Good evening.
I'd like to call the April 26, 2021 meeting of the Derry
Township School District Board of Directors to order and announce
that this meeting is being live streamed and audio recorded.
This meeting is being conducted both in-person
and virtually limiting our in-person attendance to ensure the ability
to social distance during the COVID 19 pandemic.
I'd like to request the board members to please state your name when speaking Mrs.
Agee. Roll call. Mr. Abel.
Here.
Dr. Cronin.
Will.
Miss Drew
here.
Must have her stick here.
This is many here, Dr.
Shore. Here.
Mrs. Secor.
You're Mr.
Singer.
You're
Mrs. Steiner
here.
Eight present, one absent.
I understand that Dr.
Cronin was going to be tempting to access via Zoom, but we will proceed.
Flag salute.
Please rise if you are able, and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.
I would just like
the United States on Iraq and Syria, which is a stance one.
Nation, indivisible, with liberty and.
Justice for all.
Thank you.
Moving on to the approval of the board of directors agenda.
May I have a motion to approve the April 26, 2021 Board of Directors agenda.
So move.
Lindsey Drew second Cathy sticker.
Is there any discussion?
This is a state of voice vote.
All those in favor signify by saying I anyone opposed.
Motion carries information and proposals.
Steam presentation.
Mr. Blaze.
Okay.
Good evening. Good evening.
So I am an elementary school teacher.
I was a fourth grade teacher for 16 years.
I believe I've had
several of your children somewhere along the path of of teaching.
But pre-pandemic I decided to make a switch,
a career switch, and wasn't sure what I was getting into.
And then the pandemic changed.
And here we are.
But it has been exciting.
And I have to say ambassadors with me, and we just like to share and highlight
a little bit of what has been happening in the virtual world.
Because even though I have a steam lab
that's filled with equipment, I haven't been able to have students in there.
But we figured out a way, as we do and
through multiple iterations, we I believe we found some success. So
here we go.
So that is me, Mr. Bryan Blake.
As I said, I've been with the district for a long time.
That is what I look like without a mask, which is kind of nice to see.
It's a rare sight when you see people without masks.
But then I have Chase, who is a fifth grader, and I'll let him speak a bit.
And I've had Lee, who is a second grader.
They've both done amazing things.
And and I know that, you know, throughout this year, there's been
a lot of contentious debate about different things and politics.
But I think it's great to just be able to see kids and
see what kids are doing in our schools, which is great. So.
So what is steam?
I ask the second graders this and they tell me
the sound that comes out of a teakettle, you know, So.
So there's some learning.
You may have heard it has STEM, but it's basically
an acronym, stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
So it's a culmination of all of those subjects together
and really trying to teach children how to solve problems in a modern world.
And I love this quote, you know, kind of open with this as as
this is what it's all about.
And that is somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known.
The class and the course is really all about discovery.
You know, every great discover discovery throughout human history
has been kind of brought about by a creative thinker.
And oftentimes it's, you know, sometimes kids who have the best ideas.
But in this in this course, you know, there's not always the right answer.
In fact, there is not always an answer.
And sometimes there's always a problem.
We're trying to figure out the problem and the answer to it at the same time.
So there are there are several big ideas
or concepts throughout the course in the normal world.
You know, the curriculum would definitely hit on these ideas.
We've had to tweak it slightly this year and adjust as we go.
But the basic just is that we cover digital citizenship,
How to Stay Safe online engineering and design Thinking.
So how do engineers solve problems?
The forces of education?
And that would be creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication.
So trying to collaborate in a virtual world is difficult, but
we figured out ways.
We use a seesaw blog and students are able to give feedback on each other's work.
Then we touch on some coding and computer programing
and then ultimately, you know, growth mindset.
And that idea of feeling forward is is woven into all of it.
And you'll see Chase exhibits that great
a great way in one of his clips coming up.
So the first big thing and we
really hit on this in all the grades is this idea of digital citizenship.
How do you stay safe online?
They all have these devices in their hands from kindergarten really to fifth grade,
but they don't necessarily think of it as a tool more as a toy.
And one of the big things is their digital footprint that we all have.
You know, we as adults tend to understand that a bit more, but kids don't
they don't understand necessarily that what they post and do online is
is captured.
So we try to foster this idea
of keeping a positive digital footprint as opposed to a negative one.
Then we get into personal versus private information.
And what could you share and what should you never share?
And then in the upper grades, we touch on cyberbullying and online gaming.
And then the
culminating activity for that unit
was I had two students in second through fifth grade make public service
announcements for the students because they didn't have steam.
So this was a third grader.
I did not teach these skills.
So I said, Here's the project.
You know, you could make a poster, you could do a rap, a song,
a radio announcement, whatever you wish to create.
And this is a third grader that I'm not sure how
she made this, but I kind of want to know that and let her teach the course.
But this was better, really, than some of the stuff I found from publishers
that created it with some of the her skills or so.
Hi, my name is I.
As you know, today we're going to talk about how to be safe on the Internet.
There are four things you need to remember.
Number one,
you should never give out your address.
Number two, never talk to strangers online.
Number three,
always be respectful and kind on the Internet.
Never give out your last name or your phone number.
I mean, pretty impressive skills for a third grader.
I was blown away when I saw that.
So I have captured all of kind of the best of the best
that a rolling document that I can share with those younger grade teachers.
And if you guys want to see it, I'll gladly share theirs.
I probably have a hundred of them now that are on their.
Status to date.
Now that we, you know, we move into engineering and design framework,
we use something called the launch cycle, which is by AJ Giuliani.
And launch, again, is an acronym.
So each of those letters stands
for kind of an element of the engineering and design framework.
I started the course by really working on this idea of problem solving.
I had this idealistic view
that kids would be able to identify a problem
and then work through the steps with me to fix it.
The hardest part was getting them to find a problem.
Kids generally really don't complain,
at least about problems that I would think they would have complained about.
So I changed that in time and we eventually moved to
making catapults and did some work with simple machines.
But again, a third grader you'll see highlighted here.
And the idea was they had to find a problem,
make a blueprint and kind of go through prototyping.
And this third grade girl, you'll see what she came up with.
And again, this was all her her parents assured me they did not help her,
which I still a question because I think this is amazing
and I kind of want to buy one of these devices myself.
And I really can't treat this spent there because my kids
are always looking for food and it is pretty annoying. So
the. Treats go through the plant and.
You can.
Actually get her.
Made.
And they go.
And here there is a.
Door right here and on the back of the door,
I'll wait to make it.
It goes up when you press this lower and the weight on the back
make it go back down.
So eventually she.
When you think about all the skills that require her to build that,
it's pretty amazing, you know.
I mean, that's more than just tinkering.
She had to understand the basics of simple machines,
the idea of a lever, the idea of the incline plane.
I mean, it's pretty amazing for a third grader to develop that.
So that and that's that's certainly one of the best.
But I've seen many items like that.
I was like,
I couldn't believe the things that kids
came up with when they just had a chance to know. It's kind of like
now we moved into coding and programing, which tends to be the kids.
A lot of the kids favorite idea.
We use a program called Code.org, which is a free online program.
We do hit some CSS basics, and that's computer science,
not necessarily writing programs.
We're using block coding, but developing the idea
and understanding of how computers work and how they function.
And this is where we really got some some cool things.
So some of the third graders and fourth graders developed basic video games.
The second graders and fifth graders that they ended up in the same course
because of the way the course was rolled out.
But they did some artwork with code and you'll see some of those on
the next slide here.
So this this one of these on the left is Hadley the second Grader program that.
So the basic gist here is that that little artist on the screen
that you can see with commands, you can tell him to move so many pixels,
rotate so many degrees, travel so many pixels, changes in color,
and then you can create a loop where it would loop through that program.
And then there's another command where she could make it jump
without drawing and draw those smaller designs.
So it probably ended up being, I don't know, 50, 60 lines of code.
Maybe
it's a lot.
But when I first ran that because when they submitted to me,
I press run, it's a blank screen
and then you can see this artist drawing this picture.
I was blown away.
And then the other one, one of the fifth grade students
programed it to write the word stem.
