001comment items submitted by the board just for recognition the recognition is coming earlier no other recognitions if i support to share sure okay okay um okay we will have a role we will have a vote then we have a motion to approve the agenda as as presented and it's been seconded so we'll have a roll call vote please maria dr bohm yes mr casper yes mr matthews yes mr matthews yes yes can you hear me it's me smith yes mr wilson yes ms thompson yes unanimous vote motion carries thank you okay the next order of business is the staff recognitions and so i turn the floor over to miss taylor green good evening and thank you mrs thompson it's a pleasure to be here tonight to recognize some inspiring individuals as part of our monthly
002recognitions in red clay we have a proud tradition of devoting the beginning of our school board meetings to publicly recognize those who have gone above and beyond to achieve great things in red clay schools first up tonight we would like to formally recognize christopher chujoy who was named red clay's 2022 educational support professional of the year christopher is a paraprofessional at ana pimote elementary school where he works closely with students with autism in addition to promoting a positive image of the educational support profession at the school and in the community christopher is known for being highly knowledgeable and skilled in his role as a paraprofessional christopher grew up in peru and had a previous career in banking and finance he came to red clay as a translator and interpreter for parent conferences and school board
003meetings he then proctored for the access test for english learners and became an instructional paraprofessional with positions at red clay summer program the richardson park learning center richardson park elementary school and now anna p mote elementary school when i asked christopher what he loves most about his role at moat he said his favorite things are connecting with people and building relationships with his colleagues students and parents the positive vibes and constant teamwork make a big difference in the day he said christopher is here with us tonight along with his principal lauren young so please join me in giving them an extra loud round of applause to christopher and the bulldogs and next up earlier this month the u.s department of education recognized 325 schools as national blue ribbon schools for 2021 including red clay's own
004north star elementary school the recognition is based on a school's overall academic performance or progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups as u.s secretary of education miguel cardona stated in his announcement of the winners this year's cohort of honorees demonstrates what is possible when committed educators and school leaders create vibrant welcoming and affirming school cultures where rich teaching and learning can flourish this prestigious designation is one of the highest honors a school can earn in the united states as the national blue ribbon schools program honors public and private elementary middle and high schools where students achieve very high learning standards and schools where students are making notable improvement in closing the achievement gap this coveted award affirms the hard work of educators families and communities in creating safe and welcoming schools where students master
005challenging and engaging content tonight we're joined by several members of the northstar team who were instrumental in completing the application process to earn the national blue ribbon award they are librarian alyssa schweitzer fifth grade teacher amy joseph second grade teacher joy brogan first grade teacher sarah oberle special education teacher catherine stack assistant principal tylesha saunders and principal karen jakubowski please join me in congratulating this team who is also here with us tonight [Applause] and actually can we have all of the honorary honorees come down actually to to get recognized properly you guys did a wonderful job mr true joy as well come on down mr joy go ahead take that red carpet walk across the stage [Music] so that's christopher trujoy again red clay's 2022 educational support professional of the year followed by the north
006star blue ribbon school team congratulations thank you thank you for all your work congratulations congratulations thank you for all your work thank you congratulations so congratulations everyone and that concludes our recognitions for tonight thank you miss green and now we move on to public comment again thank you for coming out tonight to attend our meeting and share your thoughts under board policy 2006 the board encourages the staff and community to share concerns regarding school issues and educational programs sharing can be done verbally in writing and or by speaking at the board meeting under board policy 2006 the board shall provide a time period of up to 30 minutes at each board meeting for public comments which time may be extended at the board's discretion speakers are requested to give a written copy of their remarks
007to the superintendent and speakers are limited to a three-minute time period the time will be monitored and you will be able to see it on the screen you'll see a little counter countdown speakers will be unmuted by the red clay team when it's time to speak if on zoom and or at the podium and when the time is up the microphone will be muted so again thank you for coming out tonight to attend our meeting and share your thoughts our first speaker is on zoom and it's mr brandon bouchon welcome mr bushong thank you last week our monday morning routine took a sudden turn when we received notice that our oldest son had to quarantine due to exposure to covet while we were frustrated to hear this we were even more alarmed to hear of
008the district policy regarding vaccinated and unvaccinated students i spoke with the school nurse who i must say was fantastic last week to confirm the policy that vaccinated students can return to class immediately after a negative test while i guess i could have understood this policy in the spring it makes zero sense now given the information available both nationally and globally over the past few months consider the following data as taken from the world health organization country and state dashboards in september seventy percent of the coveted related deaths in the uk were fully vaccinated here in the united states cases in august and september were 200 percent higher than the same months in 2020 when the vaccine was not available from the state dashboard vermont the most vaccinated state in the country at nearly 80 percent
009of its population has 39 percent increase in cases over the past two weeks a study from the university of california released two weeks ago concluded quote no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people the same university cal released a study by a different epidemiologist concluding quote boys 12 to 14 are up to six times more likely to get myrocartitis than get acutely ill from covin a study of 620 000 us military personnel finds the johnson johnson vaccine went from 88 efficacy in march to just 3 percent in august then on august 5th the cdc director rochelle walinski said in a cnn interview question about the vaccines responding quote what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission closer to home the university of delaware which boasts a 91 vaccination rate on campus reported
010659 new cases for the month of september why do i list all these stats it's clear that whatever potency mass vaccination policy may have had in the spring and summer it's not working now warnings were issued back as early as february by the inventor of mrna vaccines that durability could be six months or less i want to make something clear we're not anti-vaxxers i get the flu shot every year and since birth our kids have received what seems like 30 immunizations recommended by the cdc however it's obvious that coveted shots are not effective at this point and looking at nearly 800 000 adverse reactions on the cdc's own reporting system it begs the question how they're still available our child sat home and played video games for four days while testing negative and presenting no
011symptoms i'm asking the board and the parties responsible for this policy to revisit it now and amend it to match the situation on the ground thank you thank you mr bushong population self-esteem language and cognition essentially when you give children the chance to move you facilitate opportunities for growth at the early years program most of our students have developmental disabilities making the need for learning through movement even greater a dlc we have a small outdoor play area and a portion of blacktop that is used for riding toys and other blacktop games indoors we only have a single classroom that hosts 16 gross motor classes per week which we call jump and play as well as individual occupational and physical therapy sessions three pts four ots and other specialists must work to coordinate the use of
012a single room for jump and play otpt and movement breaks while we have amazing therapists the single room just is not conducive to the needs additionally on rainy days or when the weather is below 20 degrees our students have no place for indoor recess i'll stress here that children need to move on sunny days but they really need to move during times of poor weather when they're less likely to go outside at home which brings us back to the gym again currently used for district storage of district materials as a teacher i totally understand the need for storage space but now that preschoolers are at the elc the gym needs to be empty and by doing so our three and four-year-olds can utilize that space for indoor recess for a jump and play that offers
013more space and room to move and the current room can be used as a dedicated space for individual therapy this is our third year at elc please don't have us go another year another winter without access to the gym we're still working through a pandemic winter is coming and our youngest students need a dedicated space for movement we should not have to wait any longer thank you and thank you so much for your email responses this afternoon thanks very much thank you dr dallas our next speaker is miss soraya gutman welcome miss gutman hello superintendent green and the board my name is it means queen of light in arabic i why you look at me so strange have you never seen anybody speak with an arabic or a deutsche accent my name is soraya morgan
014guptman my father is a first generation egyptian my mother is a first generation german my husband a first generation russian and of course our dogs are hungary i bet you're wondering what that has to do with my talk i have two things to share number one oh by the way i bet you're wondering what our family holidays are like number one is i want to say thank you my daughter mila has been through the red clay school district since kindergarten and i can say from cook elementary to hb dickinson and where she is now at mccain high school she has had outstanding teachers who have been passionate about helping her actualize her highest potential my daughter mila may forget her teachers one day but my husband and i never will i have shown my appreciation
015with the high scoring online reviews that i have done as well as starting the first award program connecting local businesses communities teachers teachers and parents many of you have had children who've received the free restaurant coupons and gifts donated by local businesses superintendent you were there at the one at cook we had a blast second i'd like to share that everyone here is empowered to make changes instead of focusing on our differences we can focus on our commonality of how we can work together if you believe as i do that parents should make the rights for the decisions of their children not the government you can make this happen as i mentioned mentioned my husband is a first generation what russian what i did not mention is that my husband is jewish i'm christian i
016bet you're really wondering now what our family holidays are like my husband lived in soviet union and he escaped communism and he knows firsthand what it means for a government to have control of people's lives yes his family had a free 900 square foot apartment and free education but it was the worst quality environment because there was no freedom you could not move or change schools in the middle of middle school he was horribly treated by teachers and kids his family did not know what to do but there was a single teacher who went out of her way to help through calls through conversations she did everything she could and she successfully got my husband to move schools then this was accomplished um in the rigid dehumanizing bureaucracy of the soviet union if that can
