001good news throughout the district over the past two weeks uh include you know the most exciting day of the year is the first day of school looking at the our opening dates excited to welcome students back for the first day of the 21-22 school year with the expectations high as far as our ability to meet all students needs within the school building we had students excited all throughout the campus from our elementary buildings middle school and high school you see some great welcome messages back at greenwich elementary school and the middle school here on these pictures some students taking their back to school pictures there at quitton elementary school i think mr flicker and mr lynch holding a class meeting out in the stadium as well as students using some of the tents in the
002back the high school getting an opportunity to spaced out and take their classes outside just a great opening two weeks in reality we had some unexpected weather as everyone knows last week that changed the schedule in ways we don't expect at the beginning of the school year but despite that just seeing students smiling throughout their classrooms and on school properties over the course the first two weeks was just a great way to start so thank you to all families teachers staff administration and those bus drivers for getting students here for the first two weeks of school just a really really exciting time dr myers and friday night lights this friday um walking into the stadium it was just the magnitude of the number of people in the stadium was great to see on friday night
003uh students the football team lost the game 46-27 but uh competed throughout the game to see the number of students on the field is only just a part of what you know we can see happening on the stadium on a friday night the kutztown athletic department with the football team honored the veterans to start the game and see students wearing their commemorative jerseys you look into the crowd and it was hard to find a seat up in the stands with over 599 guests that was paid yes doesn't include cougar passes as well in addition to students participating you know the number of students in our stadium on a friday night is just phenomenal to see between the students on the field from the football players to the cheerleaders to the band and then the student
004section just a great night of football on the return on friday night friday night lights as you'll see in the picture here we have the the band sitting up in their spot and then on the other picture we have some young cougars there was a lot of young kids boys and girls in in cougar shirts recognized before the game showing some interest in those youth levels of the football program just some more pictures of the students coming out and being recognized running through the cheerleaders the young cougars in addition to our team lined up for the national anthem set the tone for a great after a win against shendo on the opening night set the tone for a great fall season uh nothing better than having the students here under underneath the lights representing kutztown
005so just a great way to start that's my report thank you mr tim chattan next we'll have the student representative report ms wood anything for the group good evening um i hope you guys are all doing well um recently i did have some high school students reach out to me today about a couple of things the first thing was about the book bags and being used in high school they gave me a couple key points that they would like to share about how book bags will be useful to them it would be more convenient to them so that they won't be late from classes from coming from lunch going back and forth between classes throughout the whole day and carrying all those things um the backpacks would only be used for like necessities it would
006be used for only your books and your computer and your laptop um but things like your coats and jackets would be held in your locker so that lockers would still be put in use and then there would be more space in the lunchrooms they provided me some pictures where they had food spilled on the floor because all their stuff is on the table that there's no room for them to put their lunches on the table and then the last thing that they said was that with the cases rising and the delta virus and the universal masking the backpacks would limit the trips to the lockers and concern um the exchanging of germs like throughout the walkers and throughout the hallways one more thing they were just concerned about homecoming because homecoming is like a time
007to celebrate our school and our sports that we're in with the games the prep rallies and the dance mostly and they haven't received any information on that so far and i think that's what they were concerned about and homecoming is normally in like october and they haven't received any information yeah homecoming evening is october 1st and i know mr flicker had a meeting this afternoon with some student representatives to develop some initial plans for events for homecoming um so i think that information will be coming out over the course of the next days they were he left the meeting mr flicker left pretty excited about what the plans were for homecoming right yep and that's all i have for the report thank you very much thank you those items you lister mr flicker shared okay
