October 18, 2021 KASD School Board Meeting

001[Music] like to call this meeting to order would everyone please rise for a moment of silent meditation to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all like to welcome everyone this evening it's either in the room or or online i appreciate seeing seeing all the folks come out to the meeting there was a sign-in sheet in the back of the room um that you could use to sign in as well as also initiate whether you'd like you to speak on any either non-agenda or agenda items there will be time for public comment on the meeting this evening there was a executive session prior to this evening to do work to talk about both legal and personnel

002items with that roll call please ricky michelle batts here randy birch here darian here michael house here cecilia holt here dennis ritter here eric johnson here carl nolte charles sher here quarter business evening will be the approval mr president could i interrupt please before we proceed can we please have the governor's mass mandate enforced it is dr darien the two folks who are here without mass have have medical exemptions okay thank you start with the approval of minutes from the october 4 2021 school board meeting to have a motion so moved motions are a second motion a second any comments or questions regarding item three hearing none roll call please ricky michelle batts yeah randy birch yes yes michael hass yes cecilia yes eric johnson dennis redder yes yes so approved next is item four

003treasures report mr miller thank you mr nolte this is the treasurer's report for september 2021 the month began with a cash balance of seven million six hundred forty eight thousand and fifty seven dollars and forty seven cents we had receipts of 12 222.79 bills in payroll of 4 million 204 367.20 leaving with uh leaving us with a cash balance at month end of 16 443 513 and six cents thank you mr miller is there a motion to accept the treasurer's report we have a motion second motion a second any comment questions regarding item number four yeah mr miller i just have one question so um looking through some of the transactions and things that were paid um sorry the other night there was one payment to the borough of qut and we can talk about

004that this is just me trying to understand some of the details behind this um and it looks like it was in the amount of forty two thousand five hundred seventy dollars utilities or that that kind of thing have been called out necessarily so just for my own knowledge did you say borough of kutztown that is most likely either electric electricity or water or a combination of both any other questions hearing on roll call please ricky randy birch yes yes michael hess yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes charles sure yes michelle batts yes carl nalty yes so next is item five approval of bills for payment we'll start with item a the ratification for the general account including manual checks of 2 million hundred fifty one thousand four hundred forty six dollars

005and sixty cents to have a motion motion is there a second second second question a second comments or questions regarding item a ratification of bills for payment from the general account hearing none roll call please ricky hi darian michael yes cecilia yes eric johnson yes demonstrator dr ritter joshua yes michelle batts yeah randy bert carl nolte yes so approved next is item b approval of payment from the general account in the amount of eight hundred fifty seven thousand three hundred thirty five dollars and seven cents we have a motion so moved motions are a second second should a second any comments or questions regarding item b hearing none roll call please ricky yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter joshua michelle bats randy birch yes aldarian yes carl nolte so approved next is

006item c approval bill for bills for payment from the construction account in the amount of 578 320.73 to have a motion so moved some motion is there a second second you a second comments or questions regarding item c approval bills for payment from the construction account so one question on this one so it looks like most of this cost is to mcclure is this how are we ending up with some of the delays and things was there any um any of this costing or where are we landing with that project uh as far as i couldn't hear what you said are you talking about the mcclure payment yeah the mcclure payment just wondering where we're falling with that to finishing the project and if there was any credits applied given the delays and things that

007we've incurred in the course of the project well this was just uh currently there are no credits due to delays none of the delays at this point were necessarily mcclure as a result of mcclure are not following through they've either been just procurement things that they gave us at least a little warning on or some permitting issues that they've been working extra hard on but we still owe them money we're yes yeah for payment for correct any other questions yeah regarding the money we're holding if you look on page two of the treasurer's report there's a 2021 summer construction account there's a balance there of 1.3 million dollars so still bond money that's your mark for those payments any other comments hearing none roll call please ricky cecilia holt yes eric johnson dennis ritter yes

008charles sure yes michelle batts yeah randy birch yes yes michael house yes carl nalty yes so approved next is item six communications and reports we will start with item a the comprehensive plan presentation i'm gonna go down and join dr lieber's word one location we need so oh so this evening our first bit of uh reports from the administration is our quit centenary school district comprehensive plan for the years of 2022 through 2025. the comprehensive planning process began way back in the fall of 2019 as we had a group together sitting right here on this floor prior to covert 19 discussing some discussing strengths weaknesses of the district really started with a review of the mission vision and values and as processed 19 there were some delays obviously through this ski and the requirement to

009submit the comprehensive plan but we continued along with that process as as best we could and really ramped up in the spring of last year so in that comprehensive planning the first piece as i discussed is the review of the mission vision and values here we have uh the clicker not working in that review back in january of 2020 um we sat with a group of parents students teachers uh community members to review sort of the mission and vision of the kutztown school district mers was that most in the community that we met with really found great in the mission but through those conversations through uh promises of what we want for a school district for our students um there was an addition of the word empowered there knowing that our little girl has empowered

010contributors to a global community empowering them to engage within the community from whatever their interests might be as they grow into adults that contribute to what this global community turns into the vision maximize potential embrace change and create the future has remained a vision that was embraced by those who who met with us in initial planning phases in addition to our mission and values there are the beliefs belief statements that go along with those values all students can learn lifelong learning is essential that individuals must possess a sense of purpose and belief in their own potential for collaboration among the home school district community positively impacts learning critical thinking and the acquisition and application of knowledge are keys to success diversity is valued individual individuality is celebrated individuals are responsible for their choices and accountable

011for those actions healthy choices are imperative from a safe and interactive environment is critical and decision making is expected you know those are belief statements that uh that had ascribed to in the previous comprehensive plan company planning process and as we again vetted them with the community members involved back in 2019 2020 still believing that those are belief statements that align with the values so the the process uh is laid out by pde and it's a fairly scripted process and have a lot of latitude in what we look at uh we have uh we're even told which data to look at just just i suppose that's so pve gets a common look across the commonwealth um so so one of the first things i had to do once completed our mission vision and values work

012um we then took our administrative and our leadership team and we did a needs assessment and there was two things that we were really doing there reviewing student performance and then pde calls equity considerations i'll explain those in a moment so in the needs assessment there's three areas that are mandatory to look english language arts math and science technology and engineering these are these are also areas the state has a state assessment in and so what we're doing is we're reviewing and analyzing and discussing a variety of relevant data data sources mostly identified by the state but we are also allowed to look at some of our own data sources so you'll see throughout the star testing which is not something the state would condone but we use for benchmark testing in a lot of

013ways it's more useful than what the state gives us because the state will test us once a year star testing we can do multiple times and we can use it for growth identifying growth in our students so there's this this category called equity consideration and um they ask you to look at subgroups identified we really only have three subgroups we only have enough students to have three subgroups so it could be a minority group if you have a great enough number of minority students that can be a subgroup but the subgroups that we have are english language learners special education students with disabilities and considered economically disadvantaged and looking at the data from these three sub um i want to experience for each one and there's been a lot of discussion over the last six

014months about kind of where might our gaps be where are the areas where um our students might be underperforming the discussion on that those three areas are and it's borne out in data so i do want to take time to read these in the past three years we've it's a significant decline in the percentage of english learners proficient and advanced measured by pssa assessments now our numbers continue to rise um as of this last year we had 33 students that were english language learner as of today we have 42 so a marked increase again as little as i don't know three that number was i don't know dr quinn probably below 20 correct yeah below 20. so we continue to see an increase in our english language and we've seen that in the needs for

015um an ell teacher uh that we've in the last and we've seen a growth there secondly a disproportionate number of learners are chronically absent in each year over the past two years um attendance is one of the things they ask you to look at you have to look at attendance and attendance groups and are there are there any differences between groups and so it's sort of a stark it's an interesting mystic and we don't we don't really have an explanation for it um but it is we'll be looking at in the coming years why why is that uh thirdly there's a greater percentage of english learners not reaching proficiency in star which is our the local assessment that we use that is that is benchmarked against a lot more students than just our district in

016uh grades three to five and it's in both ela and math now this is in comparison to all the all student groups so throughout the plan you'll you'll see this all students that's all of the the kutztown students combined and then you compare the subgroups to the all student group and that's where you're you're looking for is there a discrepancy between achievement in those groups so these are the three things that we saw with those learners with disabilities the state average for students that have been identified with disabilities is between 17 and 18 we started this process in 2019 the state average has gone up but ours has two students with disabilities in kutztown make up 21 our student population last year when we had a cyclical monitoring which is the state comes in and

017looks at our processes for special education this was one of the things we were dinged for because numbers are too high and so later i'll get to an explanation of why we think our numbers are so high and what are to trust that um 40 to 50 percent of all absent students came from our students with this population so the students with disability population which is 21 percent of our student accounted for and it's 40 to 50 because the the data is really messy for the last two years what what do we call an absence what do we not call an absence you know why is here why are they not so that's why you see the range of 40 to 50. it's in there depending on how you read the data students with disabilities

