that date if yeah but it wasn't confirmed that's why i was wondering so let's say tentatively the 30th at 6 30 p.m location to be determined okay and i will confirm that with the board any other comments about the wilmington learning collaborative none we'll be going to the next agenda item monthly board workshops so i wanted to discuss the monthly board workshops because we do have a lot of work to do as a board and we have a lot of things to to clean up we should my recommendation is that we consider and think about and discuss in the next couple of meetings having regular board work sessions and or workshops to be able to go through some of

124this minutia and for the public because there's been some some comments why are we doing why did i bring this up here is because we don't have them we don't have that structure in place and so what happens is we have agenda items that we vote on but we really haven't had an opportunity to talk as a board to be able to um to be informed and to really make a good decision and so i want the board to consider and think about what days of the month which maybe like a second tuesday or whatever it is might be a date that everyone can come together to have a work session to one discuss agenda items more in detail without the formalities that we have here and two maybe get some um professional learning around

125how to conduct board meetings how to conduct the work of what we're supposed to be doing and how to form committees and all those things that we argue or debate about here uh if we're going to be able to do the work that we were elected to do we have to be informed and so you know my apologies to those who are uh bothered by today's uh commentary but we already i mean i'm a person who just talks about the dirty the dirty laundry that's already out there so we're going to get better we are a great district i moved here because we're a great district and we're going to continue to get better but it leads it's from the top so when we're not together the rest of the district is not together so

126we're going to get that together and so i just want you to consider those things for board workshops regular regularly noticed board workshops for us to attend i do not have any particular date in mind but i want you all to think about that and then we can continue to talk about it as we go forward this year it's not something that we have to rush and do but it's something that i think would be important for us in order to move forward any other discussion on board workshops it's okay follow up on miscellaneous items these are the items that were discussed at the july 13th board meeting in 2022 dr von made the following requests and i'm just following up with mreen and whoever else it may be relevant to uh there was a

127request for communication to the community about changes with regard to the changes with free lunch i do know dr bone that particular principals put that out and their and their letters on mr rita you can kind of help us with that and again dr baume and i did follow up with her but again information has gone out through individual schools there are again federal guidelines that we're trying to work through and then the initial request is to ensure that um in essence those who may have financial issues you know providing lunch no child will go hungry we can't commit to that we have waived all of the debt of any student who may have incurred that prior to um so no one is starting a year with debt um on their their their balances um

128there is a federal provision that only gives like a month grace period for any family who may have had access to free lunch through community eligibility programming it only runs through october so our school nutrition department is working diligently to make sure um that again that families don't incur or in in inherit a barrier to having access to lunch so that information has gone out and again the schools who were a part of the community eligibility the freelance program will continue to go through that process it's those students that don't have that poverty level within those particular schools and again our school child nutrition department is working with you know those respective families or if anyone who would have any thank you that's very important for parents to know uh we there was a request

129to add the hotline for suicide prevention 988 to the superintendent's welcome back with that and so that's that's actually broader than just welcome back there is um legislation as well um that requires us to put that on student id cards and i know that was something um that was previously discussed so that information will get disseminated through our student services department one of the things that we realize is they're using i guess more national numbers or national hotlines when there are local based resources that are available and some of the numbers that are actually delineated are actually being phased out because of the new um 988 process but we are again working diligently through student services working with dr amy through our tech department because that information needs to be placed on student id cards

130so that information will be or it will be added to all of our current existing resources as it relates to um suicide prevention it's my understanding that there's some work to be done with that hotline as well so to continue to share the local resources i think is important um there was a request to reinstate the legislative breakfast with delaware legislators and the red clay school board i'm not familiar with that but can you speak to that so i know prior to actually i guess me coming um there were regular convenings um actually we hosted one when i first initially came we did it at brandywine springs and obviously been the pandemic hit but i had been in contact with representative kim williams and senator laura sturgeon to to reinstitute and re-engage with the legislators

