001uh um okay uh bye foreign okay the uh media centennial school district school board will please come to order for september the 13th with that i'll ask the secretary to do a roll call please mrs brancato here mrs crossin here mrs islandberg here mr godickson present mr lyden here mr martin president mr ginhart here mrs lynch president mr sadowski here nine members president thank you very much full house you would please rise for pledge of allegiance at this time i only have two brief announcements and they simply are that we had an executive session prior to this meeting to go over legal matters and my bed i neglected at the last meeting to announce so we also had an executive meeting to review legal matters so i think i'm caught up with the executive meetings
002at this point in time with that we'll get the student presentation from william tennant high school from ms emma weinstein please good evening everyone good evening okay beginning today and tomorrow picture day for grades 9 through 11 had occurred back to school night for william tennant students will be on thursday at 7 pm senior portrait retakes will take place next week as well homecoming planning is underway led by student government the theme has been chosen as neon and the homecoming nominees for king and queen will be soon voted on the dates for the football game and the dance will be set to october 7th and 8th following that the sats will be offered at tenant oh prior to that the sats will be offered at 10 for all students on october 1st that is all
003i have to report thank you very much thank you thank you any questions you get off easy thank you very much next month be longer right yeah one more going okay thanks next i guess we have a presentation for mr creighton regarding athletics and all girls good evening everyone thank you for this opportunity uh joining me tonight is mr joe stabilito senior he's one of our wrestling coaches and also uh national wrestling hall of famer and basically the executive director of pennsylvania usa female wrestling so it syncs up very good for what i'm coming here to present tonight so am i in charge of this doesn't look like it slideshow so it yeah like they just need to do this actually if fran can pull it up so that it's on the screen that would
004be great it's in board docks that'd probably be better this is for you but they can't see it thank you so going back a few years we did a 1009 self audit where we started looking at where we were at what we were doing well what we weren't doing so well and how we could improve and then every two to three years within that audit it's seeing if there's opportunities out there to increase the opportunities and participation for our female athletes so two of them came down the pipe last spring uh actually we attempted to be within the first year with the girls flag football and with the help of mr stabilito we were looking to be the 58th or 59th for girls wrestling tonight so an emerging sport the definition from piwla is essentially
005they're not going to recognize it as an interscholastic offering until you get to 100 schools that are willing to participate within that sport so these are our current offerings for females we're at 13. boys we're at 14 so it's a good time to to see if we can balance it or even sway the the balance being the opposite way over the last four years since i arrived to centennial these are the additional offerings that we've added more specifically three unified offerings in the fall winter and spring we introduced a video game club which was the first step to esports and the varsity boys and girls lacrosse team was already in a club phase when i arrived and is now as a varsity offering so when we did our title nine audit with the students their
006survey some of the responses to what are we missing or what are you interested in some of them we already have hit with increasing unified sports with bocce and pickleball last year also with the esports with video game club and then moving with our metro esports partnership last spring and two of the other opportunities that are in yellow girls football and wrestling are opportunities that we're coming to you tonight so it's been about two years since a nonprofit organization called sanction pa has started to get the needle moving with girls wrestling for piaa and with mr stabilito his son was also our coach and some of the what would you call them wrestling coaches and wrestling fanatics throughout the state have really pushed for this within our region because at this point there are college
007female wrestling programs but not as many at the high school area so as you can see the trend continuously is going up we have some of our current william tennant female wrestlers here in in the audience tonight uh junior junior angelina and 9th grade irene they're right here in the first row i'm going to turn the remainder of the girls wrestling presentation over to mr stabilito who will go into actually more specifics if you go to sanction pa website the gentleman on your left here is actually our head coach mr tabalito jr and i present to you uh national wrestling hall of famer mr stavalido senior thank you sounds scary usually when you think well i am old but you think of hall of famers you think of maybe not even here anymore but i'm
008still kicking so so just give you a little background about i was part of a organization called pennsylvania wrestling federation and we never had girls we never had girls and you know we had like five girls across the state that wrestled and i went to a meeting and said you know we need to start a girls championship and after everybody laughed at me why for five girls but from those five girls last year we had 450 girls uh we had for the last five years we've had official state unofficial state championships where we crowned pennsylvania state girls and we've recognized them at the hall of fame dinner the same as we recognize the boys wrestlers that win states so the girls have gotten a lot of recognition this year we expect the number of girls
009before we get sanctioned to be around 450 500 girls so it's growing every year at the youth level it's doubling and tripling that number so the elementary and middle school their numbers are growing and growing uh and it's just a good sport you know it's not good to have girls that want to wrestle come out and wrestle boys it's you need to kind of give them their own program and uh you know we have girls that go and angelina went out every match last year wrestled all season for us did her best and you know she was wrestling girls she probably would have won 90 of her matches she didn't do as well wrestling you know wrestling boys because her a little stronger at this age but when she wrestled girls she did really good
010okay so it's you know we're trying to get this moving this the state has been helping us we we uh i'm part of sanction pa also the state when we first approached them a few years ago they were like can't do it can't do it you need 100 schools but we've been moving towards 100 schools and we've got emerging sports status this year so but you know it's something that is coming down the road a lot of schools are doing it district one is starting to pick it up they don't have a lot of schools yet but there's some in a you know it's coming through but uh that's it it's it's it'd be a good program good for the girls uh good recognition for the girls and it's something uh that's you know a
011movement that's in the right direction that's any any questions anything i should share with you first of all it's an honor to have a hall of fame members attending our meeting i think we usually have too many hall of famers in any sport come to our meetings but it's an honor to have you here i just had a couple of quick questions would the girls have the same weight levels as the boys do i know they start rather low and they go up to a heavy weight yeah their weight classes are a little different than the boys like the boys are like their first weight class is like 106. the first girls is like a hundred but then they go all the way up to 235 the girls so we have you know we uh