And Chase also did that, except chases em was more of like a traditional
M with slopestyle, which I thought was awesome.
So that was some very cool stuff.
And then there's one more that I haven't linked in here.
And again, if this is true, if you want to run it, you can.
This takes you to the code.org site and you'll see
this one run.
And this one was probably
maybe a hundred, 150 lines of code.
And you can speed it up if you want to.
But she had to program every step of this, every turn,
every color and adjusted by pixel.
So each line she had to make it jump five more pixels and then rotate,
you know, travel, turn left, travel 85 pixels, turn left,
85 pixels and so on and changing the colors as she went.
So some fascinating stuff.
And and you might notice
a theme that a lot of this work is is done by girls
and that's not I'm not bias in picking girls I just think it is amazing.
I'm a father of two young girls and I think it's amazing to see girls
thrive in this subject because so often I know when I was in school
this was thought of as a boy subject and science was a boy subjects.
So seeing that girls are finding amazing success and loving this course,
like I said, as a father of two girls, it gives me hope that they will be
the ones, you know, growing up solving problems alongside men.
I mean, there's no reason why they are amazing thinkers, which
then leads me into the tail end here, and then I'll let my ambassador speak.
So as I said, all of this is you know, this idea of growth mind set and
and we teach perseverance that I was having so much fun failing with my designs
that I think it showed through to the kids that it's okay to fail.
It's okay to fail as long as you don't quit.
And I tried to explain
to the kids, really, the only way you fail is when you give up.
As long as you keep coming back and trying, you're not failing.
You're learning.
And I believe Edison was the one who said he never, you know,
the greatest inventor probably in human history.
He said he never failed at anything.
He just simply learned a thousand ways that won't work.
And I love that.
I love that thought that, you know, you're always learning.
So we try to fail forward and learn from our mistakes.
And you'll see
Chase does this masterfully.
And the beautiful part of this that I got such a kick out of was
he went into this kind of even though I don't know if he realized
that he almost knew he was going to fail and trapped
the chance of failure
by announcing at the beginning of the video that he was going
to speed up part of the video in the event that I fail.
So you don't have to sit and watch through it, which I thought was was genius.
But he went into it not not thinking, I'm going to find success immediately
and not thinking this will be easy.
He went in going, you know, this is going to be tough
and I might fail, but I have a plan for that.
And you'll see I'll let it speak for itself.
It's just, okay, so here's my catapult.
The attempt just to get it.
To go into this.
Phillies hat upside down all thing.
So this up a little bit.
You know.
Fast forward it. So
if it takes more than one. Try.
It's not waiting after 5 minutes and.
The engineer
work. And.
Then that moment's.
Just barely doing.
Yes, I got it on like my tray.
So yeah.
So it's just been very cool to see, you know,
get to see kids kind of thrive in their own environment.
And with that, I'll turn it over to these guys and let them talk.
But but I also want to send a humongous thank you
to everybody,
all the family members and parents who've had the help along the way here.
I certainly could not do this myself.
You know, I always tell parents that I'm
part of your child's educational team, but so are you.
So I certainly could not do this myself, especially without
having the kids in front of me.
And I owe a huge thank you to all of the parents and family members who helped.
Hopefully it has not been too messy at home
when there were messes involved, I made them optional
and I told the students, Do not beg your parents to take you shopping.
You know, we'll figure out ways to do it.
But with that, thanks for your time.
If you have questions for me or you know you want to connect with me,
email me and I'll leave you with that
quote from again, one of the most famous thinkers of human history.
I kind of like that idea that I don't have a special talent except curiosity.
So ambassadors, if you want to talk, by all means, go ahead.
Thank you.
I don't have really something planned. But.
Or if you guys want to ask questions or.
Ask any questions,
I have a question about your catapult project.
Were you what were you ultimately trying to figure out there?
I was basically just like trying to figure out what angle would work best
and like what I needed to do to get in there
successfully.
But of the task
was to build a catapult that will launch a paper ball and
into into a competition.
Yeah,
I just want to sing.
Is your mom that I'm really proud of you.
You did?
Did you expect it to go in on your first try?
No, I didn't. Because,
I mean, like, nothing works on the first try usually, but
I knew that I'd probably have to keep on doing it to get it right. But
it was like a trial and error thing.
Gotcha. Thank you.
I have a question.
Mrs.. Mrs. Steiner, How are you?
I'm good. How are you? I'm well, thank you.
I'm so impressed by both of you and the projects that you're doing.
And I wanted to ask both of you how you think these experiences help
you with your other school work and other parts of your life.
I think
being able to, like, do all of that at the same time
and do it while really enjoying it and having fun out of it
really can help you.
Like when you're back in their homeroom and make it more of like a fun experience
because like when you're just doing math class in school,
you don't really think about the fact that science is like tied
in with math and it's all just kind of like tied together.
And I think that just like, really helps.
Like bring it out and see, like, the excitement in it.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Awesome. What about you?
So steam.
Is like.
It's been my favorite
out of all the specials I've had.
And but I've also known that
it's not going to be perfect on the first try, so it's my catapult.
I've had to,
like, turn it different angles to try to get it in.
So I had a double and then I had to like it
and I had to push down on the lever for it to go
and I had to see how much force I need to put into it.
Wonderful.
Thank you both so much.
You did a awesome job. I'm so impressed.
Thank you.
Congratulations to both of you.
Ms.. Hadley, what would you say is your if that was your favorite steam,
what was the best part of all of it for you?
And what will you take from that class
as you go on to third grade next year?
I know
my favorite part was coding.
I've loved coding since first grade,
so it was
it was really tricky to make that design I made
because it was like
you had to program how many,
take how many pixels you need to go.
And it was tricky because you also don't know how it works.
If it was new,
how long did it take you
increase?
20 minutes.
Oh, I thought you were going to say like 6 hours.
Oh, great.
K Never mind.
Was super impressive.
Anything else from the board?
I would just like to say thank you to Mr.
Blaize for being such an incredible resource as a teacher for these students.
I have had conversations on the baseball field, sidelines and with other parents,
and every time steam has been mentioned this year everyone responds with a yes.
That was such a highlight.
So thank you for making learning so incredibly fun,
even under the toughest of circumstances this year.
As a parent and as a school board director, I really appreciate it.
And to Hadley and Chase, congratulations.
I would also just like to mention, I didn't know that
Hadley was the third grader who was part of this.
I obviously knew Chase was since he's my child, but
if you ever
want to see what Derry Township School District can produce,
we have second generation, some third generation
students here in Hadley and Chase because have these parents and Matt and I
are the best two classes of Hershey High School from 2001 and 2002.
But it's fun to see second, you know, to see our children
when we all went to school together, to see them now thriving and succeeding.
And I think that's a testament to the dedication and commitment
of everyone that's part of Derry Township School District.
So thank you.
And. Congratulations to you too, and keep learning.
Thank you.
As a thank you, Mr.
Glaze.
Thank you, students and all our faculty and all our parents.
That was very, very delightful.
Let's move on to to be
parliamentary plans for
the 2021 school year.
Dr. Winslow.
That's.
Got to be hard.
I know. All right.
She's an.
Amazing singer. Too.
So thank you for having us tonight.
Mrs. Funk and Dr.
Smith are coming from across the hallway to join me and Mr.
Valentin is joining us as a panelist.
So we'll all be working together through
our presentation chair.
Here we. Go.
Thank you.
To just discuss the fall preliminary plans,
I know it's been on everybody's mind.
What what is the fall going to look like?
And I'll just reiterate, we're definitely having a full reopening
that that is our plan and
how to move forward.
Mrs. Landry,
just a quick agenda.
I walk you through some of our planning, some of the mitigation strategies.
We expect to still be in place,
what we anticipate for
mental health and wellbeing support, although the building
principals will speak more fully to that for each building,
building specific information, and then I'll finish it up
with some department specific recommendations or information as well as
guidelines and some open ended pieces
that we still are looking to
figure out.
So we have been planning regularly
building teams meet weekly at the building level 2 to 3 times a month
as an administrative team and monthly as curriculum teams.
So we have multiple teams meeting
different times, different places
and then regularly pulling that information together.