131that represent red clay so there will be a process moving forward thank you and then along with we we're making sure that the meals are there so we got that um there was a request to conduct a board self-evaluation um this is something that all boards according to nsba should be doing anyway i know when i joined the board i got this book that says the key work of school boards guide book i think all of us have if we don't i'll make sure you get one it does have the board self evaluation kind of template for us to kind of ask ourselves how we're doing with certain things and i think given even tonight's events this would be a poignant uh thing for us to not that's not the right word if this would

132be a an action that we definitely should take at a board workshop uh to institute so that we can kind of self-evaluate and then see what areas or priorities we have for improvement so um that will be in one of our workshops coming up hopefully in september but if not september hopefully august there was a request for a report on how the district is disseminating information about curriculum student achievement gender neutral bathrooms and school safety plans to students can you just share us you know just for the for our our own understanding in the public how how he's disseminating that information about these different topics what i would generally say when folks are engaged with their school we have back to school nights where families share information with parents about scope and sequence you have

133syllabus or syllabi that go home for for students we have curriculum councils or again where educators are engaged in a curriculum student achievement again various aspects of you know report cards progress reports monitoring of that depending on what level again i think for all of these topics that the the most beneficial thing that would help me and my role in my position along with you know leading the district is to actually establish the broader priorities again i think it's the the goal or job of the board to set the mission and vision and it's ultimately my goal to carry that mission and vision out but the challenge then becomes when you have individual or select um areas of whether that would be inquiry or expectations that aren't necessarily board driven board meaning the body i

134think we have competing priorities i think a lot of what the board is asking we already engage in that work through various committees so as it relates to again information disseminating information about curriculum that's through a whole host of ways engaging families you know through their schools um uh student achievement um again when we say how are we disseminating it uh ultimately it's to who there are different audiences in terms of how that information gets disseminated um ginger neutral bathrooms this is the first that i can specifically say it's an initial request so we can get that information back but typically it works through schools when students need access to particular you know facilities that might be unique to what their needs are you know schools work through that process with um individual students and

135then school safety plans we have our office of public safety relative to school safety planning you know if there's a lot of depth in terms of what that plan is um each school has a plan ultimately you know we communicate it but again it a little bit more clarity around with those accidents those requests would be would would help provide you know in terms of the nature of the audience who were actually providing that too and this was requested to have by september and again dr bowman idea dialogue that this was a september issue um that she had requested and we would you know do a little bit more homework to be able to figure out that request thank you uh there's a request to discuss board planning meetings and the pros of cons of

136publicly noticing them um so i'll speak on that um so with the research that i've done with the nsba you have book and everything so board planning meetings and our handbook we're planning meetings are typically across the country with the the president and the of the board and the superintendent and then taking items from the board members but i think to the point of mr green just said one thing that we did not do yet that we should have done at probably the first meeting but it hasn't been a past practice but it is in our board handbook is to establish our priorities as a board to disseminate a calendar of what will be on each of the agent monthly agendas those things that we know about those regular items but also um action items

137and things that are aligned to the priorities of the board and so we have not yet done that and that's why it is very important that we are able to come together to establish those in a board workshop so with that um i i find it problematic to have a board meeting as a board planning meeting as a yet another meeting for us to come together publicly when we can if we do our due diligence of finding a fine-tuning our handbook abiding by it then we and you know if you submit things like i said at the beginning if you submit things we put it in that whole agenda from the beginning of the year that we're not finding 15 20 different things each meeting because we've already decided what we're going to focus on

138as a board we can't address every problem ill that we have in our school system um in one year but i'm certain certainly sure that we have some priorities that are aligned to the goals and visions of our district and those those things that you that we all bring from our own particular minds and experiences that we can collaborate and put those together in a calendar agenda so that we can address them and and not just talk about them so um any other discussion on that because i know somebody else brought that up i have a question yes so again in our board handbook page eight paragraph six i think this speaks to the issue and it's already embedded here so it says quote any two additional board members may attend and participate in an