012i run pennsylvania state wrestling so we brought uh our little girls like all the middle school girls to a tournament this year in tulsa oklahoma we we won that championship uh two years in a row now for defending champs we brought 50 girls to the national championship in fargo uh 16 you girls and uh high school girls and we had 14 all-americans uh which is is pretty good that's top eight and we had two uh national runner-ups and uh these are both young freshmen one goes to truman who is an all-american and the other girl goes to saucon valley so it it's uh it's an exciting time for the sport it's actually bringing girls wrestling back or growing is helping the boys side the boys were kind of going down a little bit and all
013of a sudden because his girls are out and there's an interest we're getting the boys back out so it's a win-win for both sides sounds like a great idea but how how many if you had a team who would you play and how far do you have to go to get a match uh there's well there's an events every week and what they do is because the girls don't have teams yet they just bring the girls together you know every week and then so you would have to go maybe to allentown or gettysburg but uh it's about the same trial when the boys are doing but we just bring them you know match them up and they just wrestle each other and they get like four or five matches a week and the end of
014the year we have regional tournaments and then the girls go to state tournament so the girls actually got more competitions last year and the boys did yeah there was 45 some of the girls wrestled 45 matches and i know that was you know 30 some for the boys so but yeah they were i'll tell you to be honest to god truth and i i've been coaching the girls for a number of years and a few years ago we trained in fort washington to get ready for nationals and i brought the girls at drexel for for a session down there and i brought him in the room and you know coach he had his these guys wrestling and put him on the side and i brought the girls out and he watched and he didn't say
015anything and he brought his guys back out and he said do this do that and he put him back down and brought the girls out he told them to do the same thing and he said well i'm coaching the wrong thing i should be coaching these girls they're putting my boys in shame and the girls work you don't have to you know ever tell a girl in practice hey start working they work they work hard john very good i just wanted to thank you for advocating for the sport and no problem and providing a platform for these students i love it thank you they're good kids so we need need to get them stopped getting beat up on saturdays and coming back on mondays it's amazing so my question is in regards to how are
016you marketing this and how are you getting students engaged in this process now and how many other high schools within bucks county is involved in in bucks county there's like five other schools right now there's probably a couple coming down the road uh soon like council rocks the council rocks are working on something and uh pennsylvania is working on some stuff it's just taking a little longer because they really can't even get in front of the school board yet so uh but you know we most of the competition on the weekends we'd probably have to travel a little bit but it's you know wouldn't be a big thing how many uh how many girls from at william tennant are interested in well we have a lot of injuries well we have these and we have
017like three others for sure and then we're going to have an interest meeting yeah and try to bring them in i think once they hear it yeah i think so too yeah the one school uh two years ago they they announced the program they had six girls and he had their first meeting they ended up with 35 girls yeah and it's one of those things let me steal this mic from you um and going back to my teaching time we had weight training classes all day but it was 29 boys and one girl and then when a few student athletes came to us and said we would love to be in weight training but we don't want to be with the boys because we don't feel comfortable in what we're trying to do it's very
018similar to that we have some girls that go out every week and wrestle against boys but there could be 25 to 30 that if we immediately say it's it's a girl's wrestling team you're only going to be wrestling girls i mean that really could skyrocket the interest do your friends like do your are your friends that are girls obviously um do they seem like they're pretty excited about you girls doing it i'm going to tell you you have to get excuses right can you turn your mic thank you i think it's absolutely wonderful um mr stabilito my boys wrestled and uh you have a daughter correct i do i have three daughters so you're oh i only know the one so the one daughter and your grandson wrestled with my kids yes yes yes squirrels
019i think it's wonderful and i think as soon as we can offer this to girls you're going to be flooded with girls absolutely i appreciate that the girls go ahead you had a question yeah i do have another question from mr creighton because i see you up there practice time in that space none can we create that for these girls so so the additional cost meaning like the green means we're in a good spot meaning we don't need any additional funding we don't need any additional space the only thing really um that out and again that comes from me and it's already within my budget that if i manipulate some of the transportation from some other places the the increase in transportation is there but girls invitational is the absorbing of the current invitational budget
020for a wrestling program it will just it'll come from there um no green is good on there i'm sorry okay i just saw the word not yes no green is good mean that we have no problems we have no additional costs what's really good about the girls is when the girls wrestle the crowd is is amazing they get you know i i had somebody who came down from boys states uh to our girls tournament when we had it in gettysburg and he's uh a big you know big influential guy at lehigh he came down and watched our stuff and he was at states the day before and he goes man you guys just put on the show and put the state to shame they need to come down here and see what you guys are
021doing so uh girls when the girls wrestle people watch and people get excited and it's you know if the world championship right now is in belgrade our girls are doing good a few weeks ago they actually here in pennsylvania to practice they were in lancaster for a week and uh they're they're doing phenomenal but the crowd in belgrade is you can hear the tune of the people when the girls wrestle it gets gets up so i'll be quiet i can talk for the next three minutes are there questions anybody has thank you that's that's remarkable really it's exciting sir sounds good appreciate it thank you very much all right thank you for your attendance yeah you can sit uh thank you again uh mr stabilito he's such an asset to our programs and we're very
022lucky to have him uh he goes back to the start of the warmester spartans in the youth clubs that's as far as he goes back with our township absolutely you are now to my next uh offering that i'm asking uh for your blessing to approve is girls flag football in the spring uh with the philadelphia eagles um it started last year uh uh one of our william tenet parents of a student athlete reached out and i said yeah i mean this matches right up with our powder puff in the fall when we have 1500 fans out there watching a flag football game for girls i reached out to the organization they said unfortunately that in year one we're only going to stay within the city limits with the catholic schools and the public schools but
023uh over the last year now they've reached out to the surrounding counties so it started as 16 schools it's going to move to 39 if everyone gets approved and again this is in an emerging sports status similar to girls wrestling that if it gets to 100 teams or 100 schools interested it could potentially become a pia sport now this is not running against girls wrestling girls wrestling is in the winter and girls fight football will be in the spring a little bit different some highlights from the first year leveling the playing field is the non-profit that's working with the eagles i did a 30 minute interview for a grant and we were able to get all of our fall female athletes that needed them a grant for sports bras that were donated from the philadelphia