008let's make sure that their concerns are heard okay thank you any any um comments or questions from board members on on the two reports i just have a general question what is the rationale for not allowing them to use the backpacks the and the backpacks you know it's kind of stemmed out of safety procedures over the years you know as we go through the iterations of different ways to increase safety in the hallways using the lockers and not carrying your backpacks throughout the hall is one of the recommendations that we that we have followed that's really all it is you know and that they have the access to those lockers they shouldn't i say shouldn't but sometimes i think we end up working with students on ways that um they shouldn't have to carry too
009much from class to class with the opportunities that they have to go to the locker so it really comes out of safety recommendations anyone else okay hearing none we'll move to public comment on agenda items on the sign in sheet there's two people that would like to do that we'll start with jerry sievert hello i'm jerry siver and the agenda item was the communities in school data agreement um we did i did look at the the website uh communities and schools and again everything is talking about equity i mean it's still crt it's still critical race theory it's it's like it's everywhere and um i just implore you to if you hopefully you looked into it and you would vote accordingly thank you next is carrie westner i am carrie wester um mine's not technically
010on the agenda but i'm hoping that it will be on the agenda um i am speaking about the mask order um i didn't like your first decision about the masks i didn't agree with it but you guys all voted and that is the decision that you made and passed it the numbers in our district are going down and there is no reason to follow an idiotic order made by the for the entire state didn't um like i thought you guys talked about last year talking about renovating air systems and stuff like that um making you know using that money for that i don't i thought you did so you know was that expense pointless let's see if those improvements to the air system will help and you know it may be much better than a
011stupid piece of cloth that is coughed in put in their mouth dropped on the floor constantly touched and worn improperly not to mention of course restricting their breathing [Music] and i was at the football game you showed a picture of it it was packed literally shoulder to shoulder yes we were outside but no one cared about masks and we were all yelling and cheering and expelling more droplets than a child sitting at their desk three feet away from other kids this order is wrong and it is just targeting our kids the governor has not put restaurants businesses back to 50 percent or even required masks again anywhere except schools except our kids also one of the exceptions to the indoor mass is that is student is practicing for a sport so they don't have to
012wear a mask if they're playing basketball bumping into each other breathing heavy but they do have to wear a mask sitting at their desk trying to learn it's straight stupidity and unnecessary vote to stick to your original plan okay that is all i had for anyone that wanted to comment on agenda items that will move to new business we will start with item a personnel on our agenda we have items under item a we have one through c2 looking for a motion to approve personnel item a1 through 16. some of the motion is there a second second which is a second any comments or questions regarding item a hearing none roll call please ricky randy birch yes michael hass yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis trader yes joshua yes michelle batts yeah carl
013nalty yes so approved next is item b the policy second reading is the recommendation of the palestinian company that the board of school directors approved the second reading and adoption of policy 218.3 discipline of student convicted adjudicated of sexual assault do i have a motion critter move motions are second second motion a second any comments or questions regarding item b hearing done roll call please ricky michael hass yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes joshua yes michelle batts yeah randy birch yes carl nalty yes so approved next is item c a conference request it is the recommendation administration that the board of school directors approve the request for employee number 374 to attend the aasl conference on october 20 to 23rd of 2021 in salt lake city utah at a cost of
014one thousand two hundred and sixty three dollars we have a motion motions are a second second johnson motion a second any comments or questions regarding item c i think it's important to point out that this is not including the flight the flight the employee is twice the flight employees taking care of this is just for the the uh the conference itself conference in the state stay any other comments hearing on roll call please ricky cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes demonstrator yes joshua yes michelle bats yeah randy birch yes michael hass yes coral nalty yes so approved next is item d the kids piece esy agreement it is the recommendation administration that the board of school directors approved the extended school year program agreement with kids peace national carriers inc for a special education student
015from july 6 to august 16 2021 at a cost of 85 dollars per day to have a motion ritter moves motions are a second second a second any comments or questions regarding item d right this isn't this is in the rears this is yes because we don't always make those determinations when the student is educated at kids piece so we are notified after the party okay but we are legally obligated for if it's a citizen other questions hearing on roll call please ricky eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes charles sure yes michelle batts yeah randy birch yes michael hess yes cecilia holt yes carl nalty yes so approved next is item e a snow plow purchase it is the recommendation administration that the board of school directors approved the purchase of a snow plow from
