001you how about now ricky now i can hear dr johnson do you have audio uh yes i do now thank you now we cannot hear you can you hear me randy burch aldarion michael hess cecilia holt dennis ritter yes eric johnson yeah carl nolte charles sher our first order of business will be the approval of minutes from the september 21st 2020 school board meeting so i have a motion second a motion a second any comments questions or corrections from those meetings hearing the roll call please review michelle back randy birch yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes joshua yes carl nalty president next we'll move to item four communication and reports thank you [Music] for the superintendent's news report uh plenty of good news first and foremost we have as you know
002we recognized two weeks ago at the 2020 national liberal school of excellence for our christian area high school you're one of 317 public schools recognized by the united states secretary of education betsy devos based on school's overall academic performance and closing and closing the achievement gaps among student groups this is a uniquely prestigious award in 317 across the country for this year 58 high schools across the country and only two in pennsylvania for a secondary school it's a very unique honor one of the one of the measures we always look at is looking around the county and identifying other schools with recognition such recognition has not happened for a secondary school in berks county since the being recommended used by the pennsylvania department of education for our legislature to the u.s department of education you
003know is a credit to itself and then the work that goes in from our team here at the christian area high school or the leadership mr flicker this is a very very prestigious award we will be communicating through throughout the community and beyond over the course of the next weeks and months looking at a public relations campaign to brand our school with this national government of excellence it's a community-wide recognition while it's just a high school we are the accumulation of the high school of what has occurred throughout the school district and the community over over the years of childhood education the school officials represent we represent the high school at a two-day virtual aware ceremony in washington dc november 12th and 13th unfortunately mr flicker and i won't have the opportunity to go to
004washington um it'll be a virtual event this year but the reformation does not take a step back at all so this is truly a measure of excellence congratulations mr flicker and your team and the entire district at large in the national pilgrimage school of excellence um bringing in 100 years of votes for women ringing in 100 years of votes for women attended by elizabeth roxanne and mrs patton seventh grade social studies teacher elizabeth is a 12th grade student at chris center area high school she participates in the quickstart area school district internship program as a graphic designer and writer for the upcoming chris center school district university equity inclusion website helping to build that with our diversity equity and inclusion team uh they attended on friday september 25th independence national park in philadelphia for the
005justice spell ceremony recognized we are a hundred years from the original ceremony suckers for women in the united states the event this broadcast is live on facebook uh elizabeth like thank you mrs patton for inviting her to this unique event and share her experience with us cougar prince um truly being a part of history and being able to share it and then take us through the center exposure diversity equity inclusion website is a very appropriate next step so congratulations to elizabeth and thank you pat for making that possible the golf county championships as the fall sports season rolls on we have some golfers taking care of taking care of recognition for themselves who are really performing on the county level emily berkley fifth place at the bcia golf county championships on september 28th and advancing
006to district 2a class golf championships this coming week and addison johnson third place at the berks county boys 2a golf championship on september 30th 9th place between both 3a and 2a and also advances to class 2a golf championships this week uh congratulations to both emily and addison the best wishes this week in the championships that were on october 9th good news in the bright bite survey format we looked in the spring and did perform the survey throughout the community looking at how students and families were dealing with virtual learning uh we would like to follow up on that here in fall 2020 the new format that we have we're partnering with brightweights once again we do educational research and analytics we want to learn more about schools technology is for students in this format where
007we have students in the building full-time students in the hybrid and also students learning virtually some of the examples of data we used to collect access for the types of devices types of devices that are being used instruction in terms of types of activities tools using how learning is facilitated social emotional learning student self-management self-awareness social skills online safety and beliefs these skills are online skills and digital citizenship and support protective support learning environments is some examples where we'd like to gather information from families uh that survey is gonna go out this week and we will keep it open for two weeks hoping to have as much feedback as possible so that we can help support families where they need and get valuable feedback from us that's my good news for this week i do
008have another report since march 13th we've been on a journey of identifying how to best meet students and families needs uh in a virtual learning environment brick-and-mortar learning environment and a mixed blended learning environment this year back in august proposed opening up with a full opening for kindergarten through eighth grade in addition to a hybrid format at the high school where we had 50 of enrolled in first students attending on a rotating basis with agent school two days a week in the middle school we had all of our students who were enrolled in person both buildings looking at that high flex model where you're zooming in at the same time in addition to teaching in person while the elementary we've had two separate models of virtual learning and in person thus far we've had a