024eagles it was just something that i mean a half an hour on the phone to describe that this is a lost piece of equipment in female sports um and i just drove down to their warehouse and picked up 200 of them and brought them back for our student athletes um the championships are held in lincoln financial field there are teams dr henrich's high school alma mater saint hubert's was flown out to the nfl draft to do the second round pick last year for free there's just so many things involved with the eagles doing this that really takes away from any of the costs that we would have to deal with until obviously we get to that interscholastic sport opportunity here's some pictures from st hubert's and lansdale catholic who won year one and then again
025green is good here um for the spring for practice time for the coaches the the philadelphia eagles similar to our unified sports programs where special olympics pays the coaches their stipends the philadelphia eagles will be paying for the coaches they will be paying for the uniforms and then on my end it would be the transportation the officials which again i can handle within my current current budget allotment so this is stolen from sanction pa but it also it falls into place for all pia emerging sports so essentially i come here to present to you um we we are hopefully approving and we move forward to being one of the first hundred schools to form these teams and then the pia considers to sanction not only girls wrestling but also girls flag football as an official
026sport any questions it triggers a completely different question from my side i know we have an ice hockey team and um how close are we statewide to the 100 you know so that becomes a sanction for ice hockey i would have no idea and i'm really not even affiliated with the ice i can even know where their numbers are at in regards to the clubs but for an emerging sport yes you are correct so so this is going to be in the spring so it is going to compete with softball and and what else is there any other softball track okay there's and girls across so what if so what if a girl wants to she can't play too correct we would hope not we do have a section in our student handbook that when
027again if if we're looking at that our our numbers are are not where we want to be um we have had some boys volleyball players jump for the track team as well but then there was a primary there has to be a very specific primary versus secondary sport okay but being that this would be hopefully it's its own team and it's not an individual thing i think it would be really tough right okay i i think it's wonderful thank you listen i exactly i think it's just a it's an easy they've already practiced for six weeks in the fall and between the the fall and winter season and i think the interest there just carries right over in between the the winter and the spring and it i think it's a home run for us
028in my opinion this lynch has yes thank you this is absolutely fantastic and ladies and women in this room you have come a long way baby and i'll tell you there's no stopping us now thank you for bringing this to us and ladies the very very best for more to come and you enjoy yourself thank you thank you mr crayton uh mr rustic can she go out sure got eligibility left at the risk of asking this by my calculation you will now have more female sports than male sports if if it reaches in a scholastic level yes you gotta start looking around for another boy sport we'll work on it okay thank you jen absolutely thank you so much my day we believe volleyball thank you good deal that was good that's good okay up
029to item three reports of standing committees i don't know if there are any finance committee is trying to arrange a meeting but we haven't met to be honest anything for any other ones mrs lynch or operations or mr martin education community committee is meeting tomorrow at 3 30. okay and operations committee anything we haven't had a meeting yet are you going to schedule one i imagine we will okay good so everything it's a little early to school year but we'll get those committee meetings uh scheduled uh dr ben it's up to you uh good evening board members everyone in attendance and watching i just wanted to remind everyone that things are going strong food service is uh still have opportunities for those who are interested in employment please take consider us those ladies are doing
030a wonderful job despite being down a number of workers transportation as i've very little phone calls so transportation has done a yeoman's job they're still balancing routes adjusting as we communicated in a weekly report to parents [Music] because of the shortage across the country and drivers and also the need to be efficient and effective with taxpayers dollars transportation is not able to be as accommodating they're having to stick to the routes and the rules so i ask that everyone be patient with them work with them or recognize that it is not for lack of wanting to but we have to make sure that we are using the resources to ensure that every student gets to and from school that's eligible to ride in a timely manner so some of the previous accommodations that were able
031to be done they're not able to do given the shortage of drivers that we have so be patient and understanding enrollment we have is communicating a weekly report to both the board and the community we're happy to say that our enrollment we always love serving our community we have more students enrolled this year than we did last year uh the numbers uh continue to to grow uh we also we had to add four additional teachers to our staffing to accommodate the growth at the elementary level we also will having to look at the numbers with our english language development program with the increased enrollment of students who are non-native english speaking students so we're still working on that situation additionally we currently have 46 students who continue to be enrolled in our full virtual learning
032uh program known as centennial virtual learning academy this is also nine of those 46 students are their first time participating in the program all new enrollments are at the high school level additionally we've had one student who returned from cyber pa cyber uh virtual um a regulated student with a net savings to the district of approximately 15 000 and we say net because obviously there is a cost to educate the student but the net savings of the cost that we were expending for that student being in a virtual cyber program we had one student who returned from an alternative instructional outside placement for net savings of approximately 17 thousand dollars one of our own special ed students we've had six students who switch from in-person placement they were not inclined to stay in in-person but
033because we had the centennial virtual learning academy they chose not to leave the district and enroll in our program and stay with us which would be a cost avoidance of approximately 138 thousand dollars had they left the district and we had to pay another cyber program for that we actually had one student and family moved into the district to take advantage of our virtual learning offerings uh and left a gore charter program so they came to centennial florescent uh virtual learning academy and all those shifts have a net impact of either savings or cost avoidance to the district of approximate hundred seventy thousand dollars that it cost us uh and we say cost avoidance because obviously the final decision or whether person stays or goes we can't predict but we know they could have left
034us to go if we had not had this option for those nine students uh who were we just talked about with the new enrollments overall with the 46 students who are enrolled in our program that amounts to a potential cost savings excuse me savings or cost avoidance of 1.05 million dollars to the district potentially had we not had the program depending on what decision they would have made additionally we have 16 students who are in our new blended grade 12 pilot program uh when this sentinel virtual learning academy was started a couple years ago it was obviously in response to the pandemic then we had a study done to assess the impact on our students learning loss which we believe is unfinished learning we don't feel like students our students are losing something we feel