And we have a social emotional learning team.
We've been meeting 2 to 3 times a month
and pretty extensively doing a lot of planning to prepare for next year.
The meetings address issues that are surrounding schedules,
social emotional well-being of students and staff,
potential learning gaps and acceleration strategies,
as well as refinement of procedures and structured and structures to ensure
best practice instruction.
So really looking at our multi-tiered systems
of support, looking at our professional learning communities,
looking at how we do data review, curriculum, revision, etc.
So a lot of the pieces that we already have in place,
but making sure that we're really maximizing the potential for
those structures to serve us
well as we go into the fall.
We also are looking at how to continue to offer surf
learning, safe learning environment for students and staff.
We anticipate having a COVID response team in each building.
That team will help with monitoring the isolation room,
contact tracing and mask reminders.
And these last couple of weeks have been an excellent reason
why we feel like we're going to need this.
The more students we have in the buildings, the more
contact tracing we are doing.
And that takes up a tremendous amount of time from the administrative team.
So we really want to make sure
that we have people on hand to make sure that that's getting done.
And we do anticipate still having some mitigation and strategies for the fall.
Of course, we are guessing at this.
So much of what we have been doing has been trying to make educated guesses.
We assume that we will be encouraged
to still wear masks, probably mandated as well.
Still wear masks is what I would guess,
and to be encouraged to be cohorting
as much as possible, which is pretty like we can do that to a large degree.
The elementary, but not as that to the same degree
that we've been doing this year. And Mrs.
Funk will explain that a little bit further.
We will continue to
we expect to have universal masking.
We'll continue to purchase extra supply of masks for students and staff.
We anticipate facing all desks in the same direction as much as possible
and continuing to provide hand sanitizer, Kleenex, soap.
All the things that we've done this year will continue to do
next year.
Mental health and wellbeing support.
Just kind of looking at a broad district picture,
really recognize that all of us have and are experiencing
a universal tragedy with varying levels of impact.
One of the things that I've heard
people say many times is we're all on the same boat, but we're really not.
We're all in the same ocean, but we're in very different boats in that ocean.
Some of us are on cruise ships
and some of us are hanging on the logs and just trying to stay afloat.
And we need to be very cognizant that our families have had very different
experiences through all of this.
Their children have had very different experiences
and even our staff has had very different experiences.
People have lost loved ones,
people have been sick themselves,
People have lost jobs, their spouses have lost jobs.
There's there's just a lot that has happened in these last
14 to 18 months that that we want to be very cognizant of
as we are working with our students and their families.
So we are looking at social emotional learning
and trauma informed practices to be implemented district wide.
This is a K-12 piece that is not something that will be optional for our staff.
It is something that everybody will have to participate in
and we're looking at using our to hour late starts
to be focused on professional learning around social, emotional learning
components and strategies so that our staff has a full toolbox
themselves of resources and can then model that for our students.
And so at this point, I will step aside and ask Dr.
Smith to come forward
to talk about some building considerations for the high school.
That.
Good evening.
Everyone likes to see everyone in person.
Thanks for having us.
So at the high school, I have nine considerations to go over.
And then just a little bit about virtual planning for next year.
So our first
so for next year, like we're doing this year, we have in our classrooms,
the desks will be facing one direction in our standard classrooms.
We have 20 desks right now. And I say a standard classroom.
I mean, a majority of our classrooms, like a standard English classroom,
a standard mathematics classroom.
We're going to bump that up to 25 desks for next year.
And so,
you know,
that doesn't mean that we can't be more than three feet apart.
But for a class that will have 25 students,
it's going to look more like a traditional classroom.
And students would be about three feet apart.
Some of our classes run at 17, some run at 20.
So again, this we're speaking about just general and generalizations
and averages when it comes to our work, when we're talking about classrooms.
And we will be spending more time this summer on balancing it.
You may think, well, we have 75 freshmen signed up for English.
Can we just put 25 in each classroom?
And it doesn't always work out that way
because those 25 freshmen probably have different mathematics
courses, different levels of social studies, different electives.
So it's not just like
I like a nice clean fit when you're going through the schedule.
So we also we've been sort of
toying with an overflow plan that we have in place right now.
We've had very little usage of it,
but essentially our overflow plan is if we if we're over 20,
the teacher would contact one of our library staff members,
send a student register on a Google doc.
Email goes back to the teacher.
Jeff Smith made it to the library.
Jeff Smith stayed here for the duration of the period.
They're monitor to make sure they're on there participating in a Zoom class
and that we keep the communication open like that.
But like I said, this this in the last few weeks
we've used we haven't used this very much, but it is a plan we have in place
our cafeteria.
We're going to we took out if you ever saw the cafeteria pre-COVID,
we had a combination of rectangular table square tables and round tables.
We removed all of our round tables last summer and we're looking to keep them out.
We're going to look for keeping the rectangular tables in.
Right now, we're at six feet left, right front back.
And so we're going to look
to rearrange our seating and we're going to stagger kids for next year
and they still won't be facing each other, but they would be staggered
sort of diagonally.
And that gives us about it's somewhere right around three
and a half to four feet, depending on where they sit on the benches.
So we also will still be using
our hallways and when the nice weather we have, the area outside, we have about
I believe there's about eight or ten metal picnic tables.
We have them numbered right now and our students are allowed to use them.
Now we have students register their seats at lunch,
so they had a QR code and they type in their seat number.
So we put little tags on the seats outside so we could use those as well.
Our gymnasium, we're looking at trying to get back to as normal as possible.
We are looking to utilize our locker rooms at this time for next year
in the PE classes.
They're wearing masks and they've been looking at, you know,
different activities that they're doing in terms of distancing.
You know, it's nice when when we're outside,
there's not as much concern with PE,
but when we're in the gym or in the fitness center
or in our wrestling room,
there's different considerations that we have to take in mind.
All right. Next slide. Our hallways.
Our hallways do look different, even though right now
we're a little over 600 students not assigning lockers has has
had a very positive impact with traffic in the hallways.
Typically, you know, the hallways are filled
just about right before 10 seconds before that bell rings.
And then, you know, they're you know, we're getting scaring the classes.
We haven't had any of those issues.
And we'd like to continue that.
If there is a situation where students,
you know, there's absolutely need a locker room,
obviously we can look into that, make some considerations.
We do have some plans about lockers, but at this point, we'd like to not assign
lockers because the flow in hallways has been pretty amazing.
And if we're going to, you know, open school next year
and let's say we have a thousand students that are coming back,
you know, I
think we think that that could clog up the hallways a little bit.
We'd like to avoid that if possible.
Our morning entry this year,
we were entering from six different locations.
We're going to keep that for next year
and we're letting students enter 10 minutes prior next year.
We'd like to look at allowing students,
if they have a scheduled meeting with the teacher, to come in at seven
if they're allowed.
Some of the teachers started office hours in the morning at 630.
In the past even 615,
you know, it's really beneficial to some of our students that have jobs
after school that are participating in sports or other activities.
So next year, we're going to look to
make sure or allow students to come into the building
if they have a meeting with a teacher at 7:00.
Flexible campus was something we've been slowly integrating into the call.
The culture of the school and our seniors.
Our students have done an absolutely fabulous job with this.
So we've expanded it a bit and we even look,
we looked to expand it for next year.
So for next year, a senior could just could choose
a first period study hall or last period study hall during course selection.
So it wasn't like no luck of the draw.
We didn't have to have luck of the draw.
They could choose if they wanted first period
study hall,
which allows them to come in
a little bit later or last period, study hall
Which allows them to leave a little bit sooner.
We are considering to look at this for juniors
that are in good academic standing, you know, wide good academic standing.
We mean that they're passing all their classes are on track
with credit, you know, and their attendance good
and they're making good decisions or staying out of trouble.
And one of the thing that we're going
to consider for flexible campus is the possibility of
looking at maybe seniors allowed to leave for lunch next year.
You know, we have we're going to rearrange our schedule a bit.
You know, we're switching from each school to synergy.
And synergy doesn't like our schedule.
Has that ABCD in the middle.
And we kind of we're kind of scrapping that.
We're just going straight numbers.