139agenda setting meeting which is our board planning if a board member wishes to attend an agenda setting meeting he or she is asked to contact the superintendent so that a notice of the meeting will be provided in the event that four more members may attend or more members attend yes so the interpretation of that appears that we can have four or more members there it would just have to be noted yes so i know for our last meeting i think four people wanted to attend one person one person a person was asked to recuse themselves so they wouldn't attend and one person did recuse themselves so then you only had three yes but we could have had four yes and that may have circumvented some of the issues we had at the beginning of the

140meeting with people's agendas agenda items being removed because if more board members could be there then they could speak up on behalf of their agenda items so i think that's one of the reasons that the um the conversation about having board planning open to the public you know was was put on the table yes i understand and so again we need to go through this board member handbook because there are some nuances that make it confusing um because it also says that the vice president should be there and it actually has duties for that vice president in that so i i agree and i think we can really come together and and iron these things out at a board workshop but yeah but if poor people want to i did step back from this so

141that you didn't have to notice it but i will not do that all the time that is not fair so if i it's just not it should be rotating it it's a bare minimum it's rotating and otherwise it'll be noticed so i think we agree that i think we agree that we have some work to do in our handbook so i'm hopeful for that madam president and again in full transparency this is going on for you this also speaks to trust amongst the board if the board generally just can't get together to set an agenda well we're working on this i know that's great and we're going to get there people hope a lot i'm trying all right we're going to do it i think this meeting has proven that it's very very very difficult

142and there is a lot that's broken because i think there are fundamental principles that are not understood and i don't think the board handbook what you need to look to is the board policy not necessarily the board handbook because it's the policy that we're governed by the handbook just happens to be a written document the policy and the law and our policies say that we're governed by the law our policies and then robert's rules yeah in that order so we won't be writing a handbook that consistently synthesizes all of that but we may write a policy so that might work thank you for that okay so the next the next items are i'm not going to go through all of them um because it's just not enough time to go through all of them and

143they're not necessarily something that we need to talk about right now but there were some items that uh you know dr boom had some questions about and wanted to discuss that she submitted to us and it was the first one was a survey administered to students and employees asking what their three most important challenges are to help shape using this feedback to help shape the strategic plan do you have any discussion items on that dr bill superintendent green and i spoke about that and i think he mentioned it earlier too that he is going to work with hanover and create a survey which had a specific question about challenges that people in schools were experiencing as we move into the new year and that's going to be presented to the educators and students after labor

144day right yes is that correct awesome thank you thank you uh we talked we spoke about the board of self-evaluations um we spoke about plan board planning being publicly noticed and i think we can continue that discussion as we kind of craft our year future meetings this is something that came up um we discussed some things about it last meeting um for future meetings offered in a hybrid format with closed captioning i know mr leonard and dr baum both spoke about that do you have any other discussion on that yeah i just think that there was a call i know pat thompson asked about the cost of being involved in in doing zooms for our public meetings for our public who cannot make the meetings we either do work or child care or whatever have

145it available to them on digital video so they can review that later on uh and it's the same as this meeting's going on right now we're resuming this meeting and it's being recorded which would be posted so it'll be the same format as that for all our public meetings right now most of our public meetings are not uh videotaped or and posted so those who cannot make it in the public will not see what went on those meetings and uh so they feel like they're not part of it so that's that's the idea that i had behind that so if you have anything else so there is a huge cost involved here we've got a technology department we've got it's not just zoomed and posted i mean if people wanted to just zoom and post

146okay depends on the meeting those zooming things could be depends on whether you want the audience to be able to participate they the the media if you have enough people that if you're just recording off of you know one of the the the computers and a screen it may be a useless um recording depends on how many people are present and whether it's people online that are talking how they're going to be acknowledged who's going to monitor that you know to run a meeting and to be able to do all of that at the same time is challenging for anybody if you've got enough people in the room so yes that's why i raised the issue about cost because i think we have to i i think we have to identify what it is that