035like our students didn't have a chance to get their full access to learning during the pandemic and so we don't try to use that negative term towards our students what that showed is also is we had a number of students who accelerated and did well which was an aha force and thus the goal was to continue this as a pathway uh we thanked the board for approving it uh the board at the time talked about if this goes well and continues to offer an alternative to students leaving the district uh we should plan to try to make it work and continuing it uh so we continue to try to own as much of an in-house with our own teachers uh the pilot program was this year with our 12th graders and so we have um
03616 of those students in that program 10 of those students out of 16 are totally new to essential virtual learning academy they are our best advertisement they are now obviously attracting additional requests from friends of those students who are now inquiring and how's it going and getting interested a pleasant outcome of this is that we're growing in our reputation we have had inquiries regarding our cbll program cbla program you were made aware of an inquiry of a family of three who as we continue to expand our program was interested in moving from our neighboring district of havon horsham and enrolling in centennial school district if we continue to grow the program the kids in elementary right now so they can't move right now because we don't have it at that level this week we also
037got an inquiry from a family in penridge [Music] who saw and seen our brochures about our program and expressed an interest in attending our program our challenge that we uncovered this recently this year since school has started back is we've lost some of our russian and ukrainian students to a particular school that is promoting that they can help students get an accelerated diploma within two years i'm just going to go on a record as i said to the staff is i'm not sure how they do that in two years and mr golda can probably say the same thing as an educator how do you do that when you also want to ensure that the students are actually workforce and or college ready those skills are in place so we are inquiring if they know something
038we don't know how to do we want to learn from it if it's not right we want to protect our students also and make sure that we can make sure they get a quality education it's their right to go to school where they want to but we have a responsibility to make sure they understand the potential outcomes so that's my report but thank you very much thank you uh dr rick i only have one one question came to mind students would attend the virtual learning academy are they eligible for activities at the school now what if they are living in hartford or horsham but attend our cvla um where where would they go for their activities would they go to their where they live or would they go for their attending our school well that
039cases the parents were inquiring about actually moving so if you came to our district and you stayed somewhere else you'd have to pay us tuition by the board policy so then if they were tuition paying steward they would still be one of our students then they would they could participate in activities in this district yes but they would be a tuition paying student if they didn't move and right now we don't have any of those you do have a policy in place that addresses it uh that has come up in conversation we have to be thoughtful uh when we're talking about virtual and how that looks uh for us uh but the board does have a policy in place if someone wants to pay tuition to attend centennial thank you any other questions for dr
040ben that actually triggers a completely different question from my side because if you now have a hat bar horsham student paying tuition to centennial would they then be eligible to attend mbit i haven't looked at it from that standpoint but that's a question and i'll assure you the policy and we would never it's our option to accept and we'd bring that to the board if someone paid tuition but what i want to be clear is they're not going to displace any of our students first so the goal would not be to displace any of our students so my reaction to that is we pay for x number of spots uh that i would believe the board would and i would want to start with if you are living in our district paying all the costs
041you get first priority i hope so because we know we're hitting a crunch that's the way i would approach it unless the policy i haven't looked at it from atlanta says anything different anything else thank you uh dr benton we're going to item foreign thank you ladies and uh thank you for representing us yeah you girls all right so we're going to move on to the approval of the agenda be resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors 4.1 approves the september 13th 2022 border gender as per attached are there any corrections that need to be made that are allowed by pa law second secondly by mrs lynch all in favor aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions passes nine nothing thank you uh miss kirsten moving on dino five which is public
042comment uh first public comments i relate to agenda items anyone else at the end we'll entertain them if there are any i have two requests at this point in time there's only three people here so i guess that's about it uh mrs mcnamara has a comment please good evening my name is catherine mcnamara i'm 46 davisville road in warminster i want everyone here to reflect on your elementary school years and i want to ask you to see if you can remember have you ever had a friend that you ate lunch with that had down syndrome or rode the bus with a student with autism when you were in elementary school special education has evolved and i mean really evolved in the 50s and the 60s kids like my son tj were recommended by well-meaning professionals
043and educators to go to institutions it wasn't until 1975 when parents won the right for entry into public schools schools were no longer allowed to deny students like tj saying that they couldn't accommodate them fast forward to the 90s and segregation continued we built big county regional schools for special education children sometimes children had to ride 90 minutes across their county to get to the special education regional school making it impossible to play with their neighborhood friends in the last 20 years we're seeing this trend the districts bring back their neuro-diverse students back into the fold does that mean the last 20 years they've gotten the best evidence-based and expertly designed education ask some special ed teachers you'll hear stories of classrooms and janitor closets and classrooms with holes in the floor fast forward to
0442013 along into my life came my lightning bolt of love my son tj i researched and i was delighted inclusion was no longer just a catchphrase there was a body of evidence of research that children even with complex learning needs learn best when educated with their typical learning peers universal design for learning principles were designed and developed as the road map for educating children in the least restrictive environment the least restrictive environment is a term you're going to hear a lot in special education law i'll talk about it again in a second so i was excited really excited for tj's education and for his opportunities until i sat down with a district administrator when he came into kindergarten and they said you're lucky the life skills program is at mcdonald lucky well what about his
045civil rights segregation what about special education law so i want you to ponder this you can assign children to programs based on a lot of things whether they're interested in creative arts or coding what neighborhood they're in their favorite color but if you assign a child to a program based on legally protected criteria like race gender or disability you're violating their civil rights and breaking special education law by not considering the least restrictive environment so let's talk about least restrictive environment special education is not a place or a program it is a set of supports and services delivered to a child in the least restrictive environment and let me be clear the least restrictive environment is their home school with their neighborhood friends i want to urge you to consider two requests tonight i want