018um achievement on keystone exams falls significantly below the all student group in literature algebra and biology all of the keystone assessments so our students with disabilities are not performing at a level that we are satisfied with there's a disproportionate number of students with disabilities that are not reaching proficiency in grades three to eight on pssas in ela math and science so in grades three to eight i look at the numbers against the all student group we're just not achieving at the same level at least a level to us it's too big of a disproportionate uh gang and the two students considered economically disadvantaged this has been a really hard group to define in the last 20 months this is usually driven by by students who apply for free and reduced lunch and the federal government

019has made lunches uh and all meals and schools free for the last two years and our understanding of who's economically disadvantaged is probably a little bit handicapped today but that we were looking at was when we knew who the economically disadvantaged students were so we're a little cloudy on who they would be today but we're not cloudy on the data that we were looking at previously there's a disproportions considered economic disadvantage that are not reaching proficiency in grades three to eight on pssa assessments and ela and math there's also disproportionate number of students considered economically disadvantaged efficiency on keystone math and science the math would be algebra and there's a disproportionate number of students considered managed that are not reaching the 40th percent in grades k to 8 as measured by star the 40th percentile

020so when you look at star you have to it's it's you're generally trying to measure growth and we established the 40th percentile and star establishes the 40th percentile so student 40th percentile meaning 40 of all the students who take star fall below that and 60 are above that that's the threshold that star says you can start to look for proficiency on pss so we that's a benchmark that we use the 40th percentile because star says if they're at the 40th percentile they may very well be proficient so that's kind of a marker of how we know if they're above the 40th percent they really probably ought to be proficient if they're below it they're going to struggle on the pssa so in summary of those things for uh in the category of equity in the

021in the portion of the study of equity considerations let me summarize really in this statement achievement in english language english learner students students with disabilities students considered economically disadvantaged as measured by pssa keystones and star in ela math and science have fallen behind the all student group now i don't think that town would be alone in finding these statistics and these these statistics are our problem um can be found in another district what the comprehensive plan asks us to do is to look hard at our data and say which students do we have that are falling behind and what is going to be your action plan to address those so that was the result of our needs assessment so at that point we switched to a self-assessment we rate ourselves and mr chat and we'll

022pick up there can i ask a quick question before you move on yep uh okay so obviously we're in a kind of strange a couple of years back to back i'm wondering uh you said in a lot of points that the data is cloudy just because of circumstances out of our control um we've been measuring uh socioeconomic by by uh free lunches are we going to be changing how we try to collect that information to adapt to the way things are now or is it going okay i mean in theory it would go back assuming that the free lunch status you know for all isn't something that exists beyond this school year um but that's how the state collects that and we still could people could still complete the forms but there's really no incentive

023to do so if the lunch is free no matter who you are so that's where that data is is incomplete in in a given year like this will last because of it so we we are the assumption that that's not going to be status quo going forward and that we would be able to collect that information once again an attendant where we encourage people to stay home when they're ill you know you have your testing stay home quarantining and isolating you know is a little bit different but there's so many different variables into attendance this year so in that assessment of conditions for leadership teacher teaching and learning there's categories not yet evident emerging upper exemplary those ratings used to identify strengths and challenges some of the categories empowering leadership continuous focusing improvement on instruction

024centered supports uh data-driven human capital strategies and the allocation of resources strategically those exemplary ratings include local business community partnerships and the recruiting and retaining of fully credentialed qualified staff emerging ratings maintain focus on continuous improvement and organizational adherence for those systems school supports in implementing evidence-based strategies all students have access to rigorous standard production and that's a very very high standard as you know as we talk about these going forward to the priorities that we set some strengths include um aspiring to implement evidence-based instructional strategies and programs the recruiting of fully credentialed staff the support development professional learning of central office staff in alignment with the mission vision and goals and partners for the communications those are strengths challenges implementing and sustaining tiered intervention systems to support student growth across all grade levels that's

025what you'll see we'll talk about in the planning phase mostly um you know in those most multi-tiered intervention levels we have much stronger system elementary as they get to secondary they end up becoming less they're not as strong and consistent and that's there's reasons for that when you look at remediation on a secondary level it's typically about grades gpa credits etc those measures but you know the best multi-tiered intervention system skill sets if you don't have the basic literacy skills how are you going to perform in some of your classes if you don't have the basic math skills necessary for whether it's your math or science classes how are you going to perform those classes so it's maintaining those multi-tiered level of interventions for grades and for grades and credits etc because that is important

026as well because that takes away from what happens in the secondary levels in terms of skill sets that impact those systems as well a vision of and cultural actions for all students you know that really comes down to some of those data points when we see that there's a difference between attendance and achievement and grad um depending on different categories we need to make sure that we are fostering a vision of culture and high expectations for all so again comes out to these notable observations students consider disadvantaged ell or students with disabilities fall student academic achievement graduation rate attendance again that's a real highlight and that students with disability the population is larger something that has been um you know a focus district for quite a few years and trying to reduce and we say

027reduce the number because it speaks to data but reducing the percentage of students identified isn't about a number it's about providing access to more students to the least restrictive environment as long as students are identified as special education there's a likelihood that they're not going to have as much access to the least restrictive environment or their their grade level instruction now we always are trying to work that but it's just more likely if that's the case so as we we go through that needs assessment we identify strengths and challenges and you keep distilling it down and and you get to a certain point that once you've analyzed your strengths and challenges they they they really push you to identify anywhere from two to four statements and the the strengths and challenges that we found really

028fit into two categories so our first priority statement ksd will expand and develop a systematic pre-k to 12 approach to proactively address giving all students access to standards and teachers the pedagogical skills to support struggling learners the second one second priority statement kasd will commit to the expansion and development of a data informed systematic approach to addressing learning gaps in the restrictive environment so um for just at the risk of on a tangent that takes it far away so our sled popular is higher than the state average special ed the way a student gets identified in special education is their ability level is at one level and their achievement level is below it and it has to be a significant enough and it's so it's called a deficit model and so what happens is if

029you don't give interventions to a child early on they're able we know what their level is but their achievement continues to drop and if you can give them supports you can boost their achievement and the way you reduce numbers is not by pushing students out of special education it takes a number of years the way you do it is you support students so that they don't fall so low that they get identified which means we are giving support really everywhere that we need to give support for students to find success it doesn't mean making it easier mr tim chattan mentioned reading you know what do what are we doing with students who struggle in reading but have to sit in a chemistry class and read a chemistry textbook what supports are because are we are

030we assessing reading in that chemistry class because a student's struggling to read a chemistry book we're supposed to be assessing chemistry so what supports can we put in place and so what you see in both of these is a system-wide approach pre-k 12 and that do good things in in places some places we're really good at stuff some places there's gaps and so what we're committing to and is trying to come up with trying we will come up with a k-12 approach for how we're going to support students to try to keep that gap from getting so large that they get identified so it's helping students to be peaceful as they go not waiting for them to fall into a deficit so that they now need to be identified so with this we've set five

031goals around that that concept of trying to set up a system k to 12 pre-k to 12 and um trying to give kids access to talk about least restrictive environment i'm not sure if you're familiar with the least restrictive so the least restrictive environment in a school is you're sitting in biology class nobody's with you you're just doing it by yourself a little more restrictive would be you're in that biology class and you go to a special education class in another period and the teacher in the special education class has the notes from biology and they're kind of helping you so you're getting some additional support a more restrictive environment even than that would an aide is sitting with you in the class and to make sure that you're accessing curriculum the most restrictive environment

032is you take the student out of the biology class they sit in a special education class and they receive biology there and the state has said that is your last option you need to try everything else first in order to do that we need to develop the systematic approach where we are teaching teachers what are the things that we need to do to better support our students so that's where these five goals come from by june 2025 kasd will have developed and implemented a coordinate data driven pre-k to 12 system awards for all students so this means pre-k to 12 it means no matter where they are in our school we want to try to find the ways to support students in the in the least restrictive and to the extent that we can by

033june 2025 goal two all teachers will consistently implement evidence-based instructional strategies to deliver rigorous efforts based curriculum as evidenced in walkthroughs formal observations and evaluations so we're going to we're going to upscale what we do with these evidence-based strategies and evidence-based strategies are strategies that are implemented that actually produce so we don't it's you know in the old way we would say to us a student you need to come you need to study harder that's not evidence-based evidence-based would be putting something in front of the student helping the student do something that actually produces a product that we can see improvement in the student goal number three by june 2025 all case the teachers will demonstrate how to use screening data to identify the need for tier one interventions let me pause there when we

034do this there's three tiers of intervention the first tier takes place in the classroom so if to be a restrictive environment and i'm teaching a middle school history class teacher needs to to understand what would be the tiers of intervention what that i could do to intervene when a student is struggling in my class and so what it really kind of looks like is a menu approach of things that our teachers will try to help our students find success in the least restrictive environment and continue the need for tier one interventions demonstrate how to properly implement tier one interventions across the curriculum and measure the effect of these interventions so that's the third goal by june 2025 all teachers and students will have access to a multi-tiered system of support that's the three tiers so