So what we did is we bumped up our lunch period times a little bit.
So it's not trying to squeeze this dash out the Chipotle in back, which
I would worry not just as a as a principal but as a parent.
So we're going to we're going to be talking about that over the summer
with some of our
in the building and also with some of our student leaders.
All right. Next slide
or the other considerations.
So kind of fall in the middle school model.
We're looking at trying to form a high school SEAL team
and we have all these different teams of professionals that work with kids.
But alluding to what Stacy said, there's going to
there needs to be more of a focus on this and we need to bring it together tighter.
You know what our students have been through,
whatever the older adults have been through, it's been pretty traumatic.
And so, you know, it's kind of like, you know, success by design and not by chance.
So we're really looking to create an a SEAL team at the high school.
And I think the middle school has a really solid model
that we're going to try to we're going to try to follow at the high school
community, period.
So with our schedule, you know, we have a schedule,
but we also have a B schedule that we shave.
If we shave 3 minutes off each period, we end up with a 27 minute block of time
so we can fit that B schedule in like,
you know, it can fit that time in after second period.
So we're looking to use community period to work in some of this ACL information.
And we talk about ACL information, you know, like clubs and activities.
We have a whole we have two whole grade levels really that
that are going to be not exposed to clubs and activities.
We haven't had an activities fair that we normally have.
So that's what we're talking about, community period.
And we talk about ACL, we're really talking about Redefine
running our school culture and our school climate and our school community.
That's really important because we haven't had one for 14 months
and by the time we get back, we're talking about 18 months.
So it's going to be really important.
That's why we put a link linker
up there, link crews essentially working with two grade levels next year
because we're going to have we're going
to have a group of 10th graders that have never been in our building,
that have only experienced Hershey High School from the virtual world.
And we need to make sure that, you know,
we're talking them in and we make them
make sure they feel like they're part of something special at the high school
and been talking with Link Crew a lot and they have a lot of great ideas.
And the best part about Link Crew is are so many kids involved
so the students can work with other students.
And I think that they can spread a great message that way.
And the last piece here
would be our academic supports and expanding our academic supports.
We've
we've piloted something called
the Trojan Center as an academic support center.
We also have academic supports for our special education students.
We're looking to expand that and we're looking at trying to develop some of this
possibly after school or on Saturdays.
We have Saturday detention, some schools, some
some of the administrators I've spoken to, they've kind of flipped that.
They've called it Saturday school.
So you're not just there because you got in trouble.
Maybe you're there because
you're not passing a couple of classes or you need extra help with math.
So we're really trying to look at how we can bolster the academic supports
nine through 12 on our building and not just,
you know, even during the school day, but also after the school hours.
So they were the nine points.
The final slide here is about our virtual
learning options for next year.
We're going to survey families in June, and by June we mean like
right around that, like June 1 to 3, right of that last week of school.
We're going to send a few reminders
because this is going to be really critical,
getting this information to our counselors,
because there's going to have to be some decisions made.
So we're going to survey, get the results, have the counselors reach back out
to make sure that's what someone chooses virtual that's what they chose.
Have some conversation.
And our counselors are really going to have to work.
This isn't going to be something that they can figure out in a day or two days.
This is going to be a full summer commitment for our counselors.
And when we when these families are making these decisions,
you know, we have there is some capability to bring students in and out.
But there's also
it's important to commit to something
because going back and forth in between virtual and in-person,
a virtual in-person, it's it's really a strain.
It's a strain on the student.
It's a strain on our our our how we operate,
you know, how we're keeping track of students.
So we're going to ask them to stay virtual for the entire semester.
And then the last part of this is right now we're we have
we have hybrid streaming.
So we have some class, some kids in class, and we have some kids at home
and the teachers teaching and with the out,
you know, delivering information, working with the students in front of them,
doing the best working with students that are virtual well, where possible.
This goes back to sort of some of the comments I made when I first started.
We're going to try to see if we can run some virtual sections.
Maybe it is possible, maybe there are 25 freshmen
and they're all you know,
they all chose the same English and they're all in, you know, civics.
And we can sort of mesh some schedules.
It's very difficult. But this is why
I stated that it's
going to take a lot of time and it's going to take us through the summer.
It would be awesome to be able to have virtual options for our students
to chose virtual to make it all virtual because it's
it's difficult.
It's more difficult for our teachers
when they're delivering the people in front of them and people at home.
So we would like to, if possible,
create fully virtual options for our students.
It takes a lot of work.
There's no guarantees, there's no magic pixie dust.
But, you know, we're going to we're going to work and see.
We're going to see what we can make work.
So that they were my slides.
I think we're waiting.
Stacey, are we Wait, I'm sorry, doctor ones.
Are we waiting till the end for questions?
Yes. Okay. So I will be introducing Mr.
Eric Valentin, who's going to be joining us remotely, I believe.
Great.
Thank you so much, Dr. Smith. And thank you board.
We're
really very pleased with the work that the students
and the staff have been doing to make this really unique situation work.
So as we look at next year, a lot of the things happening at the Middle school
are the things that have been or that will be happening at the high school.
Obviously, we want to make sure that we're on the same page.
So looking at our building considerations, specifically our classrooms, you know,
our classrooms are relatively small at this point.
We're able to have 15 student desks in those classrooms to maximize
having students come in as many as possible four days a week.
But next year, we would be looking to have approximately
20 student desks in the room.
And so we're going to have all desks facing in one direction,
and we're attempting to have them be three feet apart where possible.
Some of the
classrooms are just a little bit smaller and that might not be possible.
I'm looking specifically at our cafeteria.
This is an area that, you know, is, you know,
particularly important since everybody is eating without a mask on.
And so this year, we've had a 160 individual student desks
set up six feet apart throughout the cafeteria,
in the corridors surrounding the cafeteria.
Next year, we would be looking to still have individual student desks,
but we would be spacing them approximately 3 to 4 feet apart
and continuing to use the giant hallways for additional seating.
That way,
we're at least able to make sure there's some good social distancing
between the students as they're eating without their masks on.
Looking at the gymnasium, we're going to try as close as normal
to follow our curriculum for physical education.
The difference is that we're specifically making sure that the activities
that the students are involved in are not strenuous enough
to reach aerobic heart rate levels.
And for those of you that go to the gym, I know I have been going to the gym
for the past couple of months.
It is very difficult to be, you know,
at an aerobics heart rate level with a mask on.
And so we need to be cognizant of that.
So the activities that they're doing will not allow
students heart rates to get that high,
which we think is the safer option.
Looking specifically at other areas, we are not planning
to assign lockers, at least at the beginning of the school year.
This really does cut down on hallway traffic and congestion
and we want to keep the students moving and continue
some good space between them wherever possible.
If you've been to the middle school this year, you'll see that
there are orange dots by the bus entrance.
There's approximately 240 orange dots spaced four feet apart.
We use them during morning arrival in the the library.
We also have dots spaced the same distance
in the event that it's inclement weather or particularly cold.
We don't want the students to be standing outside,
but we're going to continue to use those social distancing dots
because they have really been very helpful and, you know,
making sure that we have some space between the students now
moving on to our school interventions, many of the things that you've heard Dr.
Smith share, we're also going to be doing with addition
to a couple of unique activities, unique specifically to the middle school
we do plan to have a two week special schedule for the new school year,
and we refer to this as the reorientation schedule
because we recognize that this is the first time in 18 months
that this many students are going to be together at one place.
So we have to revisit and relearn what it's like to be in school
and specific areas of the school, make sure everybody understands
the expectations and what supports are available
for them in the event that they're struggling with something.
We are also adding something new
for next year in that we're extending homeroom 10 minutes
and we're going to utilize this time to have a morning meeting.
And this is focusing around school needs.
The concept here
is that we're taking 10 minutes every morning to check in with students,
make sure that they understand what's going on for the day,
have a better understanding of things that might be going on in their life,
which might be preventing them
from taking advantage of their educational opportunity that day,
making sure that we're accessing resources for those students.
And we believe that this extended homeroom is going to be particularly helpful
because there'll be two teachers in there.