009very successful start to the school year based on our health and safety plan the health and safety plan of the group includes social distancing across the district to the extent possible looking at four feet as a general minimum inside classrooms keeping that distance as much as we possibly can masks need more there's extensive cleaning routines that take place limiting the number of students and where they sit on school buses the work of so many ways that health safety plan you know thus far has been a wide success for here in kutztown area we need to update the health and safety plan as necessary with the department of education once it was approved by the board of directors the initial piece of this health and safety plan update includes a few bullet points some clarification some
010updates from where we were back in august when we submitted our first plan we added the addition of the ionization technology installation air quality monitoring revised language on return to work procedures based on department of health and cdc guidance as we've learned through each of our contact tracing events the department of health is constantly evolving in a way that they recommend us here in schools to handle each individual case whether it's the case of someone in the district or someone uh in contact with someone in the district and we update that language the process of increasing movement in buildings by students as conditions data and effectiveness measures allow we'll talk about some more details in that in a few moments limited sharing has ability to sanitize and properly business and activity activity will allow that
011is reference to physical education equipment making sure that things are clean but sharing where necessary and properly clean opening the possibility of visitors and volunteers and building in the future we're getting to a point where we have a few limited visitors to volunteers it may be very helpful to maintain some distancing and counselors will continue to monitor social emotionally students and staff provide or recommend support as needed some of that's really just updated language for real changes we look at the way we use students throughout the building the possibility of volunteers in the process for that and also the sharing of physical education equipment this is our current status in terms of the school district copic 19 cases update we have now gone two consecutive weeks without a case of a student or staff member
012in the district and this is a credit to our practices a credit to the contact tracing that occurs by our nursing staff administration and you know collaboration with the department of health each time we have a student who is tested for coca-19 we have very strict protocols in terms of anyone tested no family members are permitted at school at that time until the negative test is produced if if there's a positive test follow the 14 days quarantine in addition to the 10 days of isolation where necessary and because of those practices because of the community support of communicating with with us as a school community when there is an illness we've been able to look at that spread we see this overall you know as a huge success in the way that we are managing
013the way that we are managing uh cases as they come through as of october 5th of today we have zero cases spreading school that we can identify we've been able to trace back any cases that occurred within school setting cases of people in school setting that none of them have been spread that's a credit to our practices again in our people we're using family as the case is metric rather than individually stating you get three cases you know again just eliminate how far that spread has been is due to the practice we have contact tracing you know families are continuously communicating with schools you know we have today families calling for the parking lot someone had symptoms can they come to school the answer is no you should take their is a reason why we've
014been successful our nursing department is just phenomenal you know every day dr lieber myself and the nursing team need to discuss any illnesses at this point and this goes well above and beyond the imperial finds that everyone else is doing but it has allowed us to be successful to know we have a finger on the pulse of each illness in the district on a daily basis the department of health well there's a lot of skepticism i think coming into the school here from people throughout the state about the effectiveness of the pa department of health and their ability to communicate with the number of individuals that would be necessary to help schools identify best practices i can't say enough about how well the department of health has responded um you know when i when i
015make a phone call someone picks up the phone they call back and check details again this level of details has allowed us to be as successful tracking and monitoring contacts ensuring that we've now spread over 19 throughout our buildings so for our next phases of recommendation there's some you know minor two relatively major changes we're recommending for the kutztown area middle school in our phase three opening or recommended as of october 14th that students begin to transition to their encore classes currently students in the middle school middle school schedule is primarily made up of your five core subjects and that can change based on the grade level business core subject and they'll have two periods where they're in their encore subjects which would include things such as art music family consumer science technology education agriculture