035tier two is a little more invasive is not more direct and then tier three is really kind of one-on-one very intensive this is a student who needs a lot of intervention so all students will have access to that and teachers will have access and understanding of how that works so that when a student is struggling they move through tier one to tier two and ultimately to tier three and this will be exhausted the tiers will be exhausted before we ever put them through a special education evaluation process so in other words we will have exhausted every node to do before we start to look at the deficits and so it's this is why it's data driven because you're looking at data all the time to figure out whether students are moving you're going to talk

036less about proficiency and more about growth because grossly what we're looking for the kid who's in the 99th percentile should be growing the kid who's in the ninth percentile should be growing without growth none of this can happen goal by june of 2025 resources will be allocated to ensure all students operate within the least restrictive environment by a data analysis differentiated instruction academic support and co-teaching efforts that one if you ask me today what does that look like in 2025 we don't know what we do know is we might be using special education teachers differently than we use them today so they might be a teaching environment where they are teaching by the regular ed teacher because that's least that's less restrictive than them teaching outside of the classroom outside of the regular classroom on

037their own so we've established these five goals and then we also set an action plan just two points of emphasis you know it's comprehensive planning model but it's also a it's very much a continuous improvement planning model where you know many of the things we discussed we do really well now we just be better when we look at ways that we can be better it's we we have multi-tier level supports explicitly throughout the elementary schools and we have them in secondary schools they just look a little bit different but being a little bit more strategic in that continuous process of evaluating um to support you know so it's we have to look through the eyes of a continuous model so it's not completely these are aren't systems that don't exist it's about making them better

038and in addition you know looking at some of the things that we discussed dr lever hit on it just at that very last point we talked so much about how are we going to support kids to get where they need to be and we look at it from most of those that are below the proficiency level but how do we support kids that demonstrate proficiency before they even take the class you know there are skill sets that students can demonstrate mastery before they even enter the class well how do we support those students as well so the the conversation ends up focusing those deficits are more but what about where the strength that we view class assessment differently in areas where the mastery's already been demonstrated by a student so this i think these people

039redundant you know you can kind of follow those action steps and see what do we need to do establish an implementation now how you you can't measure we are without the proper assessment now develop those very detailed and consistent protocols for data analysis conduct those meetings routinely oper operationalize multi-tiered levels of support implement monitor and adjust goals and instruction and again it's a cycle it's a continuous improvement cycle to monitor growth and develop each student from where they are another piece i think becomes it's somewhat redundant what do we need to do in professional development we'll support each one of those action steps assessment map development understanding data protocols solidifying tier one strategies data team meetings and action planning data driven instruction solidified tier two and tier three strategies so that they serve as a

040malleable menu of supports for as indicated by their assessments is next as far as timeline we shared that this has been a lengthy process uh for obvious reasons today is october 15th board review of the plan we're open for questions it has been available public or well since uh friday when you know copies were placed in various uh community locations and borough offices schools in each of this in each of the communities the board we would need to get a board approval in november um the 15th is the target date there and then there's a submission to the pennsylvania department of education so they are next step timelines questions i know i've heard for years now that the question of why could sounds left you know percentage of kids with special education is higher than

041our peer group i think people just sort of scratched their heads and kind of never really understood why that is um i mean have you seen this sort of program um system systemic or systematic approach been implemented in other districts that have experienced similar high levels of of special education students where i've seen it the most effective the schools that i've been in where it's been the most effective is is when we did not have levels of support so we didn't have we didn't have the the most restrictive levels to implement things in tier one and two because we knew we couldn't get kids to this place um there are there are that drive their numbers down again it's not about numbers it's about i mean if we if we did this and we put

042in all of those things and our number remained at 21. uh we would be we would be back here for growth and saying look you know here's here's where our kids are growing um it's not really about the number and i'm not sure in three years we're going to realize enough to see the number drop to 17 or 18. what we should see is we should see as students are coming through we really ought to see fewer kids getting referred and fewer kids finding themselves being identified this is this is a three year plan because that's what the that's what the state requires but practically speaking this is something the district we should get so good at it that we're doing it for nine or ten years and then i think in time we could

043we could see some real gains for students but it won't be a short-term fix i understood i think i'm curious the english language learners students with disabilities and students considered economically disadvantaged i would man imagine that a large number of kids fit all three groups some some do for sure um you know you're gonna have a greater crossover between the economically disadvantaged and special education larger pools you know if there's just it's a larger group of students so you'll have a greater cost in line with that a number i'm really interested if we could pull out of the number of kids who's attending problematic and whether that group is the group that's the the numbers come down in that group right uh just a number i'd be very curious about i don't expect you to

044have it but it's just one that would be there's a tough reality in there right like we're talking about achievement we're talking about graduation and we're talking about systems in place to help support students guess what if they don't show up none of it matters like it's you know that's that's just the reality so attendance is a key factor and we start looking at students not attend you know there's illness issues but is it because they don't feel a sense of success in school you know it becomes a compounding problem sometimes is there at times a misunderstanding lack of concern about the process and attendance i think attendance is a key factor because you can do anything and unless they attend can't teach kids who aren't here right but on the other hand that would

045give us an avenue to attack it's a different sort of intervention than the tier one two and threes which are academic this would be a different sort of thing but obviously a very necessary one yeah if you were to ask one of our and particularly an elementary principal they can tell you just how much impact one student can have on state scores because when you're when you're small that you know one or two or three students really make a big difference and um again it's not about the numbers it's about putting something in place systematically that is going to continue to help kids and it's going to continue to help our professionals grow in their understanding of what's the best thing that we can do you see it's not only the it's not only the

046kids that are at risk that benefit from this when you start looking at data and a teacher sees that their top kids are not moving that has an impact on the teacher and so our our goal the the multi-tiered system ultimately helps all of our students it targets groups that have kind of prompted us to do it but if we do it well and if we're deliberate about it it ultimately impacts all of our students i'd like to understand just how drastically different is this from what we're doing today so um how drastic the question is how drastic is it than what we're doing today we do not we have not said that this is the focus of what we do in pd so so basically for the next three years we're saying this is

047what we're doing um some of these things really well in pockets that's why it's not it's not such a it's not as high a mountain as it might sound because you can go into our elementary school you can find they have really good tier one interventions everywhere across the elementary what we need to do is we need to push that in there because secondary is tradition this isn't a kutztown problem this is a this is a u.s education problem it's just not some new well for the reasons mr tim chattan mentioned we're from gpa where it's like well you know what they got a they got a c in algebra that's fine move them on but a c in algebra usually means a c in algebra two it usually means something less than that after

048algebra two and so um when we start to shift our attention to mastery and making sure that kids are getting things that we're filling gaps that has a it hasn't it has an add-on effect you know as kids travel through our curriculum so what we want to do is take what we do really well in all of in some of our levels and make it in all of our levels and then there's some other things like tier two interventions we do well in some places but we need to do well everywhere so um it's not entirely different i would say that the change is we are we are say this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it and we think it's going to benefit you know the kids who are in

049these subgroups but we also think it's going to benefit all of our students can i ask a question pardon me is there a brief explanation of tier one and tier two sure sure tier one it can be as simple so what's a what's a classic one is there are students who have um that the new phrase is executive functioning so if they have trouble with executive functioning some of you up here are really good and really organized some of you are that's not your gift and i have a student who who is a mess nationally that becomes a barrier to their success and honestly the sad thing in education what we've done is we've said well they're not organized that's why they're not doing well the difference is so you can get this so you

050can get this subtle shift we're not assessing when they're taking a biology class we're not assessing their ability to be organized we're assessing their ability in in biology we're not assessing your ability to stay organized in math class we need to know what you can do in math so in a tier one strategy would be to help a kid with organization what structures need to be in a kid who's getting a c there's a cumulative effect and so we want to have strategies that we can employ all across all of our classrooms to help students so they're not continual so there's a list of those tier one i can i can probably send you maybe i'll send you um in the next next week in cougar tracks i'll link a document from the country that

051is our tier one interventions from the elementary school so i can show you you'll have a sense of what that is tier two is typically if if mr tim chattan is the teacher and maybe i'm an aide i might help a student with something student might need to uh direction of taking a test in a regular setting might just be a little too much for them i had this problem in college i had to learn i had to go to the back of the room had to be from everybody and i did really well but if i didn't do that i i just didn't do as well it had to do with you know my ability to focus my ability and so tier two strategies are kind of next level of what do we need

052to do to help a student find success because we're gonna teach them just to be organized we're trying to teach them to be organized so that we can know how they how much math they know how much science they know how much physics so that's the difference uh question yes dr ritter um familiar with maslov's hierarchy of need i kind of i think dr lever sort of answered my question do do these strategies take into account the fact that we have students who struggle with the certainty of or the uncertainty of food insecurity a more unstable home environment maybe even whether or not they they are certain there's going to be a home and not become homeless um so those are the things that get kind of looked at somewhere in in this year's system

053yes and you know over the years we know we love different acronyms in education and over the years there was response to intervention and we've transitioned more to we consider a multi-tiered system of support you know which adds a few words but really what that's about is looking at other factors that are not endemic or maybe even not just um you know like dr lever describes executive functioning which isn't exactly an academic skill but an organizational routine let's say so the multi-tiered would account for some of the supports in place to help students it is addressing food issues there is the need for supports and referrals and allowing people to have access to the resources that are in the community and and that's kind of the role especially in our middle school which we brought