017be done there surely by all of us working together we can get parents get back to parents choice of deciding whether their child does or does not wear a mask does or does not take the vaccine and may have the option to opt out of any form of critical race treaty critical race teaching thank you thank you miss view good morning [Applause] our next speaker is on zune zoom miss deanne inkle welcome miss ankle is miss inkle on she's coming okay okay i see her miss inkle you are on mute or you're on mute miss ankle there you go all right sorry about that now we're here good evening my name is tien i'm a pt at the early learning preschool center i'd like to open with the statement by the vision coalition for student
018success 2025 and thank mr darrell green for his contributions to this mission the statement states as we look at education more holistically we realize that the emotional physical health of children are increasingly important to their long-term health and academic success i would like to propose a multi-disciplinary project that would maximize student services and play based experiences the collaboration of classroom teachers behavioral interventionists social emotional support staff pt ot speech could be very effective a major limitation for us to implement this multi-disciplinary student supports is that we lack an indoor space or gym where teachers and specialists can set up activities that allow movement yet maintain social distancing if we had an indoor space or gym for our preschool students to use we could address the multifaceted student needs and set them up for success in
019kindergarten and beyond the catalyst for this project would be repurposing the elc gym for student use this would allow us to expand play-based learning i emphatically plead for an expedited process to transition the gym to student use november 22nd and 23rd would be ideal target dates for us to set up a gym space to meet the wide variety of needs of our students currently attending this school year students with learning differences benefit from additional supports as ad as identified in ieps and 504s a sensory station in the gym could be used as a break between activities leading to a reduction in students experiencing emotional and sensory breakdown and improve academic performance students who use adaptive equipment face an indirect exclusion right now there is not sufficient amount of open indoor space for them to move
020around in adaptive equipment and participate with their chairs whether it's a gate trainer a wheelchair or more advanced supportive mobility currently elc does not have a room to use for indoor recess for some students recess may be their only opportunity to move freely and play safely adaptive equipment is not built to withstand rain and snow and the black wheelchair cushions become very hot in the summer access to a gym would allow physical activity for all students on a daily basis with access to a gym we will be able to provide special olympics bus buddies adaptive pe dance sports and creative arts which builds social communication skills and exposed students to new interests an indoor gym for student use would eliminate some of these barriers it takes a village and the red clay team behind the
021scenes have been remarkable three preschool sites were relocated after the last day of school and we were up and running at elc for the first day of summer school please consider the needs of our youngest students thank you miss engel our next speaker is mr stephen fackenthal welcome mr fackenfall can you hear me yes thank you good evening board my name is steven fackenthal music teacher at ritchie elementary and vice president of the red clay education association tonight i speak to you about the extraordinarily high levels of teacher fatigue and stress that is being experienced by our educators it's only october 20th yet it feels like it should be june anytime now we are tired our educators are drowning to give more insight i'd like to share with you thoughts from our educators i'm extremely
022disappointed that teacher mental health has not been mentioned by district leaders once other than a link to the employee assistance program there have been no check-ins to see how we are managing as we are also returning following and continue during a pandemic along with the absence of support or concern for our well-being we're being told to accelerate learning while we know many educators are way behind where even the lowest lowest students are in a typical year from an elementary school teacher there there is even more than normal a lack of understanding of what it's like in the classroom right now it's one thing to read and talk about how covet has affected our students but those working office jobs within the district need to take our our word on more things or come visit classrooms
023more often to really understand what is happening i've been in red i i have been a red clay employee for 15 years and i feel hopeless i'm sad for our students and then completely discouraged as a teacher the general consensus is that nobody cares i need pacing guidelines relaxed as i have kids coming back from mandatory quarantines i need to catch them up ela expects us to get through all four units this year which we have never have i get i need the micromanaging from the district to stop and just have the ability to teach and give my students what they need i used to love teaching but after this past year i am seriously considering leading the profession although i love my kids everything else about teaching is driving me over the edge why
024isn't the district listening to us we need more support we need more time to plan grade and help our students i cannot cut keep up these 60 to 70 hour weeks lastly i was in tears by 11 a.m and apparently i was the third teacher of the day to do so i was in the bathroom sobbing saying i can't do this i need a different job this isn't sustainable these words are saddening these words are heartbreaking and only a fraction of the responses i received red clay board if we are to truly respect the tireless work our educators put forward for their students then we must think about the conditions which we place upon them and how to improve that experience we must do better our working conditions are our students learning conditions thank you
025mr fackenthal our next speaker is miss caitanya john welcome miss john nice to see you good evening everyone my name is kai tanya john i'm here to speak on behalf of thomas mccain high school in the autism program i just i am in awe at the transition i have a son that is in the program he is a graduating senior in his class that's in the autism program right now there are six graduating seniors they have all have a gpa they are of at least 3.5 or better um all except for one is in honors courses there is one that's in ap courses uh my son personally has a weighted gpa of 3.9 and his unweighted gpa is 4.3 but we didn't start there that's not where we began i'm blessed to be one of
026the parents that came through the system of red clay it was a different red clay my child went to the early years program tricia dallas was his teacher what a wonderful night to be here she gave him the love and the care and the attention that he needed to deal with social anxieties to learn how to be touched appropriately how to hold a hand how to receive a hug how to accept kindness how to communicate he then went through elementary school at richardson park there so many so many teachers mr chujoy in fact was one of the aides that would assist my son throughout his time there then he moved on to stanton he went to stanton middle school dr bond i can't say enough about dr bond and how she ran the program she
027had there with children with autism my son went from failing and not trusting his academic instinct to an honor student that is how he left stanton and now we come to mckeen mccain just wrapped it up put a bow on it and gave me the best present a parent could ever wish for a child that is not only educated not only found how to use his mind and how to grow but my baby's going to college he is going to college and for me and for many parents that have a child with a disability especially a social disability you know this is incredible so i just need you guys to keep in mind there are six amazing students that although they have their challenges because life is going to be what it is and they
028do struggle these guys are rocking it they are doing it they are at the top of their class they are holding the five percent of their class and this is the autism program so the path that they all came through i believe is part of their success make sure that path is there for children coming behind them from early years to graduation mr maddox miss wagner at mckeen i give them all credit thank you thank you miss john what a what a wonderful story and then our our last speaker is mr keith anderson welcome mr anderson hello um i was here last month for my first ever meeting this is my second ever meeting and um i have three children in the red clay disc school district and um one's autistic in the program at
029richardson park and like the previous speaker i'm thrilled to death with all the education they're getting all the help that's been offered to him and i have uh twin boys that are at cook elementary uh they're in fourth grade they're not eligible for a vaccine and i understand the state's policy with mass and how they have to wear mass in school i did have a question about the recess time on recess they're allowed to go outside and take the mass off which is good because there's plenty of space but they're segregated into their classroom so i called the district and asked for why this was and they said it was due to contact tracing because if they have the whole fourth grade together and they're playing in the thing and some kid tests positive then
030the contact tracing becomes more difficult and i said to them i said to the woman on the phone i said well how many how many of the the the cases that because i just get emails from the district that somebody in richardson park i don't know whether it's administrator or it's a student or i just get the emails that somebody in this school is tested positively will be contacted my question is to her was is there any data being collected on where the contacts are coming from whether it's coming from staff or whether it's coming from students that was one point and she said we don't collect that data and i think it's pretty important because if all of the all the contact all the positive cases are coming out of staff and my kid
031should be able to play in recess with a bunch of his bunch of his friends the other part of that is after they get home they go in the neighborhood and they play with the kids from the other class anyhow so there's that the policy is really kind of um i think it's to avoid having to um collect data and monitor and i think it should be readdressed um [Music] i think that's really the only comment i have for today if there's something that could be done to to look into that to try to understand where the where the positive cases are coming from and if there's something that could be done to free these kids up the recess to have more than the same 20 kids in the playground with them the same time
032that would be great thank you mr anderson [Applause] and that concludes public comment so we now move on to approval of the minutes i have a motion to approve the minutes from the september 15 2021 executive session so moved out mr casper moves is there a second doctor bone second okay smith seconds any discussion hearing none we will take a vote please on approving the minutes maria from the exact session dr bone yes mr casper yes mr matthews yes miss d smith yes mr wilson yes ms thompson yes unanimous vote motion carries thank you now may have a motion to accept the minutes from the september 15 2021 regular session of our board meeting so move mr wilson moves is there a second second mr casper seconds is there any discussion hearing none we will