016education any of those resources that fall within that schedule currently the students are not transitioning to those periods the teachers are coming to them um we're recommending that students transition to those entrepreneur classes beginning october 14th october 14th because that's the next day a day in the cycle this would have teachers walk the students to the room to maintain that distance the rationale is pretty simple development needs the students students who need to begin to move throughout the building you know having six seven day three students stay in one room is not developmentally appropriate it was necessary and may be necessary again to ensure health and safety but at this time with the success we've had in terms of living spread we believe it's time to have students um this allows teachers in those encore
017with usually more specialized spaces i think protected families space allows them to use their spaces um it also allows some freedom of using their own space for the teachers of the course subjects that they have the classroom now available during planning time right now they're still moving around but even just having their own space and playing that thing is beneficial we've seen successive transitions in high school students at the high school are transitioning seven eight nine ten times a day depending on the way their schedule works you know we've seen success of not having spread there so to again phase reopening all of our students in the middle school grade six seven eight looking for them to begin to transition um opens it up to where we can monitor a little bit further before you
018know obviously the next step would be do we transition to core classes but we wanted to see that we're successful in transitioning first and maybe there is no point this year we just always want to continuously look at this as if it's a continuum of openings closings um and do anything you can to prevent it from having to close the high school reopening you know we're looking to recommend it in october 12th we start increasing student in-person attendance days since we started you know we've always wanted to look at what does it look like transitioning back to full normal five days in the building for our students you know and understanding that that there's no guarantee that would happen this year again we're seeing success and we think optimistically that that can happen don't we
019don't believe that it's proven to jump right to it you know we've had success in the current model so our current recommendation for an increase is to increase in person to three days per week per student currently from the two days per week per student how would we do that divide the a groups and the b groups in half and then have half of the eight group go big group one day the other half made it eight years ago the other day give that a little bit more detail on the next slide still social distancing guidelines this is key you know what we cannot do is allow our changes to getting closer to full in person communicate to our students in our community that the practices that are in place are not still important we
020need to communicate that they're becoming they're more important when we start bringing more students into building frequencies because they work so if we continue to maintain those social businesses guidelines but we bring additional students in we believe we'll do so safely and have students remain healthy and remain in school as well as staff the desks will be situated for the greatest extent possible it's likely to be four feet or more in nearly all settings the high school quite honestly made up a handful of classes that's not possible because of not unevenly distributed students based on great on letters of the alphabet but in most settings that would be the case the face covering will remain required for pa guidelines and the base coverings you know are just a piece of the puzzle that have been
021successful for us some of the regression out there are actually presented percentage to enrollment right now currently sits at a max of less than 9 39 or just at 39 never exceeds that currently based on the number of students that are coming into the building we built the model around being at 50 percent not knowing and understanding that some students would be on full virtual but we always said 50 we're not even coming close to that 50 percent because of the students very full virtual in addition to the students who have bccc for half today we've been successful in mitigating the spread with our current enrollment the big picture much like the middle school developmentally appropriate the students need to be in support you know we believe that the best placement to be uh is
022in school with their teachers with the staff members that help them on a daily basis and as much as we can increase that slowly and measure progress so that we can see the success we've had continue we want to do so this is the quinceanera high school we're calling to be 75 hybrid model in person attendance um it's very simple you know as we will see on the next slide we don't get anywhere near that 75 attendance with the current students in virtual but yet that's sort of the way we're looking at it because we're looking at 75 of those who are available to come in person with me so on monday that a group the a2l group would continue to attend and continue to attend monday and thursday but on monday the amateur r
023group and mr flipper's team will identify down to the details of which students those are and communicate that with them but theory that answers our group would then also be going upon them on tuesday your m through z group continues to go as they have and in person and the age of f the first half of the a through l group and then attend as well so again we're going half the alphabet plus a quarter of the alphabet attending on the same day with a maximum student capacity right around 75 percent it'll be much lower as we'll show you we're still recommending to maintain those wednesdays the all virtual what we know is this model of blended synchronous or high flex whichever we choose to call it you know when we have students zooming into