054in of communities in schools right to help students address some of those sort of what we would consider maybe exterior issues that aren't necessarily within the educational system of the district but are happening out there in home and in the environment out beyond the school yes yes that's correct okay i think it's just important for us to connect the dots sometimes about these programs we put in place to really help boost um the students performance in our district yeah um something uh dr lieber that you had said kind of got me thinking and if it's too specific for for on this meeting that's fine um but when i think about like a typical special education setup where a student would be pulled out of class in in special ed to get some education there you

055had said something about co-teaching and i was just curious i think i might have read about it but just kind of curious since it doesn't sound like it's something we're doing and kind of what that we do we do do co-teaching it's um it's it's very staff intensive and so you have to find a way to do it with the staff that you have which so if if if currently you know i'm not always concise mr hess so i apologize um if currently we're having to support kids in a special ed room because of executive functioning issues and because of they need they need extra help in work completion because we're not doing that in the classroom the idea is we build the support so that they take place in the classroom which frees up

056a special education teacher or a para educator to to have a different role in the classroom and so in an ideal success setting the best setting that i've worked in we had three three tiers of classroom instruction we had we had for a special education student a student who's not receiving intensive services is what we would call an itinerant student so they're they're in regular classes and they check in with a special ed teacher routinely but they're really not needing more interventions than that the second level so so a student who's just in a regular ed classroom is checking in that would be the first level uh the second level would be a co-taught class so within a class and there's a special education teacher there and let's say it's algebra and so there's a

057special education teacher that co-teaches with the algebra teacher and that special education teacher is getting the exact same mission uh and is is able to model that same instruction for the students and is able to help students right there in the classroom so that would be a little more restrictive the most restrictive would be that that teacher who was co-teaching is also teaching a special education class to a very small subset of special education students that need even more intervention but they're teaching the one of the downfalls of special education and i'm not speaking specifically of kutztown this is just a downfall special education leave the regular ed classroom it's they're not always getting the regular curriculum they're getting they're getting other curriculum that is good but it's not necessarily the same it's not the

058same grade level standards and so in an ideal world we would set up a system that would allow us and that's the allocation of resources that comes really kind of in year three that we get to a point of maturity where we're able to strategically put people where we need them the most to help that support kids yeah and just some other logistical change and more teaching now you know con conversely to the tiered supports we have more co-teaching on the secondary level than we do on the elementary level you know one of the simple reasons for that is just the way schedules align up and allowing those supports in a perfect world if you're your best co-teaching situation you also have co-planning well that's a lot of things to align for a schedule to

059work that way that you can have co-planning as well um you know it's just so you end up having these like partial versions of co-teaching or partial versions of this because it becomes a staffing reality at times uh to support students you know in a perfect world when you have students with deficits they would get grade level instruction plus supports you know so they're in but then that becomes a scheduling nightmare for the students sometimes like how are they gonna are they missing then right because if they're in their regular um units of study lesson and then they go out for support some other time well what do they miss it you know then you start sometimes worried about that cost benefit of taking away things that kids enjoy about school just for the enjoyment

060of it you know versus enjoying the love of learning so it just it becomes really challenging that's all but so this may be diving into some details that can be reserved for another day but i know i've heard some discussion at secondary levels about the total instructional time in the classes and what the schedule currently looks like so that's one factor that's certainly going to be evaluated so that students have more time in the classroom with their rather than having 12 periods the amount of time they have with the teachers yeah i mean that was three years ago that was a focus of the secondary programming and scheduling committee was to try to increase instructional time for all students within their their subjects we did increase it last year take that out but it's that's

061where we went from having to do that you got to lose something in terms of time or day and what we did is we went from connections every day to every other day and we extended the periods on those every other days um you know so that just becomes as soon as we start pulling those connections out then everybody gets upset about where do we do the connections is where tier two interventions take place so it's it's okay and so not everybody needs your two interventions but connections would be a place where those would take place and so um it's it's it's everything is there's always a trade-off no and i've heard both right so kids want to conduct these connections every day but yet they would also like to have longer class periods in

062order to have an instruction so i think they're advocating for another hour of school is that can you say that cooper cooper you want to just wrap the gavel and say that i think you can come to that conclusion [Laughter] wouldn't be very popular right no but i mean i know it's about it but i'm just saying like that's what i'm hearing yeah that it's an excellent question and it's it's it is the dilemma that we have because if we come back and and to talk about connections it will invariably be tied to our tier and um and so yeah that's part of what we'll be studying and and looking at looking for data to support what it is we should be doing a good question um academic support is he was a high school

063where you know you have like it's like an intensive study hall basically where you have some free time to work on things but you're with a i guess would you call like a regular teacher that usually it's typically it's a yeah a teacher chosen by their subject area certification that they're your teacher correct right so i was wondering like is that an example of co-teaching and or is co-teaching something different than that co-teaching is two people from the same time yes so would you put academic support like under tier one or two two two supports two two yeah tier one should all be able to occur within the classroom settings like in a normal class yep in that regular classroom that makes sense absolutely any other questions there i guess i should add this is

064that there is a for review and comment and that is where can that be found on the on the website uh the school websites from the school so uh first of all there's an announcement a news we have the news feed at the bottom on the home page and the first item is comprehensive plan you click on that news feed it takes you to a board webpage which is a plan which has um this presentation it has the comprehensive plan i have and that was sent out to the community and then it has a link to a feedback form so often the community is welcome to give us comments on anything that they see anything that we think we should consider it's been a very very long rigorous involving a lot of people and yeah

065yeah but it's active today so just as a note it might be also beneficial i don't know if we can crop your presentation from youtube this is a lot of detail for people that may not sit in the education world it may be a lot to absorb so kind of incorporating not just having the information and a form for comments but actually having some context around it and being able to provide uh it's i did not put that one up that was for the team that's it this one i'm chatting he's a little more eloquent than me so i suggest that we test dr meyers with uh pairing this one down and giving us a copy of this on our website just to make it accessible because i mean i think part part of what's

066critical to all of this is it gets engaged right and they have to understand what it is that yeah we're talking about it's actually a part of the plan is it's is that we need everybody to understand the tiers of intervention and why they're important yeah i have another quick question um i've noticed at the high school level at least secondary level that there's a lack of motivation in completing and in showing up to supports that people have uh available to students is something that some some students lack in the in when they get to the secondary level what are there there's different do you see like different ways for this plan to help with that particularly with getting them to to want to do this there's a stronger on them into i think a

067student who's lacking um motivation a reluctant learner i like to call them um would would find some benefit in tier one intervention they might also find themselves a two intervention because they're not doing well um so you know ideally you want students to to want to do it for the right reason which is because it's good for them at the end of the day we will we will coerce to an extent but you know this is the greatest challenge in education is getting students to understand that they're the ones who benefit from it most that is there's there's a healthy population in any school who understand that and cooper i have yet to be in a school where i did not find that in high school students i might have even been guilty of that

068for a time myself when i was when i was younger but yeah they would really everybody has access to these interventions yeah one of the reasons i asked that is because with the um it is a good opportunity for students to get like to to support like you said which when we come up to like scheduling and stuff that would be something that they would talk about um but there's also an aspect of it where only the students that want to take advantage of that are going to because connections is a like a mandatory a time for mandatory help it's more of a time for to go and get help of the student's own volition so that's something having a connections period you might might need to look into that because because right now at

069least a lot of a lot of the responsibilities on the students during the connections for getting help so sure that's why i asked that no you're you're absolutely right and that is uh that is it's less of a problem in middle school it's not a problem in elementary school but certainly as students get older in high school it's a more pronounced problem because students make choices and what we want is we want them to make the right choices they're going to result in the best possible outcome for them so as a science teacher who came into my office one day to tell me he retired he said i'm retired and um salesman for 35 years every day i've been trying to sell science that kids need to learn science and in part that's what our

070teachers do they they kind of sell kids on look this is for you this is going to be better for you i don't know that our comprehensive plan and all that but it will certainly put some it will institutionalize some additional students will be able to access there's some fairly like psychology behind people who seek out help following motivation to avoid failure rather than to reach success something that needs to it's not a simple it's not a simple solution as well i'm trying to point but there are some some fairly complex things going on and those need to use that's the social yeah sometimes works yeah that's the social emotional learning side of what's happening um i i have seen students that absolutely were self-sabotaging they just they didn't feel like they could be successful

071and the only way that they could save face if you will is to just not care because then the reason they were not successful was they they felt it was because they couldn't do it but the reality is quit and don't do stuff then that becomes the reason i'm not successful not because i'm dumb and that and kids make that choice it's the reason a multi-tiered level of support is good because we don't want kids to get to that place where they don't believe they can do something and that's building that mindset and dr darren you're exactly right there's some deep psychology that goes into why a student chooses to not do things and it's not it's not ever as simple as they just don't want to do it there's there's usually a lot going