033take a roll call vote to approve the minutes from our regular board meeting of september 15. dr bone yes mr casper yes mr matthews yes miss me smith yes mr wilson yes miss thompson yes unanimous vote motion carries thank you and now we move on to the action items so the first action item is a an appointment and an assistant principle thank you madam president thank you members of the board guests who are here in person and those who are online thank you for joining us this evening for the first action item is the recommendation that the reclaime board of education approved miss monica malin as assistant principal at the conrad schools of science effective november 1st 2021 as submitted salary will be commiserate with the approval of the administrative salaries is there a motion
034so move dr bone so moved mr casper moves is there a second second mr wilson seconds any discussion okay hearing none maria we will take a roll call vote please dr bone yes mr casper yes mr matthews yes miss knee smith yes mr wilson yes ms thompson yes unanimous vote motion carries congratulations mrs mellon is in the audience welcome to welcome back to conrad mr passionately you have two weeks to get the most out of no pressure okay our next action item is a donation so it is a recommendation that the red clay board of education approve the donation from iron bar llc and dba anytime fitness to richie elementary school and the amount of three thousand dollars as submitted and this is to um again provide funds to support school supplies for students and
035teachers as needed is there a motion to move me smith miss nee smith moves is there a second second mr casper seconds any discussion other than a huge thank you to anytime fitness i don't we will take a roll call vote miss dr boehm yes mr casper yes mr matthews yes thank you miss knee smith yes mr wilson yes miss thompson yes unanimous vote motion carries thank you okay and so i just want to make clear for the record too because on the donation form the school says granny wine springs but on the actual motion it says right so we need to be clear as to the form itself actually says brandywine springs that's a very good point and it was acknowledged by bss as well so we may need to change that change that
036and it is the recommendation that the board approved the donation from anytime fitness to brandywine spring school in the amount of three thousand dollars okay is there a motion and i believe that dr bohm has been trying to say something from time to time and is unable to do that brian just so you know is there a motion to ask so moved miss knee smith moves is there a second second mr casper seconds any discussion other than a huge thank you again thank you to any side fitness for supporting red clay schools okay we'll take a roll call vote please maria dr bone yes mr casper yes mr matthews yes mr matthews yes can you hear me yes yes smith yes mr wilson yes ms thompson yes unanimous motion carries thank you so much okay
037now we move on to the action to the consent agenda so it's the recommendation that the red clay board of education approve action consent items a and b as submitted is there a motion which is just the certificate in the classified personnel reports so great so misny smith moves is there a second second mr wilson mr wilson seconds and we will take a vote please although i know mr casper wants to say something i am going to uh recuse myself from this vote mr casper is recusing dr boehm yes mr casper he's recused mr matthews yes ms knee smith yes mr wilson yes miss thompson yes five yes one of staying motion carries thank you maria and now we move on to our superintendent's report so the floor is yours mr green so again good
038evening everyone thank you madam president um we just wanted to start off by again thanking everyone for celebrating and honoring hispanic heritage month which concluded on october 15th had the opportunity to spend the day at lewis as they had their annual culminating activity where it was filled with the celebration of culture music and dance students had the opportunity to showcase their heritage and i don't know if we have a video to queue up um and if we don't we will make sure we okay today it's the end of our month of celebration for hispanic heritage month it's a very special day because kids come to school wearing their customs from their hispanic heritage and there's the band so it's a very exciting day here lewis switch so much people from different countries can celebrate and
039be who they are and my family's from mexico [Music] you feel joy and i learn about new people and i learn about new flags [Music] hispanic heritage month is our history and cultures about everything we know everything is important to me [Music] we've had a month-long celebrations the students are demonstrating their learning their knowledge their skill set but more importantly their culture and heritage this sense of belonging is something that we pride ourselves on in red clay having so many students who have hispanic and backgrounds and heritage it's an opportunity for our students to demonstrate their sense of belonging and show the true essence of who they are [Music] so thank you to dr heather townsend miss anna richter joe pedrick all the staff at the lewis williams louis dual language immersion program again this
040is an annual event that they normally host families were unable to attend this year obviously because of the restrictions that we have but the fact that they were able to pull it together we had education station there and again just a wonderful opportunity to conclude hispanic heritage month but also celebrate a large population within the red play school district and then lastly had the opportunity on saturday october the 9th to attend la fiesta hosted by one of our key partners the latin american community center and newcastle again where they had an opportunity to to showcase and celebrate uh hispanic heritage month as well so thank you to miss maria matos and miss wanda burgos who oversees the lacc for all of their efforts and again the community who supports red clay students and families this
041past week on monday we had the opportunity to work with building better communities in partnership with newcastle county and children and families first as a part of the county's initiative to reduce and support community violence and those who are exposed to community violence this building better communities is an initiative that will work directly with underserved neighborhoods throughout newcastle county to increase community engagement and reduce incidence of the violence and so we're partnering with ai middle school to have a behavioral health consultant as well as a trauma specialist in that school to support and this is being funded through the county as a part of their art funding but more importantly in partnership with children and families first so again thank you to mrs fisher more importantly thank you to dr tawanda bond who leads our
042office of equity strategic partnerships for leveraging community-based resources again to support students as this initiative kicks off we know that we have other needs and many of our other buildings so we will be working diligently especially with that middle school core group um and we know our middle schoolers who you know if anyone has a middle school or you can remember when your children were at middle school they literally lose their minds right and so literally losing their minds on top of everything that they're being forced to deal with currently you know there is a distinct need and so we will be focusing and concentrating some of our resources at that middle school level we had a wonderful time celebrating our 2022 teachers of the year um we celebrated our newest teachers of the year
043on october 7th with a special ceremony at thomas mccain high school with catering from our very own highlanders uh thank you to chef over there at mccain they do a wonderful job and really being able to showcase their career pathway for the students who participate in the culinary program again did a wonderful job honoring and recognizing our educators teachers of the year who were presented with plaques and video profiles and then our district winner mr matthew marion had the opportunity to be one of 20 state finalists to go up for state teacher of the year red clay didn't bring it home uh this year uh you know as miss kim stock who was the current or outgoing state teacher of the year um from last year um was in attendance as well so congratulations to
044all of our building winners and to mr marion for representing us at the state level as we continue with various mitigating strategies the state has put in place an emergency order requiring vaccinations for weekly testing for employees effective november 1st so for any staff member who is unvaccinated they will have to participate in weekly testing we are in the process of working with the data service center to put together a portal to support that effort for staff members throughout the district and so more information will be released to our hr department relative to what that will look like starting november 1st talking about career-driven education we have the opportunity to participate and highlight our mccain highlanders students who are participating in the patient care career pathway which is a career technical education pathway we have
045students who are currently at mccain high school um who are working with dell tech to actually get their certified nursing assistant certificates so we have students who are graduating from mccain who had the opportunity to become certified nursing assistants upon graduation actually interesting enough we had a cohort of students last year if they were 18 and they were able to pass the test actually went directly into the workforce while in high school as a result of the front line worker and health care shortage so we currently have several students who are participating we were able to showcase two students in particular who are current seniors who are pretty much doing all of their course work in at delta community college um while still at mccain but they're really being able to not only with their
046they currently have their certified nursing assistant certification um they're well on their way to you know attain a bachelor's in nursing so that was their goal again this is a pathway that is demonstrating a lot of success so thank you to all of the staff members at mccain i also want to thank representative maya brown who is a nurse by trade although she is also a state representative who continually works and advocates for those students who are participating in that career pathway and that announcement while we were there is actually looking at expanding uh career pathways down through the middle school level we know that you know as many students want to explore particular careers and they get interested in a pathway we also know those high school years go by extremely fast and the
047ultimate goal is to have students leave with as many certifications and high school diplomas their high school diploma you know so if they choose to go directly into the workforce they're leaving with bible certification to actually make themselves employable as we look at the labor market and the labor market demands more so than ever we have a lot of high skill highways jobs that students can actually access so really looking at that career pathway at the middle school level to put them on a stronger path to success at earlier especially for those students who have clear directions who are goal oriented um that was kind of the initial announcement that took place that day when we were also able to honor and recognize mccain patient care students just for the community to be aware um
048with regards to our esser art funding just really taking a closer look at the funds that red clay has received again this has been covered with our cfrc and we've shared it widely we've had to support and implement or actually excuse me submit our district plan to the state on august 23rd it is posted on our website just in terms of those resources um there was really three series of funding that we received throughout this pandemic but this particular presentation is focusing on round two which we've looked at long-term closure so when school shut down in the impact of long-term closure we looked at the supplies providing mobile meals to students you know when we had our transportation department we weren't transporting students but who also you know deliver meals to the community that was