It'll be the traditional homeroom teacher,
which is usually a core teacher and an encore teacher
sharing in this responsibility with the students,
because we want to make sure that the students feel supported
as they're transitioning back to a normal school experience.
In addition to that, we have had an advisory program
for a number of years at the middle school.
We will continue to have that advisory program
and as part of the updated schedule did this year,
the advisory program is actually baked into the six day schedule.
In the past, we just ran
an extra
special schedule on Wednesdays to allow for advisory,
but we've now baked it into the schedule to make sure that it is in fact happening.
Every 12 school days, which really allows
for teachers to make some connections with students.
And we think these kinds of connections are going to be particularly helpful
for our students as they're transitioning back to our normal school environment.
If we can switch to slide, please.
So that brings us to what we're looking at
for virtual and remote learning options at the middle school,
similar to the high school, we're going to have families select
this learning option, but because of the impact on
what we're doing in the building as far as making sure
there's only so many physical people
in each classroom at a time, we want to make sure
that we have them committed to the whole first semester.
This will allow us to similarly to the high school run, we will be running
fully virtual sections wherever possible.
So if you look at the concept of an instructional interdisciplinary team, each
teacher has four sections of classes that they rotate
through over the course of the day.
We are planning at this point to have one of those sections be 100% virtual.
And what this allows us to do is by having one on every single team,
when students decide that they feel comfortable to return
to in-person learning at school, it's really easy to be able
to switch their schedule because they're already going to be with those teachers.
And we feel that this allows teachers to focus on
the type of learning that's taking place.
So in a virtual environment, they'll do different
activities than they would in an in-person environment.
And so this schedule will really allow teachers
to better meet the needs of students by being able to either focus
specifically on virtual or in-person, and that's wherever possible.
Certainly our core classes are going to be like that are anchor classes.
Most of classes will be like that.
There are a few that were not able to do that with,
but the intent is to try to offer that for as many classes as possible
to really make sure that the teachers are able to offer a quality experience
for the students that are learning fully, virtually.
So we are excited about these prospects.
We we really do believe that we have some plans in place
that are going to really help students to feel more comfortable being at school
while still making sure that we're doing everything possible
to keep that environment safe for all students and staff.
So with that, that's the middle school component of this presentation,
and I'm going to transition over to my colleague,
Jenna Funk, the principal at the elementary school.
Everyone.
So just sharing some some plans with the elementary
and some of the plans are very similar to the other buildings.
But I will say that we will be using a lot of the mitigation strategies that we're
currently using with obviously encouraging handwashing and hand sanitizing,
limiting, limiting students, sharing materials back and forth.
When you think about our classrooms, one of the differences will be that
with the full return with students, our desks will be distanced
three feet apart when feasible, depending on the number of students in a classroom.
That's not always going to be feasible.
But we will
we will separate them to the greatest extent possible in the classrooms.
As Dr.
Winslow shared, if the mask mandates are still in place, we absolutely
will still have students wear masks throughout the day in the cafeterias.
We again will have students seated at tables three feet apart.
We are still looking at our cafeteria spaces.
There is a great possibility
that we'll have to utilize some of our other larger area spaces
to be able to get the number of students that we want to get in for a lunch group
to allow them to eat in a larger group space versus the classroom.
So that's something that we are looking at.
But the distancing distancing is planned right now to be three feet apart
in those areas for recess and gymnasiums are are P.E.
Classes have been virtual this year.
So we are looking to have all of those essential arts classes in person
in the gymnasium.
A difference for next year is we won't have more than one class
in the gymnasium due to hopefully some additions and some schedule changes.
But students will participate in gym with their classroom cohort.
They will wear masks during that time.
And of course that physical distancing will be encouraged from the staff members
leading that class and you'll see the same similar thing at recess.
Students will participate in recess.
They will go outside with their grade levels.
That physical distancing will be encouraged from the staff members outside.
And of course, if the mask
mandates are still in place, we will have students wear masks during recess.
Social emotional learning.
We we will be continuing
with some plans that we've had in place for many years at the elementary school.
And we have been utilizing our second step curriculum for social emotional learning
that's been in place for some time.
So that will be be continued.
We do have a school team
that's working on beefing up some of those lessons, also looking
at our transition of students back in, especially those first weeks in school,
to do some of the bounce back lessons that we utilized this year
to bring those back, give some students reminders about those.
And we also have a building schoolwide Positive Behavior support team
that has been working all year on
looking at also creating some more lessons
and some more specifics for all teachers to be able to teach students
the routines that they need to be successful
in the different areas of our school environment as well.
In addition, we did add morning meetings this year.
We will continue with those next year.
It is a protected time and our master schedule
and then we will also be asking teachers to keep a protected
time in a cycle of a schedule to do that.
The second Step Lessons curriculum
for the virtual learning option next year.
It will look different than it has this year.
At the elementary building we are looking at students
who would choose to be enrolled in a virtual program.
We would be utilizing curriculum and instruction offered through
the Capital Area intermediate unit, through the KAYLA program.
So that program and the teachers for that
program would be from Capital Area Intermediate Unit,
the District would would work closely with them and we would have a liaison.
But the curriculum, the instruction and the teachers would be provided
from from the Caq.
In addition, we would ask that families selecting that virtual environment
would remain in that environment, at least until the trimester.
Kayla is split by semesters.
So there there would be
a little bit of a of a transition, but we would be able to make that work
as long as we were sticking to any changes happening at trimesters.
Thank you.
So just a few more pieces.
We had some good news about food services.
April 20th, the USDA announced that several COVID 19 waivers will be extended
to ensure students can continue to safely receive food school meals.
What that means is that it will ensure that all of our students can receive
meals that they need.
So we continue with the breakfast and lunch waiver,
which means that all students can participate in that.
So the lunches, the lunch items
that students would buy would be a la carte items that would be provided.
Otherwise their their standard meal would be free.
That allows food services department to focus on safely serving students
without having to worry about meal applications or collecting payments.
And then so that streamlines the availability of staffing.
So we are a little short staffed in that department at this time.
It can be a little difficult to fill those positions.
This allows us to be able to offer a full service
cafeteria even if we are a little short staffed.
We would still be able to to do what we need to do.
Families who are struggling,
struggling to make ends meet, meet, but don't necessarily qualify for free
or reduced lunch.
We'll know that their kids are getting a nourishing meal
and be ready to learn and we can maintain, grab and go.
Meal options and pandemic safety measures protect students and staff.
So that was that was some pretty exciting news
that just just came to us this past week.
Buildings and grounds.
So many pieces have already been done with our buildings and grounds, but I did.
I didn't want to reiterate all of those
while I did want to just touch on a couple of things,
we did have an indoor air quality report
assessment done by train in the fall.
Our systems are calibrated per manufacturer specifications.
Each HVAC
adjustments were made to allow maximum amount of airflow.
The recommended air exchange rate I've learned a lot about this recently
is five changes per hour
and and our systems are set to be able to maintain that
as long as we stay within room capacity.
So if a room is meant to have 25 kids in it, but
you put 30 in it, that slows down that air exchange.
So if you're staying with that, so when you're hearing our principals
talking about a certain number of kids in a room,
it's to keep social distancing, but it's also part of the system
to keep that air exchange rate happening, which is really important
when you're talking about virus spread.
We are giving some consideration
to windows and doors that can be open to increase airflow.
That's not a possibility in all of our buildings or in all of our spaces,
because then it it causes other things to happen
and some of our windows don't actually even open.
So but that is something that we're looking at.
And if they don't open, we're looking at can they be recalibrated to open them?
Right now, our high school
has a two hour full purge each night,
so the air is purged from the building 2 hours before occupancy.
So as the custodians, the night custodians leave, this is done.
We're looking into this possibility for the other buildings as well.
We thought it was very important for the high school
because there's so much more use at the high school,
but definitely want to
look into the other ones as we bring more and more students back.
We're also looking at opportunities to improve our systems,
especially for large spaces.
Again, at the high school to allow for Merv 13 filtration.
And finally, we're looking at the possibility of humanity monitoring.
There are some issues with humidity.
We often think about humidity
and the Northeast as being an issue when it's too high,
which of course would allow mold to grow.