072on there that is behind why they're not doing it and there is a there's a whole side of this uh under tim chattan has been quite passionate about uh in building resilience in kids and getting them to to understand the growth mindset that carol dweck has so eloquently talked about and and making sure that they are able to succeed in the environment they're in from a very pure technical standpoint if there's any further comments review you'd be willing to share the beginning of november at our the mid if there's comments that come in that are worth sharing to the board we would have those for the mid first meeting in november sure sure i i can write i can write weekly cougar tracks i can give you an update on comments that come through that

073might be however you would like it thank you anything else mr chat dr lieber i'd just like to thank uh dr lever and the committee for uh a lot of work uh i've seen a lot of these plans over the years most end up in the fiction section of the library this looks like something that may actually make some changes in a very positive way so thank you very much for that effort you're gonna need to plug thank you again with that we will move to any other question board members we will move to the superintendent's report then mr tim chad has it set up uh did you share it are you sharing the presentation yep i just for the superintendent's good news report we obviously had the comprehensive planning presentation first up is the

074outstanding visual arts community for the third consecutive year our visual arts community our art program was recognized as an outstanding visual arts community congratulations to our students to our staff to the community as whole there is just a great visual arts community and culture here in kutztown that extends from university through town we are one of 20 schools selected throughout pennsylvania and against the third consecutive it's rigorous and inclusive programs highly accessible programs highly visible programs um congratulations to all a special thank you to our current art teacher sarah fidler chris turk and ben hoffman but also thank you to the art teachers uh mrs ziegler who retired last year um this would also be an award for her and our teachers in the past it's a culture that is pervasive throughout our schools walk

075down the halls of any school and just see the talent here in the hallways of the high school stuff mr hoffman has this kid's student has his students doing um it's a direct reflection of an entire program in a culture so congrats it's a very very well deserved recognition as an outstanding visual arts community there's a picture of the throwing wheels and the new part of congratulations to lyndon nyman who joins the kutztown area high school thousand yard rushing club he joined last week with three additional games his updated did the total is at 1031 which is number two in berks currently and he's number two in berks currently with 1378 total yards uh he has has some some place to climb as far as the number of yards he would get over the next

076two next two games but with possibility of even reaching number two on the all-time list um lenin and the entire football team this is the team of accomplishment while his name is the one that gets on the banner congratulations middle school cross country course record broken uh from by middle school madeleine maylie 8th grade broke the record home at the home meet recently on september 21st 2021 congratulations to madeline for breaking the quit centering middle school cross country course and congratulations to coach brett i see out having having middle schoolers out there working hard every day learning to run and enjoying being outside important team that congratulations goes to you as well in addition to model and the bci doubles tennis tournament meadows martin elena sewell bronze medal in the tournament both qualified for the

077district three two eight doubles tennis tournament at hershey club on friday sierra also qualified for the district three two a singles tennis tournament just a very successful fall season across the board at quitting sound high school and uh congratulations to sierra and elena thank you mr tim chattan any questions board members great thank you mr tim chattan in fact we'll move to board committee reports um start with ecc and facilities mr birch thank you mr nolte uh ecc met last monday on the extracurricular side uh we had discussion regarding the closest district with a bowling team and this would give our student the opportunity to in a sport that they enjoy and compete that actually appears on our agenda tonight under the new business under item jack with facilities we had discussion regarding the need

078to review and possibly update and replace some of the handicapped signage parking lots here in the district further information however still needed on that and that does not appear on our agenda yet for the board to consider we also had discussion regarding replacing uh auditorium exit doors uh there are stores that were showing rust and wear and that needed a replacement and that actually does it on our agenda for consideration tonight as item b with the new business there was also discussion regarding getting a new salt spreader this will help our staff in cutting down and the type of work they need to do with doing knowing ice removal so this is something for consideration of the board and that appears on our agenda tonight as item c in the new business also had discussion

079regarding uh bus patrol this is something that had recently appeared in the news there seems to have been a lot of community discussion regarding concerns with motorists obeying the red on the bus and we have concerns that people are not stopping for the uh buses uh so uh bus patrol will involve uh putting cameras on the buses those will hopefully be able to capture uh offenders if they are not going to evade the uh the buses and stop when they are supposed to and they could get to fines or other penalties if uh caught so again we are looking to address this safety issue that has uh become more prevalent in the district of late also we had this mr birch factory just interrupt there one second i apologize one you know that was uh

080vote from committee to the agenda but there's a lot of moving pieces in those contracts so it's likely to be on a uh the agenda for november there's a recommendation from the facilities committee but i'm also interrupted because i wanted to thank the pennsylvania state police and kutztown university you know for their partnership in helping to respond ku putting advantage of all faculty staff and students you know regarding the specific safety concerns uh passing stop arms near the university on 222 and max county township and the state police just for partnering for patrolling the area to kind of send that message of safety so i just want to thank their responsiveness in helping us with that issue in the short term thank you and then uh just lastly we had a discussion giving an update

081on the floor project particularly there's a couple areas where we're waiting on uh permits from the borough namely there is a basketball court that's going to be from academ but there's a hold up with the permit on that also with respect to the tennis court project there we're waiting on a permit as to the retaining wall and we had discussion about whether a board member should go to a borough meeting if necessary or try to see if we can get these issues properly looked at and taken care of and that makes up uh my report if it's okay with board members i'll hold on possibly until the end maybe look perfectly with the discussion item so we'll go to the other committees with some move to you dr ritter i'm sorry i didn't hear you

082um we're meeting on thursday night so uh i have no report at this point thank you bctc mr sure thank you our last meeting was on september 22nd at the west campus one of the items we discussed the scheduling specifications for the student programs our cte programs discussed providing a minimum of two and a half hours or more of ct instructional time we reviewed the schedule of what the different students of the various school districts are are there you know the time that they're there for um and you know some are you know they're all right around that time frame some are a little less a bit more um i think kutztown's right in the mix um i think we struggle sometimes because of the distance and i think that they are working with the

083school districts to try to get that to a to a minimum of two and a half hours for instructional time uh we also discussed the the budget timeline that'll be coming up soon for the next school year and some revisions to the health and safety plan um that's in place for bct's um oh but i think the the biggest thing was that the uh culinary arts students were able to uh their meal for for our group so they always do a wonderful job um and uh so that was we were finally able to to get together for that so that is my report thank you mr sure the berks county tax collector mr miller there was a approval of the prior meeting minutes this is uh a legal update uh we had approval of the

084financial reports an update on the mac software thank you mr miller ps okay then we'll go to let's go to policy and curriculum i think it rolls perfectly to the agenda item session on proposed policy 809 so okay thank you mr nolte uh so after compiling all of the feedback from the community conversations there were a number of common themes that emerged and so then considering those common themes the revised 809 was available for last week's policy and curriculum committee so the um committee had a long productive conversation about that um that version and uh adjusted further revisions and also voted to discuss the policy during this meeting this evening and so uh the revisions that we considered last week were all provided to the entire board so that everyone would be able to be

085part of the discussion tonight and if there are further things we need to take back to the committee in november we can do so with that i open it up to the rest of the board comments from board members so um in reading through not just the comments but just um reflecting on kind of the journey we've been on since the spring the the one area that i think we need to mentally address with the committee again is the concept of this educational equity committee um because i think that there's an inherent lack of trust from the community with regards to how things were executed with policy eq and the equity team i just i'm when i read through the details that are defining defining exactly you know what who who is administering the committee

086and how actions are actually taken i don't feel like this really calls it out it just has developed the equity action plan well we had something similar before and then we saw how the execution happened so i'm concerned that a policy that sees it this open we could potentially end up where we were previously and that's certainly not where anybody in the community wants to be so that was one of the i wanted to raise for the consideration by the public policy in particular infinity one of my notes i said you know a plan doesn't mean action right so that can be a pretty big unknown in terms of how that's fun and i understand there's always policy and you don't necessarily define how but that's just something one of the reasons i think that

087we talked about last week at the meeting [Music] regarding the committee is that until a committee forms and does some analysis and starts to develop a plan you know they we can't tell them what the plan needs to look like you know those people are going to have to come together and decide how they're going to approach and since we're going to involve a wide array of community members that's going to be a different makeup from the original committee that was formed before we even had policy 832 we can't really direct that it's not really i don't think enough to direct that when we're trying to solicit the input of that can i speak to that please first the the idea of um this equity committee um or educational equity committee is designed to to

088sort of end what went on back in the spring and to now have a committee that is going to be reporting to the board and before things get put out the board will have an opportunity to approve that and move things forward as it says in the subsequent section of that passage whatever plan they put together will be presented to the to the board of directors and my assumption would be as with many other things that get presented to us we will put our stamp of approval on if that needs to be said more clearly then i think that's a a good thing so but basically this does not allow uh i as i understand it in those in the safe safeguards in the policy in in policy around that equity committee would not allow

089for a very small group running off and you know putting things out that uh do not speak to where the community is at so this would be it would primarily be a in an advisory um capacity it wouldn't have any authority or responsibility other than developing the action plan is that i mean that's how i you know as i re as i read through this as i read it it seemed to be more developing a plan and just in an advisory role to the board without really having any authority to put out messages or communications or you know um proposed plans or anything other than this equity educational action plan is that that would be my and was my understanding as i worked on this um previously okay that's consistent with as i read it