049the you know looking at long-term closure that was one example looking at instructional technology the fact that students through grades three to twelve had had a device grade six to twelve you know travel with them be immediately pivoted with our technology department and i would say now and every student throughout red clay and even looking at our preschoolers have access to technology looked at broadband hot spots you know professional development as we had the pivot and teachers had to room and zoom you know what were those supports that we had to put in place and then really looking at learning laws a lot of that is set aside so we purchased the i-ready assessment we just went through that first round of assessments staff members are in the process of analyzing that data putting students
050in you know rti groups response to intervention looking at supports and then other employment calls such as instructional supports professional development purchasing of materials to not only support academic but social emotional needs and then focusing on facilities repairs touchless water fountains for example some of the things we were able to put in the buildings additional furniture around cafeteria tables to be able to ensure that we can adhere to the physical distancing requirements and then additional supports in terms of nursing supports contact tracing and again we know our nurses continue to be under a lot of pressure as it relates to state requirements around contact tracing we were able to hire two additional float nurses as well as additional pools of sub nurses so additional up to about four different additional nursing staff we currently have
051a posting for supports around you know contact tracing and then sr 3 part 3 funding 20 of that has to get set aside for learning loss again preparedness for response efforts get additional ppe different materials of things that we would need cleaning supplies science we had a major set aside for improving air quality around hvac things that people don't notice but ultimately we benefit from when we have better air quality and then addressing the needs of our students that means additional staffing around including school psychologists student service coordinators behavior interventionists speech and language pathologists lift vans for transportation needs and other curricular supports for students with disabilities and so these are just some detailed kind of big broad bucket areas that again our citizen financial review committee oversight had insight to this and again just
052for the general public to have knowledge about what we're doing with the federal money that we received to support our coveted and then just for the community to be aware coming up on october 26th we will have a school choice information session at 6 00 pm this will be virtual it will be a zoom event so you can see details at redclickschools.com backslash choice again details are at redclayschools.com backslash choice and i will turn it over to the man of the hour and don't be nervous uh next time you hear ben mr williamson uh again we're fortunate as a district um to really continue to try to elevate and pride ourselves on on student voice and we heard our board last year advocating that we have a student representative so ben is actually the third
053student representative that we've had joined the board since july and i will turn it over to mr williamson who is a student at the conrad school of science good evening my name is ben williamson and i'm from conner school of science thank you mr greene for having me here tonight it's truly an honor to be here i also want to give a quick shout out to miss malin i had her in seventh grade for english and she was so much fun and you're the perfect fit for the to be our vice principal so congratulations um i'm on the con i'm on the red clay student representative to the board and i would like to share with all with all of you what we do once a month a student leader as myself sits out on
054a board meeting to give student opinion and to take notes after the meeting i joined a zoom with seven other student leaders from different schools and share a recap of what we have discussed we then plan for the next meeting by having an open conversation about questions problems concerns or just general thoughts and feedback the next action that we decide we best is making sure we're effectively communicating what's going on at these meetings at every high school to every high school student whether it be through email schoology or social media the student representatives do a few questions for the board these questions are raised at multiple high schools and are brought to the attention of the student leaders if it's all right i like they ask them now uh the first question is how does
055the school board communicate curricular decisions so i mean teachers are always saying that like the curriculum has been changed however students always don't know what is changing is this information available to students for why and how it's changing and how it affects the student i repeat the question you couldn't quite understand the question oh yeah how does the school board communicate the curricular decisions thank you and just to engage with you ben typically the school board really isn't necessarily involved we do have our teaching and learning department formerly the office of curriculum and instruction that works with our building level school leaders it works with our educators to come up with those decisions but i would generally say in this time of space that we find ourselves in especially with school leaders such as yourself
056again in the pride ourselves on student voice this is a unique opportunity over the last couple years of really engaging our students in that learning process and learning not just in what you're receiving but learning and being able to to have some decision making and you know the types of texts that you're reading the complexity of the text the activities that you're engaging in so your very presence here um is an example of you know where we're heading as a district to be able to not only just advocate you know programs like the mikva challenge the soapbox challenge all of those opportunities and avenues is to really allow our students to have some say in a direction that in what you're learning but it also allows us to not have blind spots right in terms
057of we think we know it all through that engagement and through that interaction with our student population allows us to make some decisions especially if it's not resonating or registering with our students it gives us an opportunity to engage so mr sam golder and then mr mark pruitt who works with obviously the student leadership group uh will be a direct point of contact for you guys things come up relative to curriculum decisions that you might have questions about or suggestions about things that we can improve upon as it relates to what you're learning awesome thank you um our second one is will gender-neutral bathrooms be a part of the transgender policy say that again will gender-neutral bathrooms be a part of the transgender policy so we're waiting on we're waiting we have a policy meeting
058coming up and we should have a report from the committee on the transgender policy in december so we're hoping to hear what the recommendations are for that policy to be put in place and then any action steps after that and i just want to go back to your other question um about communicating curricular decisions the curriculum should be available on the website at least the oversight of things on our website as well but i do think it's a great idea for our students to have some insight into what they want to learn because that helps you to continue to grow and learn and choose your pathways so i know that president thompson had discussed at the beginning of this school year having a curriculum committee member from the board to attend to be able to
059inform the public and so that might come up again thank you that's everything thank you all very much and before you conclude your report this is um board member matthews can you guys hear me portion um i do want to thank high schools we are in the season of homecoming hello i know today three out of our five high schools have already hosted homecoming um and again where we found ourselves last year with being in a remote setting and not having anything and students actually engaging in activities and again with all the requirements and everything that we're dealing with you know thank you to you know all of our high schools sponsors parents ptsos boosters and such for all that you're doing again to bring some normalcy back um under their current circumstances and i
060generally just want to encourage everyone as students do engage in these positive opportunities and events we need to be mindful of student behavior and conduct outside of school and not really putting students in risk to display at-risk behavior you know after parties and things that may be taking place you know for our families just to be conscious of again supporting our students with healthy decision-making as best we can but also ensuring that you know we work collaboratively as a community to show that we're doing everything that we can on behalf of our not just our high schools but also our middle schools and our elementary schools um i'm sorry but i was i wasn't um i didn't elaborate yet on the bullet points about some highlights alright alright i would now like talk about a
061few highlights from conrad conrad has a ton of opportunities to expose students to different languages and cultures sixth grade students are required to take spanish one marking period while and taking chinese the next once the year ends the student and their families choose which language the student is most comfortable with so they can continue this um to pursue it throughout their conor career our eighth graders had the potential to earn high school credits um you earn high school credits from their middle school language classes during high school ap spanish and ap chinese are available to students conor is also to proud to announce that we offer ap literature in both english and spanish i like to thank our fantastic world leader teachers because they have enabled sixth to twelfth grade success conor has proud announced
062that 70 plus percent of our students are involved in involved outside of the classroom students are finding the opportunities to grow their interests in athletics clubs and other after school activities for instance our honor society is helping out with athletic events our middle school science olympiad has attended nationals the last two years and is expecting another great season and our green club had a trash audit last wednesday in order to identify how to waste less at conrad last week conrad held a coveted friendly homecoming as well as well as a full week of spirit engagement from both the staff and the students we brought back hallway decorations we brought back the pep rally and we bought we brought back the parade we've also started a new for a new few traditions at conrad we're currently
063planning an outdoor movie night for our conrad seniors this won't be a fundraiser it'll just be a fun event for the students in my opinion however my favorite tradition that the student council started this year is allowing students to paint their own parking spots it was a huge success that boosted the students spirits during the beginning of the year finally communications conrad students benefit a tremendous amount from support from the from the staff family and community in order to strengthen this relationship student leaders are using conrad's broadcasting program to relay academic athletic and after school activity highlights to our families and community for instance every tuesday we post a shout out video to a teacher that the students believe deserve extra recognition we really appreciate the effort from our conrad teachers during this pandemic students
064interested in attending conrad have not been able to tour our school our broadcasting youtube channel gives families an insight on life at conrad i appreciate this opportunity on conrad's behalf mr green the school board thank you for allowing our voices to be heard thank you ben thank you appreciate it good job and i can i just say i believe that mr matthews and dr boehm both wanted to say something so mr matthews would you go first absolutely thank you so much uh president thompson yes i i think the members um who are participating virtually were able to hear me but i i wanted to add um to our student representatives um questions that were asked earlier and i i wanted to start off by saying excellent work um mr williamson you have done an incredible