046you to prove student 1922 to continue her first grade year at davis elementary where her brother was assigned to the special education program there this is a picture that i'm sharing with his mother's permission this is my son tj and dylan great thank you for that extra moment my son tj was lucky he gets to go to school with his siblings okay he had a diagnosis that landed him in a program that was not his home school and it's it's left a family in turmoil and she'll talk about that in a second ladies and gentlemen of the board i'll wrap up we have really great programs here really great administrators diversity equity and inclusion social emotional academic learning but we are still segregating students based on disability and i'm asking you to move the needle
047forward on special education thank you very much and i have one more request francis vela i'm speaking tonight to have my daughter approved to attend davis elementary at the last board meeting i was told to get with miss bolden at that time to resolve this situation nothing was resolved a few days later i was contacted by the principal of mcdonald to meet regarding transportation concerns i was told my autistic son could be late because his pca was there to help him cope and to school later than he has for the last two years regardless of the effects it would have on my son or my family it was also suggested to me that my children take the bus and that a lot of kids with autism take the bus i explained they were talking about
048my son's individual needs when he tried to take the bus he was unable to because of his sensory processing dysfunction assuming my son can do what others can do is harmful no one reached out to see how we were doing transporting to two different schools the paperwork that was submitted for tonight's meeting was dated august 19th our meeting was august 22nd it's clear to me that the decision had been made and no amount of information i would have provided would have mattered the emails and letters i sent to several administrators all went unanswered this board was elected by the community help parents like me to meet the best needs of our children attending centennial schools i did what was asked and i tried taking my children to both schools for the last two weeks my
049son was getting highly agitated that he was not arriving to school at the time he's accustomed to where he has the interaction he needs with his peers to model behavior in the hallways ordering breakfast and eating in the cafeteria with his class in the afternoon he is also missing out on the learning the dismissal procedures with his peers because he must be pulled out as early as 305 he needs and deserves to feel included recognizing that this was having a negative impact on my son and possibly affecting his daily success i now drive past mcdonald in the morning to take him to school first taking all three of my children out of the car to drop them off the doors and driving back to mcdonald to drop my daughter off later than the time at
0508 40 which was told at orientation would be best then going back to davis to drop my three-year-old off last year you recognized the hardship it would be for me as a single mom to have my children attend different schools i have in my hand miss bolden's recommendation the board's unanimous approval from last year that states the family has an older child on the autism spectrum that has been attending davis elementary the family would benefit from having two children the same elementary school this would prevent the major strain on the family to keep up with the demand of two elementary schools my situation hasn't changed if anything it's gotten more difficult as my youngest child was also diagnosed with autism and attends davis as well i have no help i did not choose to have
051my children at 10 different schools i was told macdonald could not meet my son's needs now i'm forced to choose between my children who gets to school earlier who gets picked up later and whose events i will attend halloween is coming up the trunk or tree and the parade are all on the same day so i have to choose who i see and who sees me this was not the case last year as my daughter was approved to go to davis it feels like i'm being discriminated against as a single mom with disabled children i'm requesting this board to please approve my daughter to attend davis with her brothers which i believe is in their best interest to have a stable education which they have grown accustomed to i'll leave you with this thought fairness
052is not giving everyone the same thing fairness is giving each person what they need to succeed thank you for your time you made it in three minutes that was very good thank you thank you very much i guess that's it for public comment for this round of public comment thank you both for that and with that uh we'll move on to the consent agenda which is item six and that goes to mr godickson and on the consent agenda we have 12 items we want to pull any of these items seeing none there's a lot of sub all right no i didn't see you what do you want paul 6.3 so done three b why don't we just pull six point three you know and then take that separately all right it resolved that the centennial
053school district board of school directors 6.1 approves the minutes from the june 14 2022 work session regular school board meeting 6.1 b approves the minutes from the june 28th 2022 committee of the whole meeting 6.1 c approves the minutes from the august 16th 2022 committee of the whole meeting 6.2 personnel 6.2 a retirements 6.2 b rescinding job offer 6.2 c terminations 6.2 d resignations 6.2 e authorization to employ 6.2 f leaves of absence 6.2 g chains of status 6.2 h teacher leader 6.2 i mentors 6.2 j co-curricular additions and as i said we will skip 6.3 and move on to 6.4 6.4 a approves the appointment of dr lauren webb to a teacher leadership position of behavioral support and mental health counselor this position was board approved on august 16 2022 6.5 waivers none 6.6
054conferences and and travel none 6.7 bids and quotes 6.7 a award the rfq 23.00 computer monitors tridel uh technologies for the replacement of 174 computer monitors at the labs in william tennant klinger and log college district cost not to exceed twenty five thousand seven hundred eighty five dollars and six cents six point seven b award the annual renewal for district-wide fire and burglar alarm monitoring agreement to access security co-stars zero four zero zero zero two district cost not to exceed 9600 6.7 c award the annual renewal of for software license and support agreement to access security co-stars zero four zero that's zero zero two four district wide um exact camera system 259 cameras district cost not to exceed ten thousand hundred 458 6.7 d award the annual renewal for software license software upgrade and support
055agreement for district-wide access portals 128 to access security co-star 040-02 district cost not to exceed 5727 assemblies and speakers and programs none uh contracts licenses and services 6.9 a approves the memorandum of understanding between the centennial school district and the ivarland four borough arbor southampton and women's township police departments through the september of 2024. textbooks none uh as acceptance of donations grants and requests none changes of academic programs positions and stipends none second second by mrs lynch any discussion see none all in favor any opposed any abstentions pass is nine nothing then we're going to go back to uh 6.3 we're going to take them each at uh separately um exceptions to policy 6.3 a approves the denial of request for acceptance to policy 206 assignment within district of for student 19-22 to attend first
056grade at dave's elementary instead of students homeschool mcdonald elementary for the 2022-2023 school year second second seconded by mrs lynch mrs brancato this this is a this is a parent asking for her child to go to davis instead of mcdonald's and obviously we know who that is because we heard her um wouldn't this fall under meeting the students where they need to be met wouldn't this be part of our equity policy you can only so so you know people can juggle but you can only juggle so much like it's not hurting anything is it really hurting anything to let this child go to to go to davis is it really hurting anything or is it just because you know we have to dot the i a certain way i don't think we have to dot