024the classroom and we have students in person it's a challenge you know it's a challenge to do that on a daily basis for teachers planning for multiple methods and there is some benefit from having it's a challenge for students too and we're here after students in that there is a great cognitive load um in terms of sort of flipping between models fairly frequently that wednesday they still remain no students in the building gives an opportunity for somewhat better practice than cleaning although we're cleaning pretty deep each and every day in addition to allowing some freedom for best plan for our teachers thursday again we're back 8th round it's been going on thursdays all year you can have that second half of the the m3z group with the s roughly the s3z again with three quarters
025of the purchase students filled with 10 and on friday just follow that model it's enter z and the g through l uh looking at max 75 any questions on how that specific piece of it works how we get to that potential three quarters mr tim chattan can you hear me yes mr huffman how are you receiving i am great how are all of you it's good to see you all um as you know earlier today i shared the high school teacher's concerns about the reopening of the high school and i was just wondering if the board had had a chance to look at those concerns i shared some highlights from those concerns as you know we see those not too long before the board meeting and then once we'll continue to look at um you
026know and but we're not sure in detail with those concerns but we'll you know following the meeting um you know many of those concerns are related to the distancing that's available um and how we can mitigate the spread within our buildings [Music] the high school is you know unique in that the high school has the lowest percentage of their total enrollment attending the building on a daily basis right now and that was by design it's because we know that the lives of a high school student is a little bit different than that of an elementary student without a middle school student in terms of the those that they come in contact with in addition to the knowledge that we have related to the higher likelihood initially of students of that age level to contract and
027also spread coping 19 from early research as we see additional you know schools going back to five days and as we look at ourselves and this is mostly the success in our model believing that we've been very successful in only having two cases total in the high school and um limiting them to just those individual students at that time that the current model has been highly successful when it's time to sort of expand it expand it in a measured approach rather than bring everybody back at once so that we can monitor it again and not allow ourselves to uh you know fall victim to over overdoing it right away well we would like i'm recommending that we move to this 75 model and then continue to monitor on a weekly bi-weekly basis before we look
028at anything else whether that would be the ability to move back to a 50 model or continue to increase capacity okay thank you thank you mr when you look at the actual numbers so the actual impact of hybrid plus virtual um see some data here the total high school enrollment currently sits at 452. if you look at the first four rows we have the current schedule on an a day in the morning we have 151 students in the building for a total two enrollment of 33 and the b day it's and 24 total we have the bctc numbers there because they matter that's what makes the big difference in the a and the vm the pm when the bcc students return we're looking at 39.38 uh two total enrollment and 31.19 um again that's much
029lower than even that initial targeted 50 and it's been successful you know that is that's the greatest criticism of changes it's assessment but we are successful with the intent of returning to normal um the 75 model would have us looking at in the a.m on days monday and thursday at 49 uh on tuesday and friday 44 and in our largest group in mondays and thursday in the pm 59 and on tuesday and friday 54 so again we're really just going slightly above assuming that students remain virtual this also assumes that we would remain with the option to zoom into classrooms for students on full virtual it's my belief that that remains necessary for various reasons one is a model that's it's a great challenge for teachers and our teachers have taken on the work of
030performing phenomenally while planning to meet whose needs in multiple environments um and can't say enough about the efforts and the attention that the vast majority of our staff has put into making that work and be successful we are going to have some skills to remain on virtual throughout the year i think that's the reality of 2020 you know if you want to keep those students in quicksand area school districts they have access to the high quality national blue ribbon quality education that we offer here at kutztown versus looking for other options in addition what has worked about mitigating spread of coca-19 is ensuring that any family who is testing for coca-19 that whole family is excluded anyone who has tested for coca-19 and lives with someone they're excluded for 14-24 days those exclusions require a
031change to the educational setting that could be so disruptive without that ability to zoom right into your classroom and stay with your teacher to do that on the secondary level gives us the ultimate flexibility i also believe you know when this is from the school administrator's standpoint the parent standpoint that if my child is ill you know to keep them home it's very reassuring that they can still zoom in with their their teacher and that might be keeping home for one day to monitor symptoms you keep them home for two days to get tested and get that rapid test back it just provides that great flexibility that helps us encourage people to stay home when they're ill allows us to have students and families knit when it's necessary and also meet the needs of our