147we want what kind of meetings that we do want how we want them staffed if at all how that's going to happen and then zoom sometimes doesn't work it doesn't we've had many instances where that doesn't happen thank you any other comments i would just like to say that in speaking to constituents across the district from the bottom of market street to the hills of hokasan people have steadfastly said how much they appreciate our meetings being offered in a hybrid format they appreciate the closed captioning they appreciate the zoom option they appreciate having the video meetings recorded so they can go back and see them slash listen to them so i know our constituents have definitely asked for this and so this is something they really really appreciated so that's why i brought it to

148the table in conjunction with mr vic leonard senior i was thinking that um did you have something saying mister i was thinking that um transparency is always good and having options for access is always good but i wonder if we are doing it too much to the point that we do every single committee meeting because it kind of takes away it's not in my opinion it can take away some of the authenticity that happens in the discussion uh in those committee meetings as they're you know just sharing ideas and i know some people i know we or you know we're out on the internet so all everything we say is out there but if we want to have the level of engagement of all the community members or teachers or whatever and to not feel

149like they're on camera when they say things we might get some more authentic this is just a thought i'm i'm not i don't feel any different you know one way or the other at this point but i just wanted to kind of throw out a different perspective so this is something i think we can continue to talk about um and then if we need to put it on agenda again we can do that i do have a comment to that so i i mean i'd like to provide maybe a different perspective to um inhibited participation due to being video recorded the level of engagement that we have received during the pandemic i think would argue that point because if anything the hybrid meeting model which i've continued continuously i have consistently supported on this board

150has engaged public comment and those being able to come from their homes and watch the meeting in a public way and be a part of the red clay community as we have an upcoming referendum i think it's even more important to engage stakeholders in the work that we're doing so that we can highlight the work that we're doing but then also create a level of transparency and how their taxpayer money is being utilized so i think that having closed door meetings for public business and having discussions that utilize the resources of public taxpayer money i think we need to promote transparency to the fullest we have nothing to hide and we want everyone to be able to have a fair shot of engaging despite any challenges and barriers to getting here and i want to

151be able to eliminate the barriers of having people not make who may not necessarily have the transportation child care issues um or whatever barriers they may face to get to these meetings and to participate yeah i agree especially for a board meeting or anything that we as the board does i'm talking more specifically to the smaller committee meetings that those two for example because everything the school district does is out of public funds so you know i don't know that if the purpose of a committee and i think that's where we get away from the purpose of a committee so if everybody's going to be involved it's no need for the committee and everybody it's a big it's a everybody's part of it so the committee is is to to take the work and to

152break it up into smaller groups for those who can commit to that and who can be well informed around that we do allow for public comment because of because of the law um and so i think this is something that we can continue to talk about like some of our meetings i know are only on zoom so it's much easier for a public comment or anything like that but there's some like i know um the diversity committee meeting i couldn't even come because it's during the school day so you know it's i think it's something that we need to kind of gather some more information about i'm not against transparency i've been more transparent today probably anybody ever has here but um i think that we we really should think about all of those different

153things before we go to try to vote on it i think we really should have some really good discussion and get some other input from other people who were able to hear okay moving on um we have the uh just to address of mr leonard's administrative work group for discipline we talked about this in the board planning meeting and that we decided and i don't know if this was recalled that the next steps would be to um adhere to the memo on the discipline work group so do you have any follow-up on that i am meeting with mr leonard um specifically to address but this particular memo just for point of clarity as well um you know the working group shall remain in effect until at least august 31st of 2017. and so i think

154when we when we really look at again processes and what we're talking about relative to the admin memo this actually sunset august 13th august of 2017. and so we're going to meet to discuss how we create a path moving forward to really look at the discipline so we'll and bring something back to the board relative to this particular topic so we're due to meet next week sounds great uh mr matthews asked that ask that all requests all items be followed up by the next board meeting which is why we're going through this process and this is the follow-up and it's transparent i had a bunch of things that i was going to say but i want to hold that for another day uh and ms thompson had asked for the working group too and this