090additional language to say propose to the board also so that right and end of advisory and i just i just want to clarify that's essentially the same wording that currently happens with like the committee they're not making decisions they propose things and they bring it to the school board and then the school will vote on them like a lot of the items we have on him that's basically what the updated policy would be saying yes it's certainly similar to that like uh facilities ecc policy curriculum there's going to be an equity committee meeting it's going to be public that really would be my understanding carl so that the public would be able to sit in on those so they'd be open to the public sure because it would be a committee of the board we'd

091have to almost have it that way i wouldn't see it as being anything else and just as policy and curriculum and and extracurricular and facilities report back to us i think we ran aground because we didn't have that kind of clear um delineation of who gets reported to and what happens until that report is made i would hope this clarifies that well but i think that that's kind of where i was going with you know a plan versus action so that there's clear accountability for the actions that are taken um and i don't you know section item number three and our equity action fan shall it says you know ensure performance observations and accomplishments can you speak louder michelle it's hard to hear um for example on page four we've got item number three education

092equity action plan shell and one of the last thing that says you know it should have ensured performance against the goals of the policy but the goals of the policy are actually part of the delegation of responsibility like i was trying to put those pieces together as i was rereading this new version and so like that goes back to superintendent or just so use the data to assess that um et cetera et cetera right so i just i want their accountability for the output of what the team the committee will do and what the actions that results right because i think that is something that that's where my concern lies based on what's happened in the past and i don't want to live in the past but at the same time i also don't want

093to repeat tasks so i'm just trying to understand how we can get clear accountability and if having that public forum for meeting and discussion um is is established that that's potentially one avenue really that way so maybe we do need to include that language so that it's clear this is going to be a committee of the board i have no problems with that michelle because it isn't it was the intent of how that was crafted so at the reorganization meeting in december there would be a committee structure put in place similar to our other committees i'm asking that as a question i guess because you know when you look at the structure of the proposed committee it reads more quite honestly it reads to me a little bit more like our comprehensive planning committee per

094se like where there's a group of people who come there are two members of the board who are on there i mean you know sometimes there's one act 48's a committee like that that occurs that's not you know so the i i think i should have heard that intent but it's a good clarification point because if it were to be a committee of the board a standing committee of the board that would be dictated at the reorganization meeting annually you know just like the other committees per zero zero zero it wouldn't have the community involvement like yeah community involvement would be public comments because so it's it say but we just need to clarify what it would be and what it would not be because right now it probably reads a little bit more like

095comprehensive plan act 48 and so that's it's a little bit like that's a bigger discussion than we probably want to tackle here and we'll definitely deal with at the next curriculum committee meeting um because i certainly had i don't know that we can call it a committee of the board if all of those other communities are standing members so it is we have certainly had committees that have a structure like this that are not committees of the board and then you do need to determine what other involvement is because um one of the reasons that you have committees is for efficiency and you don't every meeting is every member of the community um right so the community you get people from that represent various units of the committee that are then bringing that contribution to

096the committee so anyway let's uh we'll definitely tackle that some more and if anybody has anything in particular more they want to say about that now for consideration then i'll make comments so um one other aspect that that i was thinking about also is you know if we set goals what is the outcome if we don't meet those like how what is the process for re-evaluation or um you know establishing what actions need to be taken like how how do we feel like that's gonna happen because absolutely enough either yeah and that ends up being you know so then there's a theoretical conversation about goal setting that you know we have as a team this is my perspective on this to the team office where do you set that it depends on what kind of

097goals you set right do you set goals that are proven to be attainable based on the data that you have stretch goals you know that we really want to stretch to but maybe our levels that we have never accessed before then there's goals that look more like action steps so it's just a good conversation about understanding the goal what types of goals and then so i think within that goal setting established whether they are through accountability goals stress and organization or absence that goals because there are we come up with three types of books you know some you know if we have a goal um you know for example with a google map online registration system well that's an action step that's that's when you just achieve i believe that that would have my sense

098would be these goals would become part of the process of our administration particularly the superintendent um but other members of the staff so that as those goals change as though like we're entrusted to to do the evaluation of the superintendent if we have certain goals around equity this equity action plan that would be part of our evaluation are we is our superintendent moving things along to accomplish those goals much like we do i would hope we're going to have we we've heard the start tonight of the comprehensive plan that i was a part of uh from the board to to be a part of that group um i would hope you know we hold um dr lever and and the staff the administrative staff and our teaching staff that they that all becomes part of

099the evaluation process uh through our district to be sure we're continuing to look at and meet that comprehensive plan same would be with these equity educational equity action plan we'd have to work that into our evaluative process other comments from the board yeah um i'm sorry my only other comment would be in line with what i had said last monday and it was just um a concern about the frequency of like evaluations i know in in the policy we talk about yearly um evaluation and it feels like it would be something that would benefit better from a longer time period kind of like the strategic plan is more of uh you take your time like the idea of the committee is to passions and take your time and really come up with like with the

100strategic plan what are we trying to accomplish and then setting those pieces out like that's the committee's job would be to come up with those ideas and set those pieces out and develop that plan it takes time to do that development and then once you've done that maybe evaluating it then after like with the strategic plan is like a three-year plan like this like i get just kind of working a better longer term kind of idea taking your time vetting out the ideas coming up with a plan and then seeing how you put those into place and then having enough data over three years to actually measure if what you um what your plan was like were there measurable outcomes to those plans did it do what you think it was going to do do

101we need to rev like then reevaluate it again and it takes another you know three years to do that so i just my personal thought is that and every year evaluation just seems way too frequent for us for something like this so i would like to see that i think though you could what i'm what i envision mike is that there will be intermediary steps or goals to get to that main goal um and and those could very well be evaluated yearly some might be able to be done in a year which build to get you to that final goal so yeah i mean i think the planning process is something that that group will have to work on and that probably be their first assignment and i would agree that certainly long-range planning is

102valuable um but i think that we would you know it talks about the annual educational equity report from the superintendent that we can certainly have things that we can evaluate or at least you know recognize progress and and just have that officially heard i think yearly is a good idea i would agree with you mike that the implementation or the accomplishment of these goals will take time but it's really to my thinking it's a question of what we do with the data we get the data every year but do you implement a change based on just that snapshot or do you wait three years and say oh that's obviously a trend we need to do something else so we need to continue with what we're doing so so it would be more what you do

103with the data than the actual collection now there's there's the old problem of are we are we going to have separate evaluations for this are going to use tests that are already taken every year i would agree with you that if we implementing more evaluations on top of everything else every year that might be a problem uh my favorite expression is you don't bat in the hogs by weighing them uh so yes i would agree with you in that case but if it's an evaluation that we've already done and we're just looking at the data in a different way take a look at it but understand it's a snapshot after one year on a process that may take three we don't have to do a do to be the action we take afterwards so i

104do agree with the points that you made that these goals will take time to to accomplish any other comments one of the things that we had talked about was um or you know when we were talking about re you know redoing the process and proposing this 809 policy was proposed was you know making sure that we obtained input from you know broad group stakeholders and i think we did a good job of that with the community conversation um but um i guess other constituents that uh i had hoped we would make or obtain you know sort of definitive input from were our our teachers um our students and those that are you know going to be i think most directly impacted by the policy um and i know that's sort of a tough thing um

105but what you know have we gotten any you know sort of definitive in from those stakeholders on the proposed policy we obviously there were some teachers involved [Music] i understand i just think it could be a tremendous benefit to get that insight i suppose and i know how challenging it is in the charged environment um that's just my one thing i just want to say obviously not formal feedback from students but from a high school point of view i know that the process that we've gone through um over the last you know more more than a year now of working on this topic um the general approval that i've seen from again a high school point of view proved a lot from when it first started um and when the policy was first uh enacted

106and then when it was it's been worked a lot by the policy committee and i think that what the committee has been doing the students have been increasingly approving of it i think that like the product the progress that the community is making and that the board is making on is being met well by students again in assessment of this of the high school uh student body but i'd say that the initial reaction was negative um but certain things have it's been getting better um as time goes on because of the the compromises that i've been making and the different things that we're putting it putting into the that have been making more favorable so i just wanted to input that from from my point of view appreciate that feedback cooper um and then of

107course we have heard some current and recently former students at board meetings as well as via email and there were some summer students certainly at the community conversations and we do have the results of the school survey which was done um at the end of 19 i believe we closed it in january of 2020 the end of 19 and we're getting a 20 so those that would have been a lot of student feedback anyone else one other item so i and i was trying to look at this very holistically then piece by piece um this time around and i if we think about the comprehensive plan the items that have been pulled out to focus on within that plan when i read some of the definitions and i look at community gaps right it shall

108mean the disparities and the delivery of educational and extracurricular opportunities funding and other resources um between and among different groups et cetera et cetera i think a lot of the right we talked about you know parent involvement with those aspects that that help to support the student and so when we talk about looking at opportunity gap how how do we plan as a district to resource all of these potential elements of the plan where we've got students we have you know teachers that are already from my main perspective but i think they're fairly strapped in their day with regards to their current load how are we going to potentially look at implementing even more demands on the resources we have without kind of carrying back what we're already providing to in another position right i