032virtual learners who have chosen as a family that's the right thing for them to be virtual learners for the entire year so you know this this also maintains that assumption um in this part of the model but ultimately this is our recommendation of how to proceed to you know best adjust to the success that we've had to grow from that success and see how we how successful we can be i have a great confidence that i really wish that people could zoom into uh our meetings with the nursing staff every day and you would have as much confidence as i do if you if you were in there and just know the level of detail that they have in terms of families and illness and that we can communicate constantly with those families friday night
033at 9 30 p.m you know phone calls with um between myself the nursing staff dr lieber and family to make sure you're communicating about any potential illness and that happens on a daily basis could be more proud of that team and give a great deal of credit to our limited spread there i'm sorry i thought i spoke for a long time um are there any questions uh regarding uh cypher from mr hawker it's any questions regarding the proposal it's not so much a question i think the other thing that hasn't at least i've not heard it touched on tonight um you had shared about or or i think it was in one of our communications during the week this really will open up for our high school students to get a fuller benefit of their
034bctc training as well so because they're right now when they aren't in school they cannot go to bctc that's thank you for thank you for pointing that out um and as our district represented on the bctc pcie board let's closer closer to your mind at heart too the um vctc return to learning plan includes that school districts will send students to bctc on the days or with on the cycle of which they are attending in their regular high school looking at it from the standpoint that as a school district we are and the board is making decisions for them as our students not just for our buildings so this would yes allow our students from bctc to attend bctc at least one more day a week as we open up our high school so that's
035a great point thank you for thank you for sharing something new on behalf of the students yes please um i think that it would be like a lot of the students that i've talked to and just the student body as a whole going back to school um i think even two days or three days would be nice just to see your teachers in person it's way easier to learn in the classroom rather than on the computer and when you're at home you're kind of distracted by like you know your electronics it's like next to you or so you have a dog or a sibling that you want to help you know you're just distracted and get up and do other things i know a lot of people come to class people late or just like
036a couple seconds late they're like oh i got lost lost track of time and they just forgot um but one problem maybe with like doing the half and half i think right now as it is people are still getting confused on oh i which they do like they need to think about it which day do i need to go in so i don't know how you can fix that but like splitting it up even more i think it might be more confusing too for the students yeah and yeah thank you joel that's that's definitely a little bit of a concern and i think we'll put that mr flicker and his team you know for a communication plan to make sure the students know you know exactly what days it is for them to attend i
037i wouldn't be shocked in the first few weeks we have a few students to show up on the wrong wrong day um you know and that's that's things we'll work through in those early phases of it this we didn't feel there was any easy way to come to a plan where we transitioned part way back to normal and you know dividing those great those group a's and b's uh made the most sense to us so um if you have any suggestions on the best way to communicate with students in a daily basis to show up for all years thank you thank you excuse me i just got a question from high school i guess this was really it's going back when the plan was initially announced before school started there was a concern about some
038of the class sizes in the elementary schools and forgive me if you sort of updated us on that but i can't recall how is that dealt with are those class sizes now in a comfortable level or were there other um areas that were found no we evaluated different options you know one of the honestly we looked at from the beginning is there's there's spaces here in single school you know that are um unused as our largest school with the lowest population density within a building or capacity but it would be difficult to offer um some of the encore and special education programs that we have because of the staff in there you know so those class sizes have remained wherever they were you know the class the classes distance the extent they came possible principals
039have communicated with those teachers to make sure that they're doing so in a safe manner and then um we've seen success as we say you know kids are kids are in those classes and we haven't seen this there so um it when the class says it's got up around 20 it didn't get basically nervous because that is higher than we're targeting for but with the diligence of our teachers and students and staff in those classes we haven't seen this any other questions will congratulations again to the to the students staff administration and actual community right for the awards for the for the high school is there a question there are no specific proposed changes for the elementary school at this time you know with all of our students um in the building and there's minor
040adjustments that occur on any given day but as of right now continuing forward with the plan as is at the elementary school with that we will move on to the new business section of the meeting we will start by taking item a personnel um items one through nine i'd like to take all at one time to have a motion critter moves motion is there a second second motion a second any comments or questions regarding item a hearing roll call please ricky randy birch yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes charles sure michelle batts yeah yes so approved next is item b and there's two sections unless a board member has an issue i'll take both together okay item b is the appointment of the school board appointment of student school board representatives