016e m cuts for a price of 7 057 you have a motion so moved motions are a second second motion a second any comments or questions regarding item e i think it's it's also important to note that this is not a second snowplow we approved a snowplow last meeting but since got an updated price that is 640 cheaper so we are reapproving because it's from a different any vendor questions just like to give props to the administration for getting us a better deal hearing that else roll call please ricky dennis ritter yes joshua yes michelle batts yeah randy birch yes michael hat yes cecilia holt yeah eric johnson yes yes so approved next is item f the communities and schools data agreement it is a recommendation of the administration that the board of school directors
017approved the data agreement with communities and schools for the attached to have a motion so moved motion is our second second motion second comments or questions regarding item f i have a question just because of this program has existed in our schools for a period of time but given the public comment i would like to understand maybe where some of those concerns arising how are the students actually engaged in this program so they're not students can be recommended and then the communities and schools will work with families um to identify you know what type of support the student would receive and you know it helps connect resources within the community as well as kind of help the student navigate the school life they're demonstrating some need this agreement is not actually for service this is
018just for the data that would be shared with the regional and then national office that is a part of the original grant that was applied for um that allows them to evaluate success progress and then communicate back not only to us but to their through the national office how many students data would be provided as part of this basically how many are involved with it this some of this is whole school data because it talks about graduation rates and and stuff so the while the any student working with the program you know when they sign up and and fill out the permission forms any information that's used that way for those specific students but this is whole school data so they can report back on you know if when some communities in schools um programs
019are larger than ours and they might want to see an impact on graduation rate you know overall as a school because they're larger than what we're doing or that they see improvement in attendance or any of those measures that can be pulled out of a student information system the information for this agreement is only identified by student number and not by name you know so that then that's on the for the regional office when they look for personal gains but for national office it's just school data those it compares the data versus the data for the entire school population you can you know yeah for various levels it will compare data of those participating the program it'll compare to see if you know school data improved just by having communities and schools within the building
020um and it can compare statewide and nationally so just to be clear that any student participating in the communities in school program that's all done with the specific written consent of the parents anybody working with the working with the communities in schools personnel has written consent from their parents and this isn't on that underlying agreement between the school district and this organization this is just a track this is just for the to track the data to conf to allow us and them to track sort of the um yeah you know the success of the program how well things are going we have quarterly report meetings that they set up that they can they will report out to us on the success locally but then this allows the organization to take larger looks of data that
021they can promote the sexes promote and evaluate the success of the program and wouldn't a lot of this data be publicly available anyway at graduation rates and oh what have you yeah it is but it definitely is but it can be disaggregated a little bit better when it's tied to other data any other any other comments questions hearing none roll call please ricky joshua yes michelle bats yes randy birch yes michael hess yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes carl nelty no next is item g interpreting and translation that the motion passed next is item g interpreting and translation services it is the recommendation administrations the board of school directors approved agreement with karina tahada to provide spanish translation services for the attached to have a motion so moved motions are a
022second second motion a second any comments or questions regarding item g hearing none roll call please ricky michelle batts yeah randy birch yes michael hess yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes demonstrator yes joshua yes carl nelty yes so approved next is item h introduction of new business by board members anyone from the board like to bring something forward uh i need to respond to a comment that was made earlier during the public comment communities and schools is not in any way tied to crt so please know that is inaccurate that statement that was made earlier anyone else from the board so just in regards to the communities in schools we already had an agreement with them that had been previously approved what is our timeline for being involved like this is for the data