109mean that is the biggest that's the challenge of any improvement whether it's related to policy whether it's related to plan whatever it's related to you know that is constantly looking at our using the resources we have and specifically the staff members that we have to the best extent possible and if we identify places where we feel like we are and you can't give one thing for another then we have to come back to the board and ask for additional staff whatever that might be i mean that's that's any improvement that we would have so if we don't feel like we can make an improvement whether it's through the comprehensive plan or through a policy or through anything that we think is necessary except we have to come back to the board and make that case

110that that's necessary whatever it might be you know if that and just give like a realistic example that could apply to either would be you know we talked about some of the skill-based supports that we feel we do not necessarily address in a systematic way at a high school level you know does that mean that we need a reading specialist on a secondary level hypothetically you know they are things intervention tests you can apply that to opportunities or based on an equity or comprehensive you know in one way or another depending on what job title was but we would have to come back we can't give up anything we're doing now we can't be any more efficient this to accomplish this part that's our job do that and then typically we would come with an

111idea of how we might be able to do that anyone else so next steps back to policy and curriculum in november yep okay with that we'll move to the student rep report mr dunn thank you um not much to talk about one of the things that we've been running to um at the high school and my brother's been been having some problems with is some of our um and i know that dr meyer's technology and stuff is technology um the the tech has been a good job of solving things as they pop up but i'd say that on a day-to-day basis there's at least a couple things a day that we run into that that need to be worked on and like i said they usually get fixed or resolved and the tech department the

112tech desk at least at the high school that we can actually go to for immediate help also does a good job of addressing those problems that we have that's just something that i've noticed has been a recurring theme for the first two months of school so something that we want to keep in mind because it does and that's that's a barrier that we talk about at home with technology and in school with technology so that's just something i wanted to mention other than that i haven't gotten any uh feedback from students on stuff that the board is doing um overall the school year has been has gone off about to wrap up the first marking period and i think people are enjoying uh what is shaping up to be a generally normal school year so

113we're glad that we're able to do that so the last thing is that i want to uh say good luck to the co-ed cross country team running at county championships tomorrow um at their cross country course so good luck to them that's all i have for tonight mr dunn are those uh are those with hardware with the devices or is it a network problem or is it some of the software that you contract with so i i haven't noticed any hardware problems um hardware wise i think uh we would do fine with that some of some of the technology connectivity issues dr meyers i know that we have some problems there's been some rooms in high school that have had like um how these times it's just slow downs it takes a bit um but

114it's something i've noticed that has interrupted teaching um and like i said it's been getting it's been getting fixed um i think mr mrs shawley's room we had we had a room that you know its internet wasn't working and that's the fix so that's connectivity things internet wise is a big thing and then um smaller things like the software that's usually what the desk does a really good job of solving um when students take advantage of that resource is solved they can help out a lot with that dr myers is uh because we did update the network uh quite a bit a few years back before you suppose um are we up to date with the equipment or is it just our provider yeah and please guaranteed or not so well i want to say

115thank you to you and your team uh my own kids uh have had their own tech issues and uh we've been pretty pleased with how quickly they get responded to anyone okay with that we will move new business we'll start with public for a few folks that wanted to make public comment on agenda items we'll start with jerry seibert yes mr smith everybody temperature you know it's a good question um you know we don't necessarily need to bring the paperwork every time but it's something that we would have to know that you have so i mean there's there's different ways we can do that you can either give us paperwork which you could do you know before i just you we certainly know who you are mr smith and no you know we've had honestly

116personal comments about this situation long before covet happened so i don't think you do i mean again i don't see why i'm very well aware oh and that's easy too but that works too thank you joshua and i heart forward and uh administrators appreciate the opportunity to address everybody this evening i want to thank you for your work on uh believe it was agenda item i for c under uh patient's reports i know there's been a lot of divisiveness and material that's gone around with that topic but i think it is a really critical thing that is addressed and brought up in our schools so i appreciate you working through that and the work that you've done uh and continue to do thank you but that's all there is on this list dr myers is

117there anyone online that would like to make public comment at this point in time on agenda items okay at this point in time we'll move to the new business section we will start with item a personnel we have two [Music] uh items under item as we're looking for with respect to personnel item a one and two so moved the motion is there a second second motion a second any comments or questions regarding item a personnel yeah the first uh item on there is the resignation of one of our facilities workers uh i know uh lots of working behind the scenes i just wanted to be on the record that this person's service to our everything all district yeah we just we need to get the microphone back for a roll call yeah i i just

118wanted to be on the record that uh um mr um mr bieber's uh service to the district is uh appreciated thank you dr johnson any other comments you have a roll call ricky please eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes josh michelle batts yes randy birch yes aldarian yes michael hess yes celia holt yes carl nalty yes so approved next is item b the auditory members it is the recommendation to me that the board of school directors approved the placement of the auditorium exit doors at the by the ag marking for a cost of 1 370 dollar number 32 and number 33 and 9 680 for door number 34. motion a second any comments or questions regarding item b i have a quick question um is this this is for external doors or doors yeah external

119in the lobby back of the back okay also um just wanted to clarify so it says 9374 doors 32 and 33 is that 9370 for each of those yeah okay sorry give me a question dr ritter no did cooper get an answer to his yes he did that is for each the cost it was hard to hear that's all okay well sorry sorry mr tim jack and just nodded and i and i got that so yes any other comments hearing and roll call please dennis ritter yes joshua yes michelle batts yeah randy birch yes aldarian michael hess yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes yes so approved next is item c the salt spreader it's a recommendation facilities committee that the directors approved the purchase of a drop spread 600 from groom trailers llc for

120a cost of three thousand three hundred seventy nine dollars to have a motion ritter moves a second motion a second any comments or questions regarding item c could we follow up on mr smith's suggestion about changing what is spread and see if that chemical works with these particular spreaders and safety and costs yeah oh okay okay thank you any other comments hearing none roll call please ricky charles sure yes michelle batts yeah randy birch yes aldarian yes michael house yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson demonstrator yes yes yes so approved next is item d a donation it is the recommendation of the administration the board of school directors accept gratitude from the coast center area high school class of 1985 to the kutztown area high school in the amount of 1 110 dollars for k.a.s.t

121emblems in the high school auditorium through motion so moved your emotions are second second motion second comments questions regarding item d just a uh thank you to the class of 85 for the generous gift thank you mr birch doctor ritter yes will will these emblems have our logo on them yes that is the intent now i thought we were looking into last time a few m several meetings back we talked i think it was during last school year about having um our art department uh work on uh developing a new logo is that going to be factored into what we do here no so the emblem is more of that seal type look of the kutztown seal the logo that mr hoffman had mr hoffman worked on many many many iterations of a potential updated

122logo and with the student groups that he processed landed not a full overhaul of the logo at all some of the locals have so i mean i could uh go back in some emails and documents but mr hoffman spent a whole lot of time with a lot of students and landed and kind of landed where he started um in his in their creative process so uh let me get back to that information and i could share back out so this will be more like what's on the podium now yeah i think this is the intent of this is to be more like the um emblem that so far more than the logo with with the school motto and that yes yes okay any other questions bringing down roll call please michelle batts yeah randy birch

123yes yes michael house yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes joshua yes yes so approved next is item e independent school psychologist agreement is the recommendation of the administration the board of school directors approved the agreement within the independent contractor desiree rodriguez read to personal school psychologist services effective october 12 2021 through june 30th 2022 for the attached is there a motion second motion a second comments or questions regarding item e and just to clarify need you have to look at the agreement to see this it's not a you know staff member this is somebody we can contract for specific evaluation specifically uh special education evaluations that would require um bilingual services in spanish previously we had to do that sometimes and paid a lot more than we are conference in addition

124the vciu has discontinued the service to me it's not a staff member would just be asleep the other comments questions hearing nothing we'll call please ricky randy birch yes yes michael house cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes demonstrator yes sure yes michelle bats yes yes approved next is item f independent speech language services is the recommendation of the administration at the borders approved agreement with independent contractor stephanie ruiz smith to provide bilingual school-based speech and language services effective october 13th 2021 through june 3rd 2022 for the attached emotion so moved motions are a second second comments or questions regarding i had a quick question um so i know that we have 30 something uh like english learners 42 yeah english learners are they all um spanish speaking learning english or is there any that are

125a different language you're not all spanish speaking without pulling up the numbers though it's you know well over 90 percent of that spanish speaking is a native language okay any other comments hearing none roll call please ricky haldarian yes michael hess yes cecilia yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes yes michelle batts yeah randy birch yes yes so approved next is item g conrad siegel agreement it is the recommendation administration directors approve the agreement with conrad siegel to provide assistance with reporting related to the affordable care act for the 2021-22 school year for the attached motion motion is there a second second motion a second any comments or questions regarding item g speaker this is a requirement of the affordable care act so we have there's no way this is mr miller yes it's not