041it is a recommendation of the administration's board of school directors appoint joel parise as senior student representative to the clinton area area board of school directors for the 2021 school year effective immediately and item number two is the recommendation administration as the board of school directors appoint kelly levy as junior student representative to the postdoc area board of school directors for the 2020-2021 school year effective immediately so i have a motion so move emotions are a second second motion assessment any comments or questions regarding item b hearing on roll paul please repeat cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes joshua yes michelle batts randy birch yes carl nolte second reading and there's four policies unless the board member has an objection i take all four together okay policy second reading it is the
042recommendation of the policy curriculum committee with the board of school directors approved the second and final reading to the following policy policy 103 discrimination title ix sexual harassment effective students policy 104 discrimination title nine sexual harassment effective staff policy 705 facilities of workplace safety and policy 815.3 electronic signatures any comments or questions regarding item number letter c eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes joshua yes michelle batts yes randy birch yes cecilia holt yes carl nalty yes so approved next is item b philosophy club it is the recommendation of an extra curricular committee that the board of school directors approved the creation of the philosophy club at kutztown area high school for kutztown area high school students effective october 6th i have a motion so motions are a second ritter seconds any comments or questions regarding
043item d dennis ritter yes charles sure yes michelle bats randy birch yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes carl naughty yes [Music] next is item e the ksc health and safety plan update it is recommended that the board of school directors approve the phase opening facial opening health and safety plan update for submission to the pennsylvania department of education as any comments or questions regarding item e michelle bats yes randy birch yes celia holt eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes carl nelty yes so approved next is item f the kelly educational staffing substitute agreement it is the recommendation of the administration of the administration as the board of school directors approved the amended agreement of kelly educational staffing to provide substantive services for [Music] motion for a second okay motion a second any comments or
044questions regarding item f hearing numbers michelle bats yes randy birch yes cecilia holt yes eric johnson yes dennis ritter yes joshua yes yes so approved next is item g paperwork technology service agreement it is the recommendations administration that the board of school directors agreement with concord technologies to provide cloud-based backed services for the attacks to have a motion for a second second we'll just say any comments or questions regarding item g hearing randy birch yes cecilia holt eric johnson dennis ritter yes joshua yes michelle batts carl nalty yes so approved next is item h a hummer fall field management it is a recommendation of the facilities committee that the board of school directors approved the agreement with plumber church system from kutztown high school at bloody field fall renovation at a cost of 8 695
045for the attached to have a this given the start time now october are we going to get the value for the expense as far as improving the condition of the field actually uh it's a reduction of four thousand eight hundred and seventy seven dollars because we're doing one less step to try you know again that's a basically they felt it was not an advantage to do that how late it was uh myself and uh ed yapsuga tried to move fields uh around so we could pursue this a little bit earlier but just it's not doable so this is the best case scenario that we could come up with dr ritter did you have a question as well uh kind of got answered with randy's i believe [Music] any other questions hearing on roll call please
046cecilia holt yes eric johnson dennis redder yes joshua yesterday michelle batts yeah randy birch yes yes so approved next is item i introduction of new business anyone from the board would like to bring something forward just congratulations to mr flicker and to all the uh staff and teachers of high school for the recognition of the blue ribbon award at a nice job any other board members just as an informational item i'm not sure what the status of this is but originally there was going to be a planning commission meeting on october 12th in the greenwich township there had been requests for some variances for the property where the diner sits next to language elementary school the proposed use was described as traffic trailer parking facility um i'm not sure if those variants requests in that
047meeting is still going to go forward on the 12th or not but for any residents of the greenwich area that might be worth your while to look into this to see what the status of that request is um i'm not sure what a trump parking facility means exactly uh but if it was a truck stop i would just have some concerns with that going forward close proximity to the elementary school thank you mr burch anyone else hearing now we'll move the public [Music] dr myers okay exactly we'll close the new business section and there's informational items and then uh item seven is upcoming publicly on october 12th there is a policy encrypted and curriculum committee meeting at six pm in the middle school commons as well as zoom on october 12th there is a facility's
048extracurricular community meeting at 7pm in the municipal college of commons as well as via zoom and october 19th the monthly board meeting at 7 30 pm in the middle school commons as well as the year zone with that i'll look for a motion to adjourn all in favor hi hi thanks good night [Music] well