But one of the issues in the wintertime is when humidity is too low,
which allows for virus spread.
So at this point, we're looking at at least monitoring
that to make sure that we're staying within
a 40 to 70% humidity range.
And that way, if we're not, then thinking about what steps can we take to
to make sure that that's happening.
Transportation,
we will combine routes and busses will run all the normal routes again.
And I thought that I would take this moment to say we need bus drivers.
Please apply
that.
Depending on how many students ride the bus,
Many, many parents have been transporting their students this year.
Many students drive.
We probably will not be able to keep the same level of
of social distancing if everybody decides to ride the bus again.
But we will do our very best depending on how many students are on each bus.
But we will run all of the routes again.
I and then
look thinking about CDC
and Pennsylvania Department of Health guidelines.
Obviously, universal masking is in place right now.
Three feet of physical distancing when feasible.
We do want to make it clear that we will do that as much as feasible,
but there will be times and spaces where it won't be feasible.
So we want people to be clear on that and not feel like they've been misled
in any way, shape or form, because for the most part,
in a lot of spaces we can do it, but we can't do it in every single space.
Hand-washing, hand sanitizing, very important
cleaning and maintaining healthy facilities.
Our custodial staff has been doing a phenomenal job
and obviously we will continue with contact tracing
topics.
We will kids do. We?
We just have things to figure out. Yet
this year we decided to not have any extra bodies in the buildings,
in the classrooms, and we have not allowed visitors or volunteers.
We have not gone on field trips.
So we have some things to do to kind of figure out with that piece.
Probably at least some of it is seeing where we are throughout the summer.
As far as you know, how is this pandemic going and where we at with it?
We miss having our volunteers and visitors.
It's a vital part of our school community.
It feels us.
It leaves us feeling a little disconnected from our families and our parents.
And we don't love that part.
We got into this because we love kids and we love people
and we want to be with one another.
So we're being optimistic,
but we really haven't made solid decisions on that yet.
And then field trips, it was very excited that the Finance Committee
today wanted to talk about adding field trips back into the budget.
I think one of the greatest things that this district does is maintains
field trips.
So many districts over the years have cut them.
It's a really, really, really important piece
of learning for students to get to see something in person.
It allows them to hang new knowledge on something that they've actually seen
or touched been a part of.
So I really, really appreciate that we have added
that field trip funding back into the budget
and we will just make those decisions as we come upon them
throughout the year as we and we'll do the field trip request
as we normally would, and pay attention to what's happening in our community
or the communities where the students would want to visit.
And and we'll go from there.
But I'm happy with that approach.
I'm happy that it's not completely off the table
and. Hopefully we'll be able to at least our outdoor field trips,
hopefully will be able to participate in, if nothing else.
And then we do have some unknowns.
There's a
an amendment pending for the Constitution.
If that passes, it could limit the governor's
emergency declaration powers, which could then limit
the ability to have virtual days as a school we have applied for.
It's on the agenda tonight for the flexible instructional days,
which in the past have been specifically for inclement weather days.
Since we have so many pieces in place, we thought it was foolish
to not submit that application.
I appreciate you putting it on the agenda tonight
because we fully expected to get sent back to us with feedback.
That is what happened to
every other single person that we know that has submitted this application.
And they did.
They changed the application date to June 1st instead of September 1st.
So I appreciate the flexibility of putting that on the agenda.
All that being said,
if we get approved for five days, there's five of them.
And our intent right now is to use them for inclement weather.
So if and I actually had the opportunity to talk with Representative Mahaffey today
and he asked me what, you know,
what's on my mind for the fall, what am I worried about?
I'm really worried that our state agencies aren't going to connect
and make appropriate decisions together,
because if we are limited in being able to use virtual days
but we have to close down our buildings
for two or three days because of the number of cases in them.
And then we can't continue instruction.
Then we have to add all those extra days into the year.
At the end of the year, we're going to be in school
all summer long if it continues on this path.
So there really needs to be some coordination between agencies
as far as what it is we need to do.
And I think it's really important that if we are still in a space
where we have to close down buildings for two or three days
to clean and to mitigate spread, that we be able to have virtual day
so that we can still have those days and hours count for our students instruction.
I just think that that's a really important piece.
But right now it's a it's a really big unknown
as far as what we'll be permitted to do with that,
with with the pieces that are kind of hanging out there at the moment.
And of course, you know, we are
we are bound by the State Department of Health and the Department of Education.
We are.
I think it's really important to remember that we are a government agency.
We are
we are governed by the state,
and we have an obligation
to be within that governance
as an organization.
So those are those are just some pieces that are own unknown
that we will be following throughout the summer and will communicate as
as fully and transparently as possible when we when we do know.
In the meantime, we are planning, as you've heard from our building principals,
for a virtual option for parents who are not comfortable
sending their students back at this.
We will
ask for that information in early June,
which could be before we have full
disclosure on these pieces.
But we want to be planned and ready to go for that one way or the other.
But we do think it's important that there could be some things
that are out of our control, force us to make some changes that
we would prefer not to to make happen.
So that's that's kind of where we are.
And I know we're we're happy to take questions from you.
Thank you, Dr. Winslow.
So we'll open up for more questions.
I did want to note that I understand that Dr.
Cronan has now joined virtually.
Dr. Krohn, are you there?
I am sorry.
I was on mute.
Right.
So questions for Dr. Winslow. Ms.. Zucker.
I have a
question about the owl cameras that we purchased.
I didn't hear.
How will you allow students to participate
if they are out on isolation or there's
maybe a sports team that shuts down for a few days?
Are you still going to be having teachers at all levels?
Do zoom for these students if they're out and the owl cameras or their laptops.
So we've had a lot of discussion about the use of the owl cameras
and and the possibility of students being quarantined
because they're sick or quarantined because they've been in close contact.
And the owl camera has really changed the ability to interact far more effectively.
You're if you're having to be at home for education.
So we see three,
three times when it would be appropriate for students
to be zooming into a classroom.
One would be if you are close contact and you have to quarantine
for 10 to 14 days, whatever it might be at that time
too, would
be if you're diagnosed with COVID and can't come to school.
And so you're out for 10 to 14 days until you're given
the green light to come back.
Or if you are approved for homebound instruction, that would be
at least ten days.
And any of those cases, you're out for at least ten days.
It's really important that you be able to stay up with your class.
But some of the things that have been happening this year
that we don't want to see happen in the future is
students have been zooming in from family trips in the past.
We never would have done that.
If you're going on your family trip, on your family trip and have fun
will catch you up when you get back.
And family trips generally are five days,
so like not we won't be approving that for zooming in.
The other thing that's been happening, especially at the secondary level,
is sometimes a student wakes up a little late
and they just don't really feel like rushing around to get to school.
And so they zoom in instead of coming in.
And that is no longer going to be acceptable either.
We're going to we're in person, we're having school.
Your teacher will not have their owl camera on unless there is an approved
absence, which would be those three instances that I've stated.
Okay. Thank you. I just have one other question.
Dr. Smith mentioned that the high school counselors
will be working with the virtual students over the summer.
Do we have enough counselors that work 12 months of the year?
I thought some of them worked like they're off or they
they work 12 months, so they have an off the top of my head.
I'm not going to be able to remember how many days they have.
Well. They have 12 days.
So they'll just adjust those days to work
accordingly instead of doing it right at the end of the year.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
I'm Dr.
and this is Lindsay Drew.
I have a few questions that I'll just go through.
But first and foremost, anything I just want to level set.
We obviously aren't going to address all of the questions that
that folks will have tonight.
Can you give any guidance as to what the communications plan
will be here going forward as we start to plan for the return
and incorporate information with the community?
I do have plans.
I do not have those here in front of me with notes.
However, I know one of the things that I plan to do
as superintendent is, one, communicate with the board weekly.
I have an intent to increase our social media presence
so that there's a lot more information put out where people are seeking it.
And much like Mr.
McFarland did last summer periodic
kind of videos that I'll put out to inform
the community of this is what we're doing, this is where we're at.
This is the information that we currently have,
but working to keep everybody informed very regularly
so folks in the community can expect, whether it's on social media
or on the website, that there will be a dedicated space.