065job reporting out tonight um in response to your question about the um transgender policy i did want to note um and i wanted you to share this back when you do meet with the rest of the student representatives in your follow-up meeting that the next policy review committee meeting is at 5 00 p.m in the district office um i just want to make sure that you had that date and that information to share um with you and in in your group and providing the important feedback and input that you guys provide so thank you for that thank you i i believe it's a it's a zoom meeting mr matthews just so you know uh you know i was basing that information on the website mr green can you make sure that's updated for the rest
066of the community as well we will send out policy committee the correct information thank you for watching and then dr boom are you done mr matthews i am thank you dr boehm hi mr williamson this is dr baume and i just wanted to say thank you so much for your comments tonight i have a daughter who attends conrad she's in the 10th grade and i do have to say she missed the bus one day and i drove her to school and i was so excited as i was leaving the back of the school and i saw all the parking spaces colored in and painted with all different types of colors and images and sayings and that actually made my entire day and i was asking her about it so i'm really glad that you bought
067that up this evening i also wanted to just make a quick comment about your question on how curricular decisions are shared by the board and i don't have an answer for that because i don't think the board really does that but i think it would be a great thing to do as we move forward and i also think that students should be part of the process of developing what students are taught in school every day so maybe that even takes it a step further but i would definitely welcome meeting with students all across the district and hearing what you all have to say and i do really appreciate your um question about the gender neutral bathrooms and i know that when mr matthews submitted the uh transgender policy that the christina school district wrote and
068implemented well over a year ago that there was a lot of information in there so i'm looking forward to seeing what our policy will bring and i appreciate your questions and comments thank you so much thank you thank you okay all right and if there are no other questions we will transition just to the last part um of the presentation i think our board and district as we talk about you know expectations around transitioning from a focus on curriculum instruction and teaching learning we have mr golder here our senior director to just kind of share a brief vision about where we're heading thank you mr green i don't really want to follow up ben but i guess i don't have much of a choice that was a great job miss mr williamson but i'll do
069it anyway because that's my job so i'm here tonight from the office of teaching and learning proud to present some of the work that our department has done over the past two months uh you know when i when i first moved from director of secondary schools to this role the thing i heard most in the field was that that teachers and schools wanted to see the content coordinators in the building and so we have made an unbelievable effort in these first 60 days to be very visible and we have done nine formal walk-throughs now of of our schools and i'm going to call them out because i'm real proud of the work the schools that we have visited have accomplished ai middle skyline stanton highlands shortage warner richardson park north star and heritage and what
070we have found you know you heard earlier the job is tough and the job is tough there's no question about that but what are people obviously know in the field is that our students that's who we're here for deserve the best that we've got and i'm proud to report to you in our visits they're getting the best that we've got we have been absolutely floored by the great work of our educators in these nine visits so i want to preface my words in saying that we've been out there we've been visible and we're very pleased with what we've seen the main job of my office and you know for now and this is early is to put systems in place that make the job easier in the field that's what a district office is for
071ultimately by the way our role should be to pick the conditions at the school level so good that student achievement opportunities are optimal and so as a district office representative that's the position we are in to put these systems in place systems like and this is the first slot pacing gods were brought up earlier pacing guides should be when they're done right an assist for a teacher they should be and that's why in the development of our newer pacing guides we have some social studies ones in order right now we're enhancing our science pacing guides elementary social studies as well we've got teachers helping us to write them now for ready jen for math expressions where we have some pacing guides that are in place we need to work with teachers to see what pacing
072is working what pacing isn't working and have those conversations to the best of our ability i've been in the job about a minute but we're working on it we've been in the we've been in nine schools i've heard the pacing commentary as well and it's a conversation we're having in our department other systems teacher driven plc's it's phrased that way on purpose we believe in our heart of hearts that plcs are to be teacher-driven literacy plans we didn't have a good district literacy plan in place in red clay literacy is where it's at at the end of the day we get literacy right we get all the other subjects right that's a big play for us here early on we've obviously given our first i ready assessment that data is coming back we're seeing where
073our our weaknesses are we're seeing where we have risk and now we have plans in place for rti moving forward and we're grouping our students grading is a big conversation in red clay we know we went k to three standards based now we're talking four to five and six to twelve what does a grade mean what's the difference between a 91 and an 86 percent the grade reporting committee had their first meeting yesterday those are good conversations and if you ever want to get a topic where teachers have strong opinions it's the topic of grading because every teacher believes their grading method is exactly the one we should be using so those are really good professional conversations and then finally of course our instructional visits which i mentioned just previously so here's you know what
074we laid out as a 60-day plan when i first got the position and met with the new department and we've been really proud to already put some systems things in place things like pd that was exactly the same for all 27 schools to start the school year we haven't had that in 16 years i've been a part of red clay every school receives the same message from their administration again in that in that ultimate hope that we become a school system not a system of schools and i make that i i make that separation very intentionally when i use those words we implemented i read we've initiated a district-wide pd for the second faculty meeting of every month again the opportunity there is all we hear is we don't have enough pd time we hear
075that across the board almost everyone we talk to our building level administrators were kind enough to us to say you know what we'll take the first faculty meeting of the month curriculum team you take the second our team did a phenomenal job rolling out that first go at this in the second faculty meeting in september you deliver a pd to a thousand teachers for an hour after school it's quite an undertaking i'm proud of the group for coming up with that edmentum of course is our online program that we're offering right now for students who are unable to be with us in person tortured of a graduate of course i spoke on that at a previous meeting that subcommittee is currently in discussions about the characteristics that will go with each of the different areas
076of the portrait and then finally in the 60-day plan we're talking about curriculum councils and how they're set up how we deploy our resources trying to be a little more proactive less reactive on how we spend money and then finally i mentioned of course how we're working on our scope and sequence documents ultimately for the benefit of the teacher if they're done well so again here's really our b that was the 60-day plan you know that's a small scope here's big scope three to five years can we the number two is the big one up there can we use the crisis we all just went through to take a breath step back and realize here is an opportunity to reset in red clay we've all been out of school now for some time we've all
077had our own methodologies of getting through these last two years but with our strategic plan sun setting at the same time we come back from a pandemic the time is right and the time is now to say now's time for a reset and we want ultimately of course for all of our students to have meaningful and enriching classroom experiences are the issues complex of course the issues are complex and i'm going to speak to that in just a couple slides mr green so what's the path forward then for our department as we try to carry out some of the initiatives that i mentioned earlier well the biggest one early is the increased visibility that i spoke to earlier including walkthroughs teacher touch points listening to folks in the field and i emailed several teachers yesterday
078that were phenomenal in our visits to and i wanted them to know as proud to be in a district that they taught it because that's how you feel when you leave our school buildings you feel inspired and you feel hopeful the intangibles though from my department and this is where i think under mr green's leadership we've we've gotten really good in in red clay we want to be customer driven we're here to support not to be a compliance driven entity and if the feel is still out there that that's what we're doing we need to fix that because we're here to support because only when we do that are the conditions right for student success and we're about the business of teaching and learning that's what we're about that's our calling that's what we went
079to school for and that's what we're here to do and that brings me to number four yeah we're going to be unified and voiced and organized but we're also going to avoid distractions and folks there are many there are many some which are unavoidable some which are created and the created ones we're going to avoid this because they don't help us in our ultimate goal we're going to spend time with teachers who promote reasonable and worthwhile ideas because ultimately that's what we want to do out of our office and mr golder to that point we will be um following up on a recommendation from ms kempstock who was again the state teacher of the year and we will be engaging our 2022 teachers of the year um for convening to to really solicit and seek
080their input as our model educators across the district about ways in which we can continue to better support all of our educators but more importantly replicate a lot of the good quality teaching that we see you know happening across but that old adage of working smarter not harder how can we leverage those resources across the district to to look at model examples and replicate where we see those successes in the case where the team went to visit heritage um and really seeing their collaborative planning to look across a grade level or the work that we just recognized and honored north star for or when we hear about how mccain is is knocking about the park as it relates to autism program you know how can we look at those shining examples that we have across
081our district to be able to replicate those um situations both academically and then also socially you know we talked about what ben just shared a school like conrad where you have 80 of the students participating in either extracurricular co-curricular activities that school is always buzzing you know that's why it's a desirable uh you know school for for many across the district because our students are engaged in the 6th through 12th grade and again i i know it's hard work but as i traverse and drive about this district and i pass a school like skyline where i see middle school sports happening you see your volleyball game going on simultaneously about you have a middle school field hockey game with a middle school soccer game you know really taking that holistic approach and kind of taking