023that resulted from what was already done but what is the um end date for the existing agreement that we had with them the agreement was a two-year agreement so it is for this entire school year and half of next year and am i correct that was picked up by kutztown strong it was a grant secured by kutztown strong in collaboration with brandywine heights and fleetwood yes okay anyone else from the board hearing none with that we will move to public comment on non-agenda items we will start with trisha ivy and again these are five minutes state your name where you live please keep it to five minutes um we have four or five folks here that like to speak so get through these i have two elementary age kids i just want to thank you
024for the opportunity to speak i know that the board's reviewing the feedback from last week's community forums i wanted to bring some items to your attention recently i filed a right to know request to see some of the material the equity team had provided teachers to coordinate with their monthly themes and announcements what i received is disturbing to say the least i will follow up my remarks tonight with a copy of what i was provided many of you are probably wondering why i'm bringing this up and why can't we all just move on and look forward to 809 while there is a larger committee instituted in 809 and some language adjustments i'm very concerned about the similar delegation of authority language both the old policy 832 and proposed 809 provide authority solely to the superintendent
025to determine why there are disparate outcomes and to target resources for improvement this is consistent with statements we have from mr tim chattan stating that policy 832 quote codified the work the administration had begun including items like the equity website cougar prince articles and announcements i'm concerned this unchecked level of power remains in place with the new policy and history will repeat itself and i'll get to that history in a moment i wish i had more than five minutes as i'll only be able to highlight one email of resources i'm extremely disheartened to see these resources were disseminated disseminated to teachers in direct charge of our children this first email i have here is from february to the kutztown elementary and greenwich elementary schools i'm going to emphasize elementary okay this one is talking about
026the monthly theme of identity this week we are focusing on understanding gender and gender identity it lists three links here one of the links here is to the human rights campaign welcoming schools project sounds pretty not a big deal right it has lesson plans to support lgbtq inclusive elementary schools with books at this link there are numerous links on books to read with k through 5 on gender expression a book called i am jazz understanding transgender children defining lgbtq words for elementary school students another link from glsen ready set respect elementary toolkit their document contains tips for teaching more inclusively let me read you a few of them make sure the analogies you use when teaching don't rely on heteronormative or gender normative images or viewpoints the example they give is that the use of
027boy and girl attraction as a way of teaching north south poles of magnets and a science lesson that's something that should be avoided find ways of grouping and lining up students other than boys hear girls there as some students may enjoy these ways of separating the class but others can feel isolated by having to conform to gender-based stereotypes another write math problems with contacts that include a variety of family structures and gender expressions for example rosa and her dads were at the store and wanted to buy three boxes of pasta this is disgusting how dare the administration manipulate these young impressionable minds without parental knowledge this is not your job and you are overstepping your bounds if there are community members or board members who think this should be taught do it at home with
028your own kids this administration needs to get back into their lane and stop pushing gender ideologies i have a five and an eight-year-old and they don't care about this stuff nor should they it's adults with agendas pushing this and creating more issues than they are resolving the seeds are slowly being planted to indoctrinate with this social justice religion i struggle to understand what data was reviewed to determine this was needed in elementary school if a child has questions and needs help certainly we should have an environment where they seek counsel but this goes far beyond that based on actions to date most board members are minimizing the large majority of parents concerns this isn't just about a rogue morning announcement from the right to know materials i received it's apparent the whole implementation of this
029policy was well orchestrated with the oversight of administration let me repeat that to be clear it is apparent the implementation of the equity policy was well orchestrated with the oversight and approval meaning from the superintendent all the way down the only reason it stopped is because parents complain had we not this would still be going on without parent knowledge this board gave the administration full reign i'm showing you the fruit of that none of these lesson plans or resources came to a policy and curriculum meeting it was done under the radar by design but instead of addressing the issues the action being taken is to disregard accountability and instead usher in more of the same with equity 2.0 also known as policy 809 given there has been no repercussions for how 832 was implemented and