057the eye a certain way every time there's got to be exceptions to policies correct and we have the power to do that mrs would this change any costs and teachers or any kind of would we need an additional teacher or how how would this impact do we have that information i'm going to defer that to dr bedden so the answer to mrs uh brancato's question is is no because the if you look at the equity lands um we're accommodating and giving something addition to that's not based on a need the student that is assigned to get services are being assigned to meet needs by the law so if we wanted to have the students attend the same school by board policy by the zone then in all actuality if we did it the equity way
058we would actually hire another teacher to go back to the school where their neighborhood school is which would have a cost so if i apply what she's saying that would be the other way as opposed to giving an exception to allow other students to attend because we have the program in one school which is what uh she was speaking about that because we don't have uh the program in all schools you have a student place to meet the requirements of giving them access to the services they need to meet their disability the ideal way if you apply to equity policy would be to actually have teachers in every school so they wouldn't have to leave their school that would be the answer to a question which would cost more teachers yes dr budding uh the
059question is do we have the capability of accommodating this one child in first grade is there is there room for her or is it not i don't know the answer if there's room but the board can decide what they want to do but i will tell you if you do this one it never is really one right i agree that's what happens you're creating an exception and there are others who have in their minds similar or just as significant exceptions and that's the challenge so the answer could be yes could this one but you've had others and it was just one at that time and you know what the board can choose to do it's it's you know as she just said it's the board they do they have two children right now going to
060davis and one's going to mcdonald's is that correct is that not miss bolton it's for the administration it's the way it goes it's not a back and forth one student is attending davis under centennial another student is not enrolled in the kindergarten through 12th grade programming in the district the iu um rents space at the um at davis so you have you have two children going to davis and one that's going to mcdonald's is that correct davis elementary school under centennial one attending school where the iu is utilizing yes the iu is utilizing this year um that location at davis which could change right because that could change mrs brancaro i'll get you so so the parent has two children at davis this year it could change next year but i'm sure the parent would
061worry about that next year we have the power to show human kindness like isn't that what we're you know what we're or shouldn't we be doing that all the time shouldn't we do what we can if it's in our power to do it why wouldn't we help this lady maybe i'm i don't know instagram no yeah it sounds to me like um this parent has tried really hard to follow the rules stay within the policy but it does sound like it's um quite an exceptional hardship in this particular case and i think we should look at these things on a case-by-case basis and i understand that it could open the door for other cases to come before us but in this particular case for this year i don't i don't see where one other charlie
062davis is going to make that much of a difference to the district but the difference it's going to make to the family is going to be significant to put it mildly and i think it's incumbent on us to do what's right for our students and for the families so i i think we should approve this this is eileenberg my question is um the parent has stated that an exception was made last year my question is what if we're able to share what changed from last year to this year and i know that we reviewed this but um having heard that i'm it's a question that i have now because it seems like it's something happened it's different that's impactful and i'm just not clear as told it is i'm going to have to come back
063to mrs bolden because the iu program that is preschool is at mcdonald's am i correct the iu there is a preschool program at mcdonald the iu has been switching even mid-year switching their programming but there is a program at mcdonald and there's a program there's a program at mcdonald a program at davis a program at william tennant high school they're different programs there's not always a continuum of services but there is a different program but i think the question was anything different no no nothing is nothing is different it's up to the board if the board wants to make the decision um did we make an exception last year is that what happened and i apologize that i don't know yes we we made an exception last year we made we make exceptions and the
064exceptions are for one year okay so it's up to the board mr grocer i i have a question um and this is if it's information i shouldn't know tell me but there's two children that go to davis school correct a third child who we say should go to mcdonald they don't have the same needs that the other two children have the third child in question here which is the one in question here so so no and i just we have to be clear that centennial as far as placement and recommendations we can only make recommendations for students registered in kindergarten through 12th grade programming any student who attends centennial in a preschool program that determination for location is made by the bucks county intermediate unit i want to be clear on that but yes there
065we the assignment for the students was based the students enrolled was based upon student need and the ability to program for the student and let me just ask this question and mr gomez just one second ms vela just to mr martin's point because you spoke you obviously personally identified your children i need your verbal okay that they can continue okay thank you i have to make a decision i'm just trying to gather information without having something i shouldn't be entitled to but i'm just trying to instead two children go to one school the third but it's such a small number she's gay we're good the third child doesn't have the same needs as the other two that was my question yes sir so at this point we are kind of blessed that the iu program
066is even within centennial school district it could be even outside the district mrs lynch yes thank you policy 206 does allow for exceptions and when a situation occurs like this it would make it almost like not to help you to be almost cruel and not to understand and i believe everyone on this board part goes out to you but on the other hand there has to be balance what have we done with exceptions for others have we set precedent have we not done this for others like yourself these case scenarios although they are heartwarming must blend for all and i believe that's what we intend to do and try to do thank you in this regard too i do think that we did make a president last year we did grant this parent an exception
067for one year last year we have denied parents this year already for the same things mrs islenberg and i and i and i really feel for your family i'm so sorry what i what i have to say is that precisely that if we if we if we do this and we continue to to do this and it's because of where the programming is we open that up in the future also to anyone who has a student who get who is enrolled in a bciu program that's within our school district and i'm just pointing out the fact that if we we have lots of students that are enrolled in the bciu programs so it really opens us up to some difficult situations in the future and i it's a very it's just a challenging situation any