082a step back i know when you're in the weeds and you're in the trenches it's hard to see that from time to time and that's where we as a district office will continue to work um and engage with our union leadership our teacher leaders across the district to find those opportunities where we can be lose tight and support them in their efforts because we know that they're rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work that's necessary and all this really brings me to to my final slide which which is one of my favorite quotes and by the way this picture is albert einstein teaching a physics class at lincoln university in it's a pretty cool freaking picture and and mr green said that to me earlier i had never seen the picture and i
083said we got we got to get this in the presentation it's that good of a picture but anyway that the quote uh everything must be made as simple as possible but not simpler and it's a great quote and and and what he meant by that really was the the complexities of what we deal with in particular in public education are not going away it's complex stuff it's not going to get simpler but are we able to not provide simple answers to complex problems no but are we able to put things in place that are structural in nature that are logical that make common sense and that are in a step-by-step approach to take those very complex problems and give them some order as we move through and that's going to be our goal in the
084next set of strategic planning process we're going through and that's going to be our structure as we really look to make some tangible differences here with our academics and right clay thank you mr golder thank you members of the board and that concludes the superintendent thank you mr green president thompson may i ask some questions sure thank you uh thank you for that um thorough report about what's going on i just have a few questions first first first a few comments i'd like to say i think you're doing a fabulous job as you transition into your new role and i appreciate the transparency and sharing of information i do have a few questions that may be able to help some people as well in in the plan you talked about the edmonton implementation and i
085know that is a third party kind of resource and we are continuing to evolve uh i'd like to encourage your your groups and other curriculum people to really think forward with innovation in terms of how we can develop curriculum on for online learning even colleges right now are using a lot of that i actually had someone reach out to me um to my program in another state from delaware a school district because they are starting to move forward with trying to think about ways we can have more blended learning opportunities and i am very impressed with red clay and i know that we can continue to stay on the forefront of innovation i know there's a lot of work to do another thing on your plate but really to start have maybe a subgroup start
086to do some research around that very fair understood and then i have a question about curriculum councils can you tell me more about that since i'm a little bit newer to the district sure so there's a lot of history here so so over a decade ago the red clay school district put a policy together around curriculum councils and that policy was pretty prescriptive at that time about who could be on a curriculum council specifically what their role was and the idea was that group was to vet new curricula and it would go through them first to do all of the research all the planning all the background knowledge and then they would vote to send two or three curriculum ideas to what was the curriculum cabinet at that time if the vote got through the
087curriculum cabinet then sure enough it was brought to to the greater board body for for a vote on a new on a large bottle these aren't we're not talking three thousand dollar you know side items we're talking about large adoptions over the years the curriculum councils have evolved somewhat uh and i would even you know say that depending upon the content area english math science social studies each of the content supervisors sort of see theirs a different way ela uses theirs to to actually enter some of the data when we come to tiered grouping math she uses some of her folks to actually deliver some of the pd at the beginning of the year so suffice it to say we're a little all over the place on curriculum councils something i kind of want to
088get a little bit tighter it was even in the slide that we're kind of rethinking the way we do this and whether they're even necessary as they're currently put in place we're even having that discussion but either way we want it to be that the ela curriculum council should look like math should look like social studies and science because that over the years has just sort of gotten away from us so it is an upcoming initiative thank you and i also saw that you had a literacy plan in place um coming up i i think that's great i'd like to see at least in the upper grades more novels being read um hopefully that's part of your plan um as a parent of a middle schooler and a former high schooler i i just found
089that they did not have as many texts uh authentic texts to navigate so whether that's non-fiction or fiction i think that i know we have those resources that help them prepare for the state assessments and whatnot and get those standards which is the what the curriculum is really built on is the standards so and i think not a lot of people know that you know when we talk about what we're going to teach is the line to the standards for the state and then finally um two more things the magnet program so my son goes to conrad conrad's a great school i want all of our schools to have that same feel so hopefully and i heard a lot of great things tonight that will continue to develop each school so they can have this
090own unique print on on red clay but be just as desirable as some of the magnet schools and then as we consider to the strategic planning process is that something that has already started and how and who might be involved in that process well our pro our plan is ending this year so i'll you know let mr green speak to the process strategic planning process the community needs to be involved and that that would be a broader stakeholder you know community-wide effort as it relates to schools um you know as you indicated we have a diverse offering of programs whether you're looking at magnet um you know our new language immersion programs you know really looking at it from a holistic standpoint so this just isn't a top-down way of us kind of creating a
091planning and rolling it out it will be a comprehensive approach to how we're looking at strategic planning how folks are engaged because simply we can't do it as a district especially where we find ourselves and really looking at what does in-school time after school time and out-of-school time look like and how do we leverage community partners how do we leverage um you know contractors and other folks who are providing resources and services for students with disabilities how do we look at our early learners but in that context to looking at students who are with us through 21 and and beyond at this point as it relates to you know a lot of the legislation and things that are being rolled out so we will take a broader comprehensive approach in terms of how we play
092thank you if a public member wanted to be involved in that process how would they inform you or how would that be selected we'll roll out online structure okay thank you so much for uh answering these questions thank you appreciate you guys okay thank you mr golder so now we move on to our committee reports and i think the first committee report this month was the in in order of uh what's listed here was the cfrc the community financial review committee i am the member the board member on the cfrc and at our community financial review committee jill did a great job of explaining the esser funding which mr green went into in his report we've had three different esser grants mr green explained all of that and the monies that we have which is
093about 73 million from the federal government all of which is must be spent within a three-year time period so there's a somewhat short window uh miss florey is going to continue to update the cfrc on these grants and how we're spending them over the going forward over the uh three-year period as she does with all the other monies that we spend so we will continue to be looking at all of this and our expenditures there and madam president before you continue just as it relates to the public knowledge just being mindful that again there's a huge influx of again federal funds that are coming in through the districts and coming in from states we are being cautious as it relates to sustainability especially as an organization who puts a lot of people in place and
094beyond when that federal those federal funds dry up and go away what does that mean for sustainability in terms of the people resources and programs that we put in place so that's something that we're being cognizant of as it relates to how we strategically use those funds so that we can sustain programming the last thing you want to do is to build up a system then in three years you know we saw an experience that were things like race to the top where we look at competitive grants most often you know we want human capital or human resources understanding that at a certain point we want to be good stewards of our local taxpayer dollars and not have to go out to acts and sustain things that were propped up based on settlement absolutely and
095that's one thing that miss florey always talks about and is always cognizant of um so another thing we talked about was that the financial hr payroll and business offices are have been very busy at least recently with covered leaves vaccine mandates that mr green talked about starting 11-1 and the re-coding of expenditures given the timing of the esser grants and the expenditures of the money so those offices have been overly taxed as of recent um and they're pretty small offices so they're doing a great job otherwise we're we are in a strong financial position our revenues received are at 60 percent right now and our expenditures are at 28.4 both of which are pretty much in line with where we were last year the expenditures were all in line except for those that had to
096be recoded because of the esser funding you know it was put in one bucket and now it's going to have to be coded to the appropriate bucket so again the financial review committee is always on top of it and ms florey does a great job leading it so that's my report for the cfrc the next one i believe is the the next on the list is the diversity committee and i believe the members there are miss me smith dr boehm and mr wilson [Music] so i don't know if anybody has a report dr bone does okay does martin wilson have a report i'm happy to let him present no uh we said dr bone but you were at the committee meeting right i'm not ready for 40 questions if you have a report you can
097give it i'm just asking if you had a report mr wilson that's all i was asking no need to get upset um i did notice that the diversity committee report placed under the agenda is actually the minutes from the diversity meeting from september 28th and minutes from the meeting are different than committee reports so i just wanted to share that with the audience and my report is brief the meeting was short it was about 45 minutes and in the meeting we discussed hb 198 and hb 318 the first one had to do with black history and implementing it in the curriculum from k through 12. so we're going to be teaching and students are going to be learning a lot more about black history in the upcoming years and hb 318 is about the holocaust
098and genocide refers to state-sponsored mass murder so students are going to be learning much more about the holocaust and the death and the killing of people in germany during that period we also talked about pd for committee members and that was part of a conversation on the restructuring of how the diversity committee will operate so there will be a number of sessions that are just for um the diversity committee members who work in the school so they'll have more intensive pd and then we'll have shorter meetings for the entire body and i think that's going to take the 45 minutes we also talked about school discipline and i'm going to talk a little bit more about that when i talk about the code of conduct meeting that's going to occur on october 28th but one