030the continued push for 809 it's clear to me this administration fully believes in what happened before and plans on doing some of the exact same things i'm calling on this board to do three things one reign in the superintendent and the administration two obtain a full understanding of what all was done with 832 and correct and implement policies to make sure it doesn't happen again three pushing 809 let's get back to educating and gender ideologies in elementary school is not education thank you for your time don myers john myers don myers from albany policy 809 i read reread i see a lot in there about the needs of the students and that's good but then i read about equity acne appears 20 plus times equality is zero why and i keep asking myself why this
031policy why we need it i understand we have lots of policies now already to meet the needs of the students this has been said before if you need more policies to meet the needs of the students add them to the present policy but not this policy and with equity versus equality equality is simple in my mind equity is not and it appears to me that to get to [Music] equality we have to go through equity which seems like a a long way around to get to equality and with that with cut with race we're putting somebody down to bring somebody up and i think along that way we're going to make trouble and chaos in april were the year announcements at the greenville channel elementary school the equity team proved to me that it's all
032about equity and what they said that morning and that week in a memo from the school board pennsylvania school board association to school boards it talked about how school boards meetings are to be conducted but then at the end there was two lists of words long list a couple of those were do say equity do not say equality do say black lives matter do not say all lies matter i find that very troubling because black lives matter website says talks about being marxist last monday night the meeting here i was told many times it was a discussion night so this is good finally get to discuss things with other people for and against with a school remember that was very well planned to go to classrooms but i found that the sheet of paper were
033given which was pulled out of policy 809 pretty much said things about meeting the needs of the students that's good but there's a whole lot more stuff in this 809 than just meeting the needs of the students and on discussion there was no discussion we put our notes on pieces of paper up in a board and just noted them when another person beside me were talking about equity and equality briefly the person in charge of that room came up behind us and said we're not discussing anything we have to move on well what i thought was a discussion there's no discussion so it seemed like the administration on the board wanted this night to be acknowledging the community but with no discussion it seems to me that this policy is going to be voted literally
034in the past from the sentiments i get from the board but i have heard nothing from the board administration about how you feel for or against this policy all right lots of us are speaking for and against getting our views but i've heard nothing from anyone why you want this policy or why you don't it looks like we will never hear your opinions of these policies until after the vote and maybe never never answered that either i've heard a couple opinions about voting for this one was to vote for this no matter how much competition there is well to me that's a that's a dictator dictator knows everything but the people don't know anything so i oppose this 809 policy thanks jerry sievert of cookstown um i have two things um i had filed a
035right to know for the surveys um that were given out to the students uh the parents and uh the middle school and the high school and all i got back was just the surveys with questions no data so i don't know if your lawyer said hey she didn't ask for the data so we'll just give her the blank surveys so here i'm asking for that data again because i didn't have time to do an appeal and i'd like to talk about also what trisha was talking about i saw the emails i saw the resources and um just a matter of fact today i got a um information from uh abigail shearer she wrote she's an author and a journalist and this is i've printed it out so everybody could get a copy um the following
036is an abduct adapted from a speech delivered on april 27 to she's written a book called irreversible damage the transgender craze seducing our daughters so i'd like you to take a look at this i'm not gonna i mean you guys can read it or not so i just thought you'd like to see the other side of the story concerning our you know our gender identity uh what you're pushing in the schools what our gender activists in the seventh grade is pushing on her students and how we have such a high percentage of kids that are having problems with gender confusion so i'll just give these out to you thank you i apologize for the last name because i can't quite see if there's a letter or not there if jennifer is ka finger or cow
037finger i'm not sure if there's a okay sorry i can't see if that's an l sorry about that jennifer kauffinger kutztown um i want to talk about policy 809 in the policy it states that we need this to bring all of our other policies together however if you are correctly administering those policies then they don't need to be brought together also i'd like to know what data you have that shows that these are issues in our school because i honestly don't think they're an issue that needs a policy if kids need help get them help it's as simple as that that's the only policy that you really need to have okay and if your teachers and your administration and your faculty are not doing what they're supposed to be doing in order to teach our