Absolutely.
For a
return to school specific communications.
I think you
with in the secondary with regards to bridge days
for going into middle school as well as going into high school,
do you anticipate those to be able to be in person and will
they also be able to be expanded to include students
who have been fully virtual for this past year
and maybe would need kind of reorientation into their building?
Or perhaps it's a seventh grader who was fully virtual for all of sixth
grade and has not really been had time to get through the middle school.
We I have only had preliminary
discussions about bridge day with middle school and high school.
I don't know if either of them I want to put you on the spot. But.
You can go ahead, Dr.
or Mr. Valentine, whichever one.
I'm happy to go.
This is Eric Vallance and we are having conversations
because we do have web crew at the middle school.
It's one crew at the high school and we want to honor the fact
that the transition to middle or high school is really important.
We're just trying to figure out how to make that happen
following the guidelines that we're needing to follow.
But we do intend to do something.
And we also understand that there are a number of students
that really have to be reoriented to middle school,
even if they are not going to be in the sixth grade.
And so that's one of the reasons why we have that two week
reorientation program at the beginning of the school year
intending to catch all of those students in a safety net of sorts.
At at the high school.
We are planning for an in-person bridge day.
We have we've started having having meetings with line
crew leaders, with the with the faculty leaders.
And we are having discussions about what to do.
And I mentioned like, what are we going to do
with our 10th graders that haven't been in the building?
What are we going to do with new students?
Because we do have a new student component where we would offer days in the summer
where they could come in and toward the building,
meet the guidance counselor, meet a couple of their peers.
So we are have we are having we are planning for an in-person bridge day
and there are discussions about what to do
with other groups of students to get them introduced to the building.
Thank you.
I have just two more questions.
With the virtual learning for the elementary school.
I'm going to be really honest that I'm disappointed
to hear that we would be going back to the
CIA COLA model because correct me if I'm wrong,
that does not offer a synchronous virtual option
as far as I know, it does not at this point in time.
We do like the elementary curriculum much better than the secondary curriculum,
and we've actually never used the elementary curriculum before.
They've upgraded that in the last two years.
We've actually never offered any kind of virtual option at the elementary level.
And while it is not going to be the same as having our teachers,
we simply can't maintain it with the staff.
This way, we can't dedicate a staff member per grade level
and have that be a sustainable peace at this point in time.
Even if there were a response to
return to school plans that there was a classroom's
worth of students in each grade.
It's with the back and forth piece.
We really can't if if people would be willing to choose it
and choose it for the year, then we might be able to make that happen.
While we also don't want to deny students the opportunity to be in the building
when their families are ready for them to be
and in the coming year, we don't want to we don't want to lock them
into that for the whole entire year if we don't have to.
Sure, I certainly understand that.
I think for me, looking at it is,
one of the takeaways
of being forced into this situation at the past year is that it required us to
to learn how to provide, you know,
education in a virtual way.
And so I feel that we would be somewhat romanced to not use this
to expand our virtual option
for those that want it, particularly because we look at the, you know, the.
The. Number of students that have gone into cyber charter schools
and making ourselves competitive, you know, in that arena
to be able to provide education to families in the district.
I'm from that way.
So I would hope that we at least remain open to looking at this.
We are totally and I can Mrs.
Funk, to say anything.
I. Don't want to speak for you, but our thinking is that we would
we would love to come back to offering something like we did this year
with the staff that we're losing through attrition
and some of those pieces at the elementary.
We just don't feel that we can afford the staffing for it.
If there is a point in time where we have
our economy is more robust and we can bring those folks back,
then we can look at how we might be able to do that continuing that for the future.
But we do want to be able to offer our own robust
and rigorous virtual options.
Thank you. And my final question
in all of the schools, it's been addressed that for the cafeteria
it would be three feet of distancing.
And we know that currently the mask mandates require six feet of distancing.
And so I'm just curious as to what the plans are
that in the event these mask mandates don't change in six are required, what
like what are we planning for and putting in place to make sure
that that is not a barrier and that we can provide
that we can meet the state
and health guidelines for mitigation while not having it
be a barrier to in-person learning.
Because talking about the large group rooms,
that's one of the reasons taking those.
If we had had to take those away this year, bringing back then
we would have taken away from, you know, band and all of these other instructions.
And I don't want to see that become the case.
And so to have a fallback plan I think is really important.
Absolutely.
And one of the things that we have found is that there's conflicting
information on the state's website.
So there is a space that says other areas right now and in other areas
and other circumstances, it says when eating with masks off at least
3 to 4 feet apart when feasible.
And then there's another section that says cafeteria,
and that's where it says six feet required.
So there is conflicting information on that state website at the moment
regarding what it is exactly we're supposed to do.
So at this point in time, we we want to get all the kids back.
We know that
there is a large segment of our community that wants all of the kids back
at the middle school and the high school.
We can get three and a half to four feet while eating and have the space
for all the students to eat at the elementary in order to do it.
In the cafeterias, it's three feet.
But we would be looking at try to keeping them face all the same direction
and we would probably be moving out into hallways, other spaces if needed.
It would just take a lot of coordinating in order to do that.
So Mrs.
Funk and her team are still working on those alternative plans just in case.
So someone decides to straighten out that information.
And just for the record, I'm not saying if the mandate doesn't change
or if it is, you know, six feet that that should be that should not
at this point, you know, be something because we'll have time to anticipate it.
I just want to make sure that we're prepared
for all of those options so that it doesn't become a barrier
close to the start.
I definitely do not want to be yelled at for that.
Thank you.
Dr. Winslow, this is J.D. Harris.
I just have a couple of questions. Sure.
First, along the lines of the cafeteria and the elementary school, and
I think maybe it would be beneficial just to see what some of the other school
districts that have been doing this for a while.
Maybe they have some ideas as far as how they're doing that.
Another configuration of the cafeteria
might be different, their space might be different,
but there's still might be some value to just seeing what they're doing.
They might have some ideas
because a lot of them have been doing it for a while now.
So I don't know if that's something that I'm sure they would be more than willing
to, you know, converse and if there's some benefit there.
My other question is in regards to the decision
of families in elementary, middle and high school to go,
I just want to clarify
whether it's like you're surveying them in June if they want to go virtual
or are they making a definite decision in June, because June
to the end of August, a lot can happen with the virus
and it could be very challenging for a family to try and decide.
They might think one thing in June
and depending on what's going on with the virus, think differently in August.
So I didn't know exactly how that was being handled.
Thank you. I appreciate you clarifying that.
It is our intent that people are making that choice in June
for what they would like to do in the fall.
And the reason for that, because the scheduling aspect of it is no small task.
So like at the high school, for example, to Mrs.
stickers question really looking at guidance counselors using 10 to 12 days
to get that all straightened out and to get those
those schedules oriented appropriately, it's very, very, very complex.
And if
we want to be able to provide virtual sections, it's
going to take a lot of work and planning in order to make that happen.
So we really need to know.
And same with like class placements.
So, you know, we if we're doing scheduling and we're placing students in classrooms
at, say, the elementary example, we try to place them with a teacher
who's going to be really good suited for their needs.
But we're also taking into account the other students in that classroom.
So if we on August 10th.
You know.
A whole bunch of people changing their mind,
we don't have time between August 10th and the start of school
to rearrange all of those classrooms
and to get those schedules pushed out so families so we really in order
to do this plan fully and appropriately, we need to know what people's plans are
by the end of.
June and by the Middle of June, as.
Any other questions have.
Ms.. STEINER Yes, thank you.
Patricia Steiner I just have one question for Dr.
Smith about the high school We talk a lot about, you know, executive
functioning for for elementary students and for middle school students.
But I'm wondering for a high school with introduction of more social emotional
learning and the academic supports, is there a space in there
for executive functioning that includes like time management skills,
organization, goal setting,
some of those types of things to help high school students with all of their load,
especially in trying to manage all of that.
What we would hope that over the first semester
we would be able to work all of that in and that is why I think we think
it's so critical to get a team together because we have different groups
of of professionals and staff members,
building administrators, teachers, district administrators.