155was only we did move in second and vote on her to accept any charter applications uh and then finally there was a follow-up for you mr greene i think you might have talked about this ascending update to the board regarding communication about cep and non-cep schools we did talk about that that's what we just discussed that's the best program is there anything else uh dr boehm that i missed there is something that i missed sorry um attendance policy for board members it was something you wanted to discuss well i have a bunch of items that i'm going to submit so i can talk about that then okay but i i just wanted to follow up with what i said i was going to thank you i appreciate that okay uh reports on the dates of

156each schools implementing their dress code in uniform policy did you get that information no that's i asked you that in september for september thank you and report which outlines the steps the district is taking to eliminate inequities and charters and magnets i asked for a report in september and school safety committee that's in september but i'm going to talk about that a lot tonight okay that's all i have in terms of miscellaneous items are there any other items from the board yes i recognize dr boom okay so thank you i love the follow-up from superintendent greene and our new president um kisian smith the follow-up is terrific because we haven't had that in years past so i much appreciate that um i'd also like to say that i would love if the board workshop could

157take place prior to our next school board meeting because then we can talk about some of these items in that board workshop and then we can vote on them at the september meeting well you can't there's two two meetings gonna be on for two meetings pardon me it's got to be on emotion has to be on for two meetings kathy i know that okay can i continue sure thank you all right so we talked about the survey we talked about the legislative breakfast and i just want to mention about free lunch i'm really glad to hear that our children will receive free lunch um for the first few weeks until all parents are notified that they have to fill out their paperwork and i also wanted to share an article i read um and it

158was entitled california becomes first state to offer three meals at school for children um and the article was published on august 12th of this year and california implemented the universal meals program and they passed it as part of their state budget so that means that all children regardless of income get free breakfast and free lunch in all of their schools and they've actually started implementing that even before school started maine was the second state to do that and i think this is why the idea of the legislative breakfast is so important because then we can go to our legislators and i can say hey i'm reading all these you know articles on free lunch and this is what these states have done why don't we start to create some legislation around that in delaware so

159i look forward to the legislative breakfast the board self-evaluations i noted last month at our july 13th meeting and i said i wanted them to be an action item for this month we didn't vote on them this month so i'm saying today again this is the second meeting i've set it at and i sent it in an email that i would like board self-evaluations voted on at the september board meeting i'd also like the attendance policy for board members to be voted on at the september board meeting we can talk about board planning being publicly noticed at the workshop we can talk again about all future meetings being recorded offered in a hybrid format closed captioned and posted on our district workshop at the board workshop that should hopefully occur in the beginning of september

160so we can vote on it at the september board meeting i would also like the report for miss from mr pruitt on the dates that each school implemented their dress codes we asked for that information at the june code of conduct slash dress code meeting also at september the september meeting i'd like to know i'd like to have a report which outlines the steps the district is taking to eliminate admissions inequities and charters and magnets and in september we will be talking about the school safety committee and we will be voting on it i want to talk a little bit about that committee so that committee can have different aims or charges i'll just throw some items out here to sort of create you know an arena for a dialogue that we can have at

161our board workshop and at our meeting next month one of the charges could be to examine current scientific research and data on comprehensive school safety strategies two get to the root causes of gun violence in schools and three create a district-wide plan to increase school safety as we do this we must keep in mind that school safety means different things to different people and different constituencies and all perspectives must be considered and addressed by action steps through the plan um and i think i also mentioned this at our last meeting that school safety should be built into part to being part of our strategic plan the school safety committee should focus on structural and physical violence to reduce and prevent mass shootings community violence manifested in schools and social inequities which are structural in nature

162and which result in violence so school safety requires the examination of the impact value and effectiveness and i would put effectiveness in capital letters of one national and local school hardening plans such as ballistic panels energy alert systems sorry emergency alert systems metal detectors fences surveillance cameras sros etc should also assess two community-based violence prevention programs such as relationship-centered school models programs such as dads on duty the black organizing project the newark community street team the work that daryl chambers center for structural equity is doing in wilmington which looks at structural equity and the impact that social determinants have on health which includes violence and the work that the woman community advisory council is doing and i'm meeting with dr gwen anglett and dr henry smith tomorrow morning and they run the wilmington center bloomington