038children they need to be disciplined or fired period okay and as for the discussion group that we had last week i'm sorry but that wasn't a discussion that was i'll share my opinions you share your opinions we're not going to talk about it a discussion is give and take feedback opinion that's what a discussion is not hearing from any of you is not acceptable we need to hear from you exactly why we need this and exactly what benefits it will have for our children because the majority of the people here don't think that there's any benefit that there's going to be more harm than anything else that happens you being silent does not help your cause thank you there's a check next to michael right now but then it just says just signing in right
039now okay that's all i have anyone else wants anyone else who wants to make any comments carrie westner from kutztown um [Music] so a lot of you i you know i've had conversations with not a lot of you i guess it's just a couple of you a few of you um about the 809 and [Music] it's you know ever like it has been said that no this isn't going to be crt this isn't you know going to lead the crt we promise and stuff like that a lot of the language does and you know lead that to crt but even if you don't believe that then i'm asking you again vote to keep crt out of our district it was already put to a vote and it was you know denied but if you vote
040again that crt will not be in our district then i believe in your heart you think this policy is not part of c-o-c-r-t if you're like nah let's just wait and we're you know we'll see what happens then to us it seems like it may lead to crt then and you don't care anyone anyone else a little taller sorry uh my name is eric landquist i'm a resident of kutztown and uh i am also an associate professor at concerning university department of mathematics uh though i'm currently on leave i'm pursuing a physician in industry um so good to see you eric um so i'm i'm was also at the meeting last week about the uh equity policy policy 809 i thought i just want to say a formal thank you to uh to putting that
041together i thought it was a very fruitful time um and it appeared that uh there was a lot that everyone has in common um there's a lot of common ground between um what the policy is intending and what uh people on either side of this policy want we all want uh the best for our students we all want uh the best faculty in the schools to teach uh the students and we all want to see the students excel to the best of their ability and so um i i give uh everyone a lot of credit for that um what i i did see in the policy though and you know i i brought this up in the discussions and and uh the people that were in the room with me seemed to you know take
042that to heart um so i just wanted to kind of repeat some of the things that that i saw in there that that i saw concerning one of the things that i think could be an issue is religious discrimination or scientific discrimination um in in the policy in the in the purpose statement it says you know we do not essentially don't discriminate based on uh gender or race or english learner status etc but uh religion was not in there and so what i raised is the point of okay well suppose you have a muslim teacher who does not recognize transgenderism suppose you have a science teacher who says like myself that okay if you're born with uh two x chromosomes then you are a female if you are born with an x y chromosome pair
043you are you're male and nothing can change that so would there be discrimination against a muslim teacher or a science teacher a biology teacher a christian teacher who who rejects that and the policy as it's currently written seems to allow that um although you know that could be up for interpretation so i i see this opening up a huge can of worms um you know that could be hiring and firing decisions based on on that policy which is concerning so um that's one thing i brought up and then you know another can of worms that i brought up you know i joked around with this about other people it's like okay well if gender expression identity is one thing well what if a student comes in says you know i'm going to be a cat
044today and i want to take a nap in the sun for three hours and i want tuna fish for lunch right you have to it would be inequitable to to not accommodate that because that's the way i learned best you know you know i know i'm being really silly uh but you know these kinds of cans of worms are wide open and that's one of the things i see uh in there and i think one thing that a lot of us agreed on is that there doesn't seem to be any real need for for this policy uh i think current anti-discrimination laws and current best practices are completely adequate and i i you know these are fantastic schools and i trust that uh that you've hired you know the best and the brightest teacher our
045students so those are just some of the observations that i've made so again thank you so much for your time anyone else anyone online with dr mars with that we'll move to the informational items board members have copies of the eci board meeting what happened pci news link and third day enrollment data item nine is upcoming meetings and informative dates on september 13th there's a policy and curriculum commuting committee meeting excuse me here at 6 p.m in the middle school commons as well as via zoom on september 13th there's the facilities and ecc committee meeting at 7 00 p.m in the middle school commons as well as via zoom and on 7 20 on september 20th is the monthly board meeting at 7 30 p.m in the middle school commons as well as via zoom
046next move to item 10 a german looking for a motion to adjourn so moved all in favor say aye aye any opposed meeting adjourned please be safe drive safely