068further comments okay yeah just i think that to follow up on this um in this unique situation this this isn't a parent that wants their child to go to a different school just because they like that school better or their friends are there or something like that this is a significant family situation and we should handle these on a case-by-case basis i think this is this case definitely warrants the family being able to remain together for the benefit of the special needs students for the family in general and this is not just a just because we feel like a thing this is i think rather significant one last question if this is granted what's going to happen next are we going to go through the same thing next year and the year after that and
069for four more years i mean sooner or later it's going to change but it seems like so you might be solving a problem for one year but you're going to be faced with next year and a year after that and a year after until the first child is out of davis school and goes to wherever klinger or wherever they may be going after that so i've had to solve a problem for what year you're not you're you're solving it but not you're not getting i hate to use this term you're not getting to the root cause mrs crossin mr bolton how many how many did we not approve for the same situation do you know around about this this year this car this year um i don't have that number right there on me i
070know in a weekly update we gave the number the total number of board um of attendance exception request but for that category i am not sure but two i will tell you the number of students receiving special education in the district is 20 of the full district population so it's a considerable amount if parents would want that i mean it's it is a board decision it it is a board decision um but we are at 20 um total population altogether thank you we had 76 uh we found our board update we had 76 attendance exceptions last year and 31 of them last year were approved so that's where we are right now with attendance exceptions for last school year [Music] all right can we move on to the vote uh can i have one one
071little question i would like just like to know if we have the capability of to accommodate one more child that you know in that classroom where is it something that we're at a max the amount of kids in that class in that grade level if it's kindergarten or first grade um that you know we need to hire another teacher to accommodate this or is it something that we can just add to a classroom as i said i don't have those numbers in front of me because i wasn't anticipating that question i mean i could i go look it up yes i i could but i don't have it here with me and in that case i would like to abstain from voting because if it's just a matter of riding a child to a classroom
072that's not a problem but if it's a matter of hiring a new teacher to accommodate the one student then that that's a different story all right i'm calling for the vote all in favor could we do it right now we can't do a role we can do a roll call yeah could we do that that i'm okay with and we're voting whether we're going to approve 3a okay and it's approval of denial you know that is being voted on so if you want to approve the denial you're voting yes okay mr martin no mr lyden i'd like to abstain mr sadowsky no mrs crossin no mrs brancato so we're voting no if we're not approving the denial no mr ginhart no mrs lynch yes mr godickson no mrs islenberg yes okay so the motion fails
073um six two with one abstention six two one yeah excuse me so that means two six one so that means this lady's children can all go to the same school now right for one year just take it one year at a time lady thank you moving on to 6.3 b approves the denial of the request for exception to policy 202 eligible of non-resident student for student 18-14 to attend william tennant high school tuition-free for the year 2022-2023 school year second second hour by mrs sandovsky 6.3 b yes and tony you wanted to speak to that no i just wanted to vote you just ordered it separately any discussion on that seeing none all in favor aye aye aye any opposed no mr stadowski any abstentions abstain okay we have a 7-1-1 vote in favor of
074denial and lastly we have 6.3 approves the exception to policy 206 assignment within district and policy algebrai of non-resident student for student 1-11 to attend senior year at william tennant high school tuition free for the year 2022 2023 second by mrs lynch any discussion none all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions passes nine nothing you're welcome it is now is that still mine [Music] it is so new business we have one two five items you want to pull any of those scene 9 we'll pull them all together it results that the centennial squared marcus as per attached 7.2 approves the continued enrollment of student 26-7 as a tuition student a resident of bryn athen the student's home district will pay tuition and will provide transportation as per attached 7.3 approves the settlement agreement and
075release for student 13-19 for the district to pay tuition to the quaker school for the dash 2022-22 um school year to 2023 past 2024 school year and a 24-25 school year as per attached approves 7.4 approves the procurement of security related technology based on safety and security needs of the district as identified for the centennial school district board of school directors and the administrative staff as per attacks 7.5 approves the job descriptions for the titles para educator instructional assistant english language development and teacher english language development as per attached second by mrs lynch any discussion question one question if i write misconception on 7.3 is it the pleasure of the board not to disclose the dollar amount of taxpayers money that we're spending on this [Music] we could disclose it it's not currently listed showing
076what the cost of doing this settlement is and the taxpayers have no idea how much of their money we're spending would we would we also disclose the cost of not doing it so you wouldn't because that's not you that's something you're not doing this is an item you're approving you're not proving what we don't correct that would be the reason to do it so in from my perspective you know in order to make that disclosure we'll need to change the process of approving 7.3 mrs islandberg if we're going to do that we need to share the whole picture and not just part of it because there's a reason these decisions are being made and we need to be clear and transparent then fully not just they don't make whatever case they wish we just aren't
077disclosing how much taxpayer money is being spent and i'm not saying i'm against it i'm just in favor of telling people what things cost and let's say 7.3 we're not willing to tell them what how much of our money we're spending that's all yeah let's tell them the whole thing then yeah we need to tell them everything and not just part of it at this point we are proving 7.3 as read i would need an amendment you know to that mrs lynch yes i do think the taxpayers who are paying the bill should know the amount but i'd also like to know how was this handled in the past was the amount included or was it as mr martin said not told the taxpayers to know how much money was spent what is the answer
078please is there anyone in this room who can answer this we know it hasn't been disclosed publicly in the past which is why mr martin i believe was bringing it up i think if i understand correctly i'm sorry i'm having difficulty hearing you sorry about that i believe it has not and that's what prompted him to bring that up today i think i brought up in the past and it continued to not be disclosed i just think it should be and then people can make whatever case they wish about why they're doing this i'm actually not i'm i'm in favor of the settlement i just think people need to know [Music] how much of their money we're spending it's their money not our money so at this point i do not have an amendment so
079i would like to go forward with the vote um all in favor aye aye aye aye any opposed i will abstain on 7.3 for the reason i stated okay we have an 8 0-1 our vote in favor of all items on the new business uh i do fortunately 8.1 policies presented for initial distribution discussion there are none and 8.2 policies presented for adoption there are none i'll take easy good job item nine financials um 9.1 there are four items anybody want to question your question any of the four yep if not 9.1 the results attending a board of school directors approves the schedule of bills investments cafeteria fund budget reports and general fund cash receipt summary june 22 july 22 and august 22 as per the attached 9.2 approves the 2022 budget transfers for june