126it's not a requirement of the act that we have uh someone work do this for us but it is a requirement not a requirement but it's a good necessity on our part sure we remain anyone else hearing none roll call please ricky yes cecilia yes eric johnson yes dennis yes charles sure yes michelle batts yes randy birch yes darian yes yes so approved nexus item h the capco participation agreement is the recommendation of the administration that the board of school directors approved lancaster lebanon iu to participate in the collaborative effort to purchase food 4022-23 year you have a motion emotions second motion second any comments or questions regarding item h i'm assuming that by collaborative that helps us save hearing none rule call please yes eric johnson yes dennis yes joshua yes michelle bats yeah

127randy birch yes aldarian yes michael hess yes [Music] yes so approved next is item i job descriptions it is the recommendation administration the board of school directors approve the job descriptions for the following attached positions to have a motion so moved for a second second second any comments or questions about that motion or the job descriptions um were there i mean there's like 20 job descriptions there which i beautifully reviewed i mean were there significant changes what you know they presently are in some instances that's sitting down with the employee who's in that position and saying what do you do yeah because it looks different than what it looked like if i could just make a suggestion you could maybe indicate what the changes are i think that might be helpful and help expedite reviews

128[Laughter] any other comments is there any resulting action then with these being updated like are the assistants or things that need to be native to the positions or salary or anything like that or is that i know we went through that activity mike thank you comments questions hearing none real call please ricky eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes joshua yes michelle batts yes bert yes aldarian yes michael hess yes cecilia yes yes so approved next is item j the bowling cooperative sponsorship with oli the recommendation school directors approve entering into a bowling co-operative sponsorship between kutz center district and valley school district effective starting the 2021 to 2022 school year of emotion motion in a second is there any comments or questions regarding uh item j this is our one that will be participating in

129bowling this year any other comments hearing none roll call please ricky dennis ritter yes michelle batts yeah randy birch yes yes michael house yes cecilia yes eric johnson yes yes so approved next is item k introduction of new business by board manager anyone from the board that would like to think forward i i have a priest thing to say or share um if i may we all i think are pretty much aware that we suffered the loss of one of the outstanding figures of our nation over the last 40 years or so with the death of colin powell today and i was reminded during the course of the day of a speech you delivered at howard university um and i want to share just a piece of that when he spoke at their graduation back

130in 1994. he said as he concluded his presentation to the graduates above all never lose faith in america its faults are yours to fix not to curse america is a family there may be differences in disputes within the family but we must not allow the family to be broken into warring factions from the diversity of our people let us draw strength and not seek weakness believe in america with all your heart and soul with all of your mind remember that it remains the last best hope of earth you are its inheritors and its future is today placed in your hands um i just felt i thought those were important words as we live in a very divisive time in our nation's history probably i would suspect not the most divisive time but it's good to

131be reminded by an outstanding uh american servant who loved his country who loved god and and his family who came here as an immigrant and you know made his way uh to the highest echelons of responsibility uh in our country and uh established a number of firsts for um african-americans for for black members of our nation and served our country with great faithfulness and diligence thank you pastor ritter any other anyone else like to bring something forward or comment on that i know i think i need to clarify a remark i had made at the last meeting that this is either misunderstood or misinterpreted when i said that the uh when kids come into the school they are our kids did not mean that in a literal sense what i meant was legally we are

132responsible for their safety uh does it supplant the parent not usually usually the parental rights prevail there are exceptions for example a parent may send their student to school their kid to school with whatever they want in their lunchbox the school is required to provide meals that meet certain nutritional standards a parent may let their child smoke at home the school prohibits it so yes the parents rights very often prevail but the school is still responsible for the safety of the child while building look at all the negligence suits that may come out if they fail in that responsibility sometimes it even goes beyond that cannot have the right to abuse their children and if someone at school an employee of the school has a suspicion that they are mandated with some fairly severe penalties

133if they do not to report that suspicion so yes the parent is mostly parental rights prevail there are some other areas though where the school has a role to play in providing for the safety and welfare of the children when they're and that's really all i meant comment a few folks would like to speak we'll start with jerry seibert and ask that we keep it to five minutes and uh obviously state your name and we can go from there thank you um there's quite a some people tonight came to come into the meeting and they were refused because they wouldn't wear a mask or they couldn't wear a mask so uh i'm asking why we cannot change the venue to a place where people who can't wear masks or don't want to wear masks can

134go this is the only place besides the college and a few other places that you have to wear a mask so why can't we switch it to the burrow uh because we've been over this many times because what this we've been over this many times and this room is best set up for the the space for our audio visual setup there's a there's a zoom link available for people that can't wear a mask so from a very practical standpoint this is the best room we have to operate the meeting it's the largest room that there is so it provides the spacing and then from a secondary standpoint um this is is school business so we the board are gonna have school business held within a school building that is the reason so if someone can't

135wear a mask they have up they have options they can have the zoom link that works or they can have a medical waiver but this is why we set up this way from the physical setup and also from the standpoint of the business high school okay do you realize sometimes though that internet doesn't work people's internet doesn't work or they get kicked off or chats are blocked or their car might not be able to drive them here there's always there's always reasons why somebody can't make her attend a meeting so so there's there but we you know what we haven't received so this is like the best option we feel that we have okay i just want to let you know that taxpayers are pretty upset over that thank you just one additional thing to

136add to that um just from a consistency standpoint for example the rifle team does not compete in school grounds and though required um to wear masks wherever we go because it's collectivity and i would think that the same would apply to it to a school board meaning per you know for the state's uh regulation so i just wanted to add that consistency wise that that is that is what we've been doing with all the school programs that are out um outside of the school grounds but indoors good point very good point so that so if we were to go off site we would if we follow what the uh the rifle team is we're hearing too we would be requiring them asking wherever we go so good point ed ed byro it's like mr fiber

137was not jennifer coffinger first off i believe the order states the building not the process so i think we could successfully go elsewhere maskless but i think we can all agree that higher education the college level has been using educational equity for some time now okay so it's supposed to bring out all the pubs under one umbrella right in the school to more unified place to be correct that's what 809 is well at the college level 75 universities just last year had separate graduation services ceremonies for non-black students or for sorry non-white students that is not inclusive okay ala suspended a professor because he would not grade more leniently his black students he expected the same of them as someone else arizona state university had a city and this is all from current events by

138the way okay arizona state university just had a section where they had black students telling white students that the only place they felt safe was the multicultural room on this campus other than that room was white center and that white people have no culture to call their own that is not inclusive and this is all in the name of educational equity this is where we are going with this um a lot of the universities are doing standardized testing act and sats because non-white students are not achieving a threat do we want to get rid of our standardized testing at kutztown the star the keystone it's where we're headed a lot of universities are hiring and a lot of companies are hiring based on your color gender or your sexual orientation or identity not on the

139qualifications that those people hold now if they're the most qualified hire them great i'd love to have the most qualified teacher regardless of their color or their gender or their identity but if they're they should not be hired because of those things arizona state university recently hired a music professor to teach uh k through 12 music education students so these are the people that will be coming into our schools okay to teach but they didn't hire him to teach music education to our to to their students they hired him because he's a crt specialist and they blatantly said that they that he will be teaching crt above music education this is in the name of educational equity females are not getting scholarships and places on sports teams because biological men who identify as or who

140are transgender picking those spots and those scholarships in the name educational equity the suicide rate among college students has been increasing year by year and they you can't necessarily completely but if you're hearing all the time that you are either oppressed or an oppressor it messes his brain and quite frankly i think you hear it enough you start to believe stuff like that and you might consider something like that at the elementary level just this week bf day elementary school in seattle washington canceled halloween because there's their celebration because blacks males this is from the newspaper black males don't know separate it so nobody can also east lansing schools cancelled halloween and valentine's day because some can't afford to participate and it might offend somebody this is in the name of educational equity it might

141not be the intent policy 809 but it wasn't the intent of the university's education equity programs to go where they went that's where you will end up so i suggest you do away with it don't worry about putting policies under an umbrella you have policies in place that will serve your students use those policies or perfect those policies don't create a new one now different subjects i've been five minutes very short we have 10 seconds very short my student has to wear a mask all day we come in here we have to wear a mask you have to wear a mask okay i have my student getting home from school and telling me you know those teachers they're just hypocrites i've caught so many of my teachers talking to one another in the school building

142no mask no social distancing if you're going to make my student wear a mask for seven hours a day because of the governor's order get your house in order your people better do it too because children should not suffer because of what you guys have deemed a legality from the governor anybody online dr myers with that we'll move to item eight informational items everyone had the cafeteria fund report the condensed board summary report and the student activity report for the high school uh item nine is upcoming public meetings and informative dates on november 1st there's the workshop board meeting pm in the middle school commons as well as via zoom on november 8th there's a policy and curriculum committee meeting at 6 p.m in the middle school commons as well as via zoom and on

143november 8th there's a facilities and extracurricular committee meeting at 7 pm in the middle school commons as well as via zoom on november 15th at the board meeting at 7 30 p.m in the middle school commons as well as via zoom with that i'll move to item 10 adjournment after a motion to adjourn second all in favor say aye aye any opposed not meeting a juror have a safe evening