099of the things that i received feedback from the diversity committee on was the fact that some of the board members who were in attendance at that meeting didn't understand the significance of pronoun usage and they felt that they were belittled in that process so one of the recommendations multiple people made to me about that diversity committee meeting was that the board needs much more training when it comes to diversity so whether um what happened was intentional or not intentional we want to try and make sure that members of the diversity committee who work in our buildings aren't insulted by remarks that board members make so i just wanted to share that with the broader community um i also wanted to talk a little bit about the code of conduct meeting which has not occurred yet
100but the agenda has been sent out and that meeting is on october 28th and it's at 4 30 p.m and it will be offered by zoom and it's open to the public and the first item on the agenda will be public comment so in perusing the agenda i saw that it was abbreviated and it was quite short and i would say that we need to add a conversation on the ideological underpinnings of punishment and discipline to the agenda and that can specifically address some of the conversations we've been having about dress codes that multiple members of our community have been bringing up over the last few months even including how dress codes are proposed and enforced at school graduations because we had four graduations and there was a different dress code for every school that
101you know had students graduating so that's one thing to talk about um so i just wanted to talk a little bit about those dress codes i can do it now or i can do it under information items submitted by the board what would be your pleasure i think we should go forward with the committee reports okay okay just do it now oh do it now go ahead okay thank you um so if we're talking about dress codes and uniforms i think one of the questions that we should ask and this really should come under the code of conduct is are we willing to take away student instructional time to punish students for not wearing the clothing that adults want them to wear in our schools we should also be asking is there consistency of enforcement
102in dress code and uniform violations another question we can ask is what do our relative risk scores indicate about dress code and uniform infractions and the ensuing discipline that students experience we can also ask can we see the relative risk scores for the data when it comes to uniform and dress code violations another question is are there racial gender class heterosexist and transphobic narratives embedded in our dress code uniform and policy our dress codes and uniform policy another question is do dress codes criminalize students are dress codes and uniform policies gender neutral do dress code sexualize students especially young women and femmes what is the correlation between dress codes body type intersectionality and discipline and what role do students play in creating dress codes and uniform policies and have students in the past played a
103role in dress code and uniform policy creation and if we want to look forward right in the uh with the idea that we do want to move forward we can look to a number of districts across the united states that have done really proactive work in the last five years in regard to dress codes so i'll throw two out there that people can take a look at uh the san jose unified school district in california has a great policy that they've been working on with student input and the portland public schools does as well so those are things that i think the um the code of conduct committee should think about and discuss and then we should have movement around some of these issues so i'd like those items added to the agenda thank you
104so much okay thank you i believe the next committee report is the dropout prevention committee and i attended that right before this meeting so um we um we were taught we were informed about the boost 22 initiative so communities in schools is it's part of communities in schools which is an organization that was created in 1977 in new york city which is about relationships not programs that change children the mission is to surround students with a community of support empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life so boost 22 is a new initiative and it is a collaboration with all five newcastle county school districts and one charter school freer academy it's focused on seniors in the city of wilmington only to get 100 of those students to graduate in the may june
1052022 time period so mr lampkin and mr barnhill spoke with us about what that program is about and fundamentally there are three community graduation coaches red clays is mr brian barnhill each district has a liaison that's mr mike simmons who led our dropout prevention meeting there are four already in in new castle county four high school site coordinators and there's one at mccain and ai high school the organization will serve about 350 struggling students they're going to get baseline data but the goal is to get all of those students to graduate this may or june which i think is a which is a wonderful goal when when mr boyer was here we talked we had a i think it was a 0.05 dropout rate and that and it went up a little bit and now
106we want to push it down as much as we can so i think it sounded like a wonderful program we also got a report on the visiting teachers from the visiting teachers and what they do red clay has four of them um in in red clay visiting teachers they really it and they they talked about what the role of the visiting teacher is but fundamentally they collaborate with building administrator administration to identify those students with attendance challenges they liaison between the school and the parents they work with the parents and the students to ensure that the students really get in school and attend school and they enforce the district and state attendance requirements i'm sure i haven't i didn't get quite everything but fundamentally they're the liaison between the students the parents and the building
107to get students to attend school because you know we want to make sure that our students in school that's probably the best way to ensure that we get them to graduate a lot and this boost 22 initiative sounded really good um mr simmons was talking we should have dropout data soon which we're going to be talking about and there really was no public comment so it was a quick meeting but it was really full of details and i really thank mr simmons for running a really good meeting madam president yes i just like to say that sounds like a great program sorry um is there a point of contact for the voice the boost 22 i'm just interested in learning more about it i would call mike simmons are you referencing boost 22 yes we
108can have a conversation about it so the inception was really around supporting students coming out of the pandemic um when we don't have as clearly defined heater patterns or boundaries or lines within the city of wilmington how we all work together as partnering districts to support the community as a whole um you know you might have a student on let's just say 26 in market for example who has access to 15 different high schools you know so how do we as a collective group throughout the county and really look at how do we pool resources share information um as a response to the pandemic to ensure that's why it's referencing groups 22 to class 22. how can we avail ourselves so that if red clay has resources that a student and christina may benefit from
109for example how can we share information and connect them and so the other districts hired a position through communities and schools as a graduation coordinator we use existing resources in red clay we did not look to hire additional people we looked at our existing resources and working with mr golder at the time we did working with our school counselors did like a quick junior audit you know who are the students who reside within those um in those areas that might be in need of support you know are they short credits you know so is it that option that they just might need an online credit uh is it something relative to attendance are they dealing with um you know housing issues you know what what's impeding their ability to kind of cross that finish line
110in 2022 um so we just had conversations with superintendents would be something that we could really prove that we can work together to support the community as a whole rather to kind of just define our districts by boundaries and by lines geographic lines that really don't play out in the community so that's kind of the exception of it the background i was around but if you need additional access to that okay thank you and then mata president i just wanted to note certain dates for the rest of the meetings that are coming up go ahead okay um and i think it was mentioned earlier but the board policy review too many meets on october 27th at 5 00 pm code of conduct committee on october 28th at 4 30 pm and the red clay education
111foundation meeting is november 10th at 7 30 pm and they'll just have some acknowledgments and after the reports okay so the next uh i don't think there was a facilities committee meeting this past month because that's quarterly so the next one is the wellness committee and i attended that on september 22nd um jess ferran does a great job and she has put in a lot of materials into board docks for us meaning our prior minutes the budget and and and the description of the wellness champion but fundamentally we approve the minutes from the prior meeting she showed us pictures of the chairs that were bought by the committee for various outdoor classrooms because the committee does some fundraising and then uses that to support wellness activities within the red clay community she recapped what the
112community has done this last year we spent a lot of time reviewing the wellness plan and policy and proposing upgrades we collaborated on upgrades throughout the district we added sections on student health as well as social emotional wellness for all it was presented the upgraded plan was presented to the board in july and obtained a board approval champions were suggested just like diversity diversity champions so we can spread the word and have programs in each building and the wellness champions were approved and now there's a draft of what that position description is would be like these folks will be part of the wellness committee um and they will create a wellness comm community at each school and carry the messages to and from the school and then they will put on wellness programs within the
113school there's more it's all in the job description which is in the inboard docs and we hope that each will hold a wellness night at the school we want to draft a subcommittee assessment tool for each part of the wellness plan so we can see whether or not how effective the plan is and every year they hold the wellness committee holds fundraisers recently there was a zucchini muffin fundraiser that was highly successful and it raised 750 from selling zucchini muffins so and everybody raved about how much they were how how wonderful they were we reviewed the budget of the committee and that's in there and then again a big thank you to jess for being so diligent and including all of this the the minutes the budget the job duties of the wellness champion into
114board docs because that's very helpful so i guess the next committee is i believe there was a delaware school boards association legislative committee maybe there was a board of directors i'm not sure i know mr matthews has legislated was there bod too no no okay it's november so miss neismith or mr matthews do you have a be a legislative committee update from the yeah i believe that can you guys hear me okay mr matthews yes can you guys hear me yes perfect thank you madam president yeah so i did attend the last um legislative committee meeting um and i was certainly thankful to board member casper who accompanied me in that meeting um it was my first meeting and we got through a lot on the agenda um the minutes and the report from that