163community advisory council i also think we need to gather together a broad coalition of people so in that attempt and in that endeavor i have spoken to a number of legislators i've emailed them talked to them on the phone and texted with them and i have support from everyone that i've reached out to they think that a school safety committee would was actually very timely i also met with tracy manza murphy on july 27th who's the executive director of the delaware coalition against gun violence and we're talking through some of these measures as well i reached out to people in red clay um and i've copied superintendent green on that email i reached out to people in our security team and ask them if they'd be interested in serving on such a committee i think

164there should be content experts on the committee such as dr aaron klipchik who teaches at the university of delaware and school safety is his con content expertise he's written books on that students parents educators and of course people in the community who are doing work in this area i'll also give you ideas of some things you might want to read in regards to our conversation next month and for our board workshop i have to thank ms stevens for printing out long articles for me today thank you um so there's one article entitled the coalition of national researchers and they've released a violence prevention plan they did that on may 27th of this year and i believe to this day there are five million academics scientists researchers etc who have signed on to the plan um

165in 2021 the german network produced a a piece called the network open study and that's great because it has a ton of data and information there is a time time magazine article entitled schools are spending billions on safety measures to stop mass shootings that has a lot of great information and i found a really really terrific report it's actually by the u.s secret service and it's called protecting america's schools a u.s secret service analysis of targeted school violence and that was published in 2019 and it has some really amazing data in it so those are all things people can look at um along with any other thing you wouldn't look at but we will be voting on the school safety committee next month in september so i just want to reiterate that i'm going to

166say one more time we're going to vote on the school safety committee in september but we didn't get any information about what that school safety committee would entail so we're going to talk about that at the board workshop i think that's what superintendent greene and i talked about on our call yes but so if you could submit something to us so that we kind of know what we're voting on in september the september 17th well you guys can also go back and listen to everything i just said can you please submit so it is it is quite taxing to go back and write it down so if you send you some articles if you could submit to me the items that you would like to be on on next the next agenda okay and writing

167then then i can be clear about what is it it is that you want one there like i did two weeks like you did before yeah yes i will do it again okay thank you thank you any other items from the board seeing now we'll move on information i don't have something no no i i do want to um acknowledge again in my report um you know it's always when you give credit to folks you're bound to overlook someone so i do apologize for all of our autism eyp special programs meadowwood staff who again did that due diligence to hold and host wonderful programming for our 12 students who get esy service extended school year services so it was not by um intention to overlook them but i want all of our administrators who provided

168programs for our early learners our autism program meadowwood first state school you know their kudos and their due diligence as well because they stepped up to the plate with quality summer programming too so thank you mr green and i just have one final comment um i really appreciate the work in the hearts the time that each of the board members puts in to be able to serve on this board i know we all come from different walks of life different points of view different experiences uh and we don't necessarily we didn't come here because we're all friends but i do hope that as we move forward that we will be able to align our work to the priorities of the district the students uh and what's important and that is the school system so as

169we continue to iron out some of the wrinkles that we have i will always be transparent whether it makes me look great or or not because i do believe that we can bring together our efforts and our work so that we can make this district a destination district so i heard the comments from all of the uh people who spoke today uh as well as the teachers and so i just want to encourage everyone to to think about what your why why you're here whether you're a parent a student a staff member a teacher an administrator or just a community member who's participated in any of our meetings or any of our events and to remember our why at the end of the day because we can get caught up in the minutia of the

170day-to-day and the hard things but just remember why we're here and that we all care about the success of our district of our students and our staff so we are going to be opening up school soon and so i just wish all of you a wonderful opening uh encourage the kids celebrate the teachers celebrate the kids have fun while learning uh and we'll get through this you know it's like like a family sometimes you you have some fights and sometimes you hug so we'll get there but i am i'm honored to serve i know it's very difficult for this work but i do i want to thank everybody for all of your time and your efforts there's some information items there that you can look at choice report good calls applications choice terminations vendor contracts

171bid awards financial position position report and at this time you can have a motion to adjourn don't move second all in favor aye aye opposed have a wonderful evening and a great school opening