080july and august as per the attached 9.3 approves the pending bills list as per the attached and 9.4 accepts the pre-approved bills list as pretty attached mr emotional and those i'll make motions or second to approve the four second any further comment question all in favor aye aye nine zero uh up to item ten board discussion and comments are there any comments or discussion items your hand up mr genhardt are you just oh okay i just they'll put your hand up uh mr martin and fellow members of the board and the vast audience that we have sitting here tv landers a lot jane i decided that the best thing for me to do would to put prepare remarks as to the subject matter i'd like to talk about so having said that here we go
081i have spoken to dr ben about this issue and i very strongly strongly hope this is done asap and i will start off with this in life one faces many challenges the hill walkway going into our football stadium is definitely a challenge for many the district years ago had the opportunity when renovations were done on the stadium to bring a remedy to the situation but at that time they resolved to use golf carts i do believe now is the time to install a railing to ease the situation as our district has received additional monies from esser and the state of pennsylvania we can pay for this railing to fix the situation let's do this tomorrow to be in a client compliance with ada standards along with helping those who struggle with the situation there are
082many people in this room who have witnessed people especially at graduation and sporting events killing themselves trying to get up and down this hill or waiting for a golf cart let us not get caught up in the bureaucrat procedures that will delay the installation of a railing hopefully we will not need a study as it tell us why we need a railing hopefully we do not need a firm to design a railing hopefully we do not need a survey to inform us of what type of reeling people want we can get this reeling done asap let's work on having it done tomorrow thank you i actually happen to agree with you as long as you don't bring up ada requirements because once you do that you have to get all the engineering and everything else
083if it's just a good thing to do i think we can so mister move ahead and do it i can speak to that so first of all it's not an ada issue and thank goodness for the reason you said because it wouldn't pass the slope wouldn't pass the ada requirement um it's an open path of downhill with nothing to help anybody get up or down and it is steep and extremely steep mrs crosston did you witness something most recently yeah i was with someone actually who has a walker who was having a lot of difficulty had to keep stopping ms crosston if y'all let me finish i think you'll be happy with my response what i was going to say is it it is not an ada requirement because we have ada access to the
084state and the law always says you have to have a entrance that actually wouldn't pass anyway because the steep is too so what i have asked the staff to do was get quotes just because what was said it's a good thing to do for what it would take to just put a rail on there so people can hold on to so they're working on getting that information to me to bring to the board because it'll be an obvious expense that you all have to prove but it is too it's very steep it is something that i'm trying to get like what can we do to get it done and if you do the ada it has a whole lot of other tape but it's not it doesn't qualify anyway so we're just trying to figure
085out i talked to mr shepard and i also talked to a.d last week about it so i'm just waiting for the information to come back thank you well dr ben whatever you can do to expedite this would truly be appreciated remember i'm only asking for one hill when the one hell is completed i'll go to the next show yes ma'am i i think i think that your comments tonight we'll help get the point across to them to get many information [Music] good thing thank you just take it easy mr shepherd we still have some pending ones from about two months ago that we haven't resolved with fences and other sorts of things so hopefully mr shepherd we can get the quotes on the railing so we can move that along with the other things bang
086bang bang there you go he's shaking his head yes i think you made your point thank you mr martin everyone in agreement yep good see that easy anyone else have anything they want to do okay reports i'm going through here mr gendart a report new specific report just a reminder to the board members that the policy committee meets every third tuesday of every month so if anybody has anything they would like to bring up for consideration especially if it's any way in any way time sensitive get it to us as soon as possible there are a lot of items that we have to address quite a few of them are things that have to be changed because of changing the law it chews up a lot of time so some things may take a little
087time to get on the agenda so thank you if you have anything get it to us as soon as you can this is eilenberg or anything i have to apologize i wasn't there was a conflict on this august 16th i was unable to attend this meeting for personal reasons and as well the bciu meeting was the same night so i was unable to attend that as well so i apologize next time i will have a report that's fine no problem thank you very much mr shidowski anything all right the one big headline from the pspa bolton this week was the governor wolf approving the universal free school breakfast for the commonwealth this year starting in october and uh you know dr betten mentioned the cafeteria staff working very very hard earlier i imagine this will
088increase their business in the mornings a little bit but i know they're up to the task also i'll be attending the first in a series of mostly virtual psba policy institute sessions next weekend uh they all culminate in the advocacy day next uh in the spring so i'm looking forward to that note there was no competition for any of the board spots in pspa now it's pretty easy everybody's getting along up there and nobody wants to do it one or the other uh mr ginhart again anything no sir mr godixton mbit uh a couple of things um we had our board meeting last night um and we are working on the north plaza it is uh well underway to be completed by november maybe mid november we've also been very successful with the work that's
089been done by the roofing company so that is moving forward very well as well we have also come to the point where we have made a job offer to a new director the new director is not on a contract yet so i will not disclose name at this particular moment but he has basically agreed to a contract uh the next board meeting is also shifted a little bit at mbit the initial meeting will be on october the 3rd which is a tuesday and the board meeting itself would be wednesday the 12th so there is a change in board meeting schedules at mbit in the month of october any questions mr gerdigson moving on uh we had pretty good communications tonight so i don't see any need for any more unless anyone else has something well
090actually there's one more thing in regards to mbit the assistant director at mbeit has also resigned so we will be looking for a replacement for her as well since there are no public i don't believe there's any further public comment they've all deserved this i don't i wouldn't uh mr shadowski do you have scheduled meeting i do ladies and gentlemen hi out there this is your schedule board events and calendar of events friday september 16th early dismissal k-5 only for professional learning tuesday september 20th at 7 pm the bciu board meeting at the bciu monday september 26th all schools and offices are closed in observance of rosh hashanah tuesday september 27th at 7 pm centennial school board meeting that's us our work slash regular meeting is right here in this board room join us for
091that wednesday october 5th schools and offices are closed in observance of yom kippur monday october 10th all schools close for professional learning and tuesday october 11th at 7 pm another school board meeting right here in this room that's it anything else before we adjourn if not is there a motion to adjourn that's a move second half of favor all right in two weeks thank you