115meeting was disseminated to the board it's not a meeting that's open to the public but we did review um some bills um and talked about what's going down at legislative hall the next meeting is not until next year in february were there any um legislative positions that were highlighted or anything mr matthews nothing in particular um any bills that are really significant for us to think about um nothing substantial one one item that did come up that was in heavy discussion uh was a bill and looking at my notes here that was proposed by representative kawako um in newark in response to newark charter's five mile radius um that bill was not voted on by red clay because we haven't necessarily talked about that um at the board level so if if they're if the
116board would like to have more discussion on our legislative priorities i think it would certainly be helpful for me and jason when we do go down um to the dspa legislative committee meeting so that we can vote accordingly but that was one bill that stood out in terms of heavy discussion okay i think that would be great i don't know if i saw anything on the legislative committee so if you i know that mr marinucci sends it to members so if you get stuff mr matthews would you forward it to the rest of the board absolutely and i believe that the entire board because i know keysia received it she gave me a call and asked for some clarifying questions so i believe john marinucci sent that report to the entirety of the board but
117i can certainly double check yeah i don't think he does i think he sends it to the legislative committee oh okay i didn't realize that yeah yeah okay that's what so for the bod stuff he sends it to the bod members for the legislative he sent it to the legislative so what i used to do was just forward it on to everybody and if you could do that it would be really helpful i could do that okay thank you absolutely i i just forwarded it um a couple of acknowledgements uh really fast okay i just wanted i had the the great opportunity to to attend my first teacher of the year event for red clay and i was just elated excited invigorated and i just want to congratulate all of the 2022 teachers of the
118year for the red clay consolidated school district but also every other person who has put their hard work in i heard tonight that there were you know there's some some feelings of despair and as an educator i know that it can be really tough and in these times it's even more tough so i just want to encourage all of our teachers our administrators our support staff members to just hang in there to you know make sure that you are helping one another to get through each day it does take a village to support one another i know that from experience and i know that from watching and learning from so many awesome educators so uh we hear you and you know i think it's a good reflection time for us to think about what the
119past almost two years has been like and how we can move forward like dr golder said and how we can think how we can use this crisis as an impetus for change and thinking smarter and we're instead of working harder so thank you so much for all of your hard work it does not go unnoticed and that's it thank you thank you [Music] anything else i do what do we have in place for the teachers as far as mental health for them getting stressed out just as well as we get calls from parents that are going through it as they brought the children back to school this year i have a few calls from different parents that are dealing with situations as well but as this school elementary by kids being out of school right
120on up to second grade for the last few years it's a lot of turmoil not just that the teachers are dealing with but what parents are dealing with so what do we have in place to help get the teachers to because uh if we're already saying after a couple months we're in burnout and this is just one person from the union speaking what about all the other teachers who do they reach out to so that's different in different buildings again you rely on one another you rely on building admin relying on resources that are in the building um you know you have employee assistance programs you really try to i mean the reality of it is no one wants the pandemic i'm sure the stress and anxiety that we all find ourselves under whether you're
121dealing with it at home whether you're dealing with you're sneezing right now and you wonder uh i have seasonal allergies but in the back of my mind am i questioning whether or not i have kobe um you know what does that ultimately mean i had code like in the end everyone would love to go back to march 2020 but the reality of it it's not that it's not happening we know it and whether that's you know paying folks per diem paying given for it's not a money issue we can't find substitutes in a lot of regards we're in a better situation than most because some districts have a 20 fuel rate you know so every avenue that we look to turn to try to provide that support and alleviate it another issue pops up and
122so the reality of mr wilson into the community we are trying our damage to support everybody yes we are and i agree and i think everybody is so sorry i think everybody's doing a great job i really do i'm not just saying that i i think sometimes this you know it's hard when you're in the hustle and bustle of your day you have these demands to meet and i just wanted to just share a little bit of empathy with with not just the teachers but the administrators as well and the support staff and the students and the parents it's just an acknowledgement of we're going through a rough time but if but just hang out hang up hang in there and continue to give grace to one another to mr green superintendent green to all
123of the different administrators and everybody because the job is hard but i just wanted to acknowledge the the great work that everybody is doing and i'm actually very proud to be a part of our clinic and again and we can acknowledge it and we'll try our best to but it's also responding to you know legitimate things that we can do in response to and so we we heard i remember so november 1st for example will be it's a it's a great event so folks can do it from home right and we just had an october 8th professional learning day that you know folks would have loved to do it from home we heard them you know staff members had to come in so now november 1st will be a day that they can work from
124home um and get their grades done so those are little tangible things that we can work to try to do but in reality again there are things that are out of our control but within our control and there's a number of dynamics as it relates to the differing level of needs across our community across our schools all things aren't equal and so as we look at equity it's how do we put those supports in place to address the needs as they arise and so we'll continue to do our best to be responsive to what those community needs are continue to dialogue with with representative groups and leaderships and as we've done thus far try to be visible and i got some say that they they haven't seen us they just haven't seen us yet and
125i think that's the thing we we have you know 28 schools that we have to get to and to really look at to be all things all places we've had administrators who are sitting in this audience doing car lines uh serving lunch i myself have done lunch duty in schools where we've had substitutes that have been out of the building so this is the all hands on that proposition and again this isn't to minimize and to say that we're not empathetic um the reality of it is we all have our struggles as we go through this so we'll continue to do what we need to do to be diligent to to hear people's concerns and respond where we can um and not sugarcoat it and give people a bs tagline to just say we're going
126to prop something up that we can't deliver all night and and i know that's true because i do go around and visit schools and i was in louis the other day and they told me how mr green was down there sweeping the other day and i'm not doing it and again this isn't to get credit this is the reality that at that time we had a school that had 12 people out of the building yeah for various reasons right because someone's daycare situation is is you know they have the quarantine with their child i mean you know and it's just being responsive to the community needs and knowing that we are in a miss of something that really as much as we say we would love to control it there are things that we just
127generally can't control and you know we'll continue to be responsive um we'll continue to try to put our best foot forward knowing that at some point regardless of what we do and i think if that's been the lesson learned through anything it's six and one half dozen of the other so we can make a decision here tonight some people are going to applaud it and the other half are going that's true to not be okay with it and so that but i also understand that everyone is dealing with this situation from their unique perspective and circumstance right you know we're not in everyone's household we have 16 000 plus children and families that we have to serve and so we'll continue to get to engage and do our due diligence to be responsive when we
128can and acknowledge again the reality that we're all dealing with but also try to push forward through this to not continue to have a culture of fear um push back on the state when we can and i readily do that as well people may not see that but i am a proverbial squeaky will most of the time because i don't wholeheartedly always agree with everything but i'm one person so we'll continue to do what we need to do on behalf of the children and families and doing just that trying to keep our children first and foremost in every decision that we're making well thank you everyone for everything that you do thank you and now dr boom texted me that she has two items thank you i actually think i have three items so the
129first one is that we've heard a lot of discussion around the curricula this evening and i i know our student representative had something to say mr golder talked about it and we have had for years i've been on the board for eight years we've had a number of people through the years come and ask if they could be part of the curricula committee so i think moving forward we should reimagine the curricula process and how we go about changing it and we should broaden our committee and the work we're doing to include other members of the community such as students and such as parents i know that a number of parents have asked to be on the committee and they've been told no that they couldn't be on the committee so that would be my
130request that we reimagine the curricula process the second thing i wanted to bring up was that there was a letter sent by the dsba and it had to do with masking and language that was used in a letter that the national school boards association wrote to the president and i was made aware of the fact that members of the board knew about the letter that the sba had written and sent and that information was not shared with the rest of the board and i know in the brandywine school district those board members had access to that information from the dsva from their dsba representative when it happened so i would just like to ask for more communication and transparency in regard to what the dsba is doing and communication with the board i think that
131would make all of our jobs um it would be it would make them more transparent and we would be more accountable that way and so i'd like that would be my one request and the other item that i wanted to bring up is today um we are in the month of october and october is lgbtq history month and i just wanted to acknowledge that and say that um although june is pride month lgbtq history month was created um by a teacher whose name was rodney wilson and he really spearheaded that endeavor and then in 1995 there was a resolution passed by the general assembly of the national education association and they included lgbtq history month within a list of other months that they commemorated throughout the year now october was selected to coincide with national
132coming out day which was october 11th and i just wanted to say that i believe this is an important month a month to acknowledge and to recognize and to celebrate those are my remarks for this evening thank you thank you anything else okay hearing nothing i'll accept a motion to adjourn [Music] remember miss knee smith moves is there a second second mr wilson seconds i'll take a roll call though i mean we'll we'll just take a voice vote on this so all in favor of adjourning say i i opposed okay it's unanimous we are adjourned it is 8 59 p.m thank you all very much appreciate your time good night all that you do [Music] all right [Music] you