We just have to put all that together and and make sure we're focused and
we have
be careful not to pick and choose too many things
because we could make a list of you know, we could go around and make this list.
And so a board with 100 things that we think we should work on,
but it's most important to pick and choose
the ones that we feel are most important and most beneficial to the students.
We sort of see this happening maybe in six or eight week phases or even quarterly.
What is going to be the most important thing
for students to need to know for the first couple of weeks when they're back?
Then what's going to be most important for them as they work their way
through the first quarter?
And what's going to be most important for them once we're here
and we're kind of tucked in and we're back in school,
what's going to be most important for the second quarter?
And we we need to be careful in our approach
because if we choose too much and it looks really good on paper,
I like to think of things that a little simple teacher, we did it
and we just want to check off all the boxes.
But I like the We did it Well column.
We could do it and we could do like 50 things.
But I think it's going to be really important to focus on the five
or six things that are most important for our students and we can build upon that.
And we're looking actually at a program to bring in that.
I have a car, I have a meeting tomorrow morning too,
with a group of people that work specifically with high schools
in terms of integrating this whole school ambarella.
And they're pretty extensive because they have a
they have a hundred different topics they cover.
We can't do 100.
We need to be really focused. And that's why
if we get this team together, we have the right people in the room.
We can narrow down our approach
because I think it's going to be really important to be focused.
I think.
The Speaker.
I just have one follow up about the eight VASI unit
or we had conversations about this last June after the shutdown
and we were preparing for the open over the summer
that we went it, we authorized a contract
with Trane to monitor every HVAC system in all the buildings.
I was under the impression that we were already monitoring the humidity
because I had a conversation
with Mark Anderson, the director of Building and Grounds, that
the virus doesn't like humidity, because we had
I had learned about this from our dental office
and everything we've to filter the air with UV light and HEPA filters.
So I would be in favor of doing whatever possible.
And if this needs added to the budget next year,
I'd like to suggest that we discuss this at the Finance Committee in May
because I thought it was already being done.
So if we need to add something to all the HVAD
units, if we need to increase our contract with Trane,
if we need to look at the UV light and the extra filtration,
maybe we need to do a deeper dive and a better look at this
because I thought it was already examined.
But it sounds like there's some more things that could could be done.
And if it's a budgetary issue, I think we need to talk about it
at finance or somehow put it into the budget for next year.
Thank you.
And this is Tricia Stone.
I just to follow up with the ventilation
for the school busses, can we have the windows be open?
Because I see busses around.
I never see a window open.
Yeah, Yeah. We can absolutely have the windows open.
That's one of the pieces that it's actually recommended.
Okay. Thank you.
Dr. Winslow.
I have. I have three questions. Can you hear me okay?
I can.
So the first question is, and I apologize if this was covered,
but I was reviewing reviewing the the slides on my own.
Will there be any will the school have any requirements
or recommendations for students over 16 regarding the vaccine? No.
Okay. Thank you.
And then secondly the will the number of families who,
quote unquote, register as a virtual learner in June
will, that number determine whether or not
we can go fully live for everybody five days a week.
No, no.
We will go fully.
We will do full return five days a week, regardless.
Perfect. One way or another.
And then following along with the survey,
I think it was I'm not sure who mentioned it.
So I just want to make sure that I understand how you explain that
the survey is basically their registration and in order to make sure, can we
can we work on the semantics
to make sure that families realize this isn't really a survey.
It's it's it's it's kind of their decision.
I'm some things can change but that would be on a one off situation.
But I think part of what got us into trouble last fall was
we asked for a survey and people were kind of, you know, you know,
we were all kind of
not really sure what was going to happen, but pretty flimsy in our responses,
or at least many of us were, I think, so that we didn't really have good numbers.
And then when things changed on a dime, we went down a path was much harder to
to change from.
So I just really want to make sure that families realize that this
this survey in June is really critical to
to to make the to make their their decisions. So
that's. All.
Thank you. Thank you.
Anyone else from the board?
As many.
At my. Question seems so insignificant.
And I appreciate my other board members clearing a lot up for me.
The locker situation.
Yes, that is so odd.
So what are kids doing?
Like, I can imagine, like not having a locker is maybe
causing anxiety for certain kids, like, because that's not cool
to a coach in general for so mesmerized by this locker situation.
It actually has not been a deal at all.
And what we found when we cleaned out lockers
last at the high school in particular was almost all of them were empty.
The kids weren't using them anyhow,
or they're dealing with their things.
They just carry them all around in their backpack.
And we don't we don't use textbook like the way that you and I think
about, like hauling textbooks around because, you know, we're all 19.
Yeah,
but there's many classes that don't use textbooks that way anymore.
Their materials are mostly on their iPads, or they're reading articles.
They're, you know, they're.
They're. Doing different pieces like that.
They don't really have to lug books.
And if they are using a book, a lot of times it's just in class.
It's not one that they have to take back and forth.
And are they taking their coats with them all day
or are they leaving them in their homeroom?
They that's a good question, Mr.
Valentine and Dr.
Smith, what are they doing for both parents?
It just kind of varies, I guess.
I think some teachers don't mind them them in their home rooms.
And a lot of times the kids, especially at middle school and high school,
they wear a lot of like sweat jackets and stuff.
They don't pullovers.
They don't really wear like again.
Like big puffy.
Coats, like were cool when I was in high school are not cool now.
It makes you wonder if lockers are becoming a thing of the past.
But yeah, they could be.
When you're forced to do without them,
then you realize you don't really need them.
And it's
I mean, it's really cut down on hallway congestion, cut down on hallway issues.
You know.
They just go to the next class and it's fine.
Thank you. Yeah, of course.
Anything else from the board?
Right.
Well, Dr.
Jones, I want to thank you and the entire team.
That's very helpful.
Thank you very much.
All right, so let's move on.
Student of the month, Students of the Month recognition.
Mr. Macfarlane.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
As we've done all year, we have our students in the month
presentations by video.
So first is Lola Barrera.
Hello, my name is Lola Barrera.
I'm one of April's nominated Students of the Month,
and I want to start off by thanking my parents.
They are supportive. Every single thing I do.
I want to thank the Rotary Club for this amazing opportunity,
and I want to thank the faculty and teachers of Hershey High School.
They have molded me into the person AM Over the past four years.
In my
extracurriculars, I have always had a passion for the arts.
I'm the president of both our schools a cappella club, Choc
Capella, and our Hershey High School choirs.
I love to sing, and I'm a member of both Cantabile,
our schools audition choir, and I've been singing in our region's
Asian choir, the Susquehanna Crown, since the sixth grade.
I have also been a member of our schools Mini Thon Club
for most of high school, and this year I'm a committee director.
I have loved the way this club has grown me as a leader,
and I know that the fulfilling work you do really makes a difference.
Mentorship also remains very important to me.
In the beginning of high school, I was a star mentor
where we help the eighth graders begin their transition into our high school.
And then this year I'm a linker leader where we continue that transition
and just get them comfortable with the new school environment.
Beginning in the eighth grade, I volunteered at our Hershey Story Museum.
I guided guests around the museum and I answered questions
along with running a chocolate cart
where I kind of explain the chocolate making process.
In 2019, I received the President's Volunteer Service Award
for 60 hours of outstanding service, and I loved being able
to put a smile on people's faces every time they entered the museum.
Once I turned 16, they offered me a job at the museum and I continue to work there.
Today.
I'm also a member of our National Honor Society,
and I've been dancing at Hershey School dance since I was four years old.
My favorite kind of dance would have to be tap in my free time.
I love to paint.
Painting has always been a very relaxing hobby for me,
and I love using acrylics and bright colors to make landscapes.
Next year I will be attending the University of Vermont
as a psychology major, and I was accepted into their honors college
in the future, I want to be a clinical psychologist
and really change people's lives for the better.
In closing, I want to thank everybody that's gotten me to the place I am today.
I am so grateful, this amazing opportunity.
I hope everybody has a great night.
And our second suit in
the month is Eric Mason.
Hi, I'm Eric Mason.
I want to thank Hershey
Rotary Club for the wonderful honors this be recognized for this award.
I also want to thank Hershey Isaac administration and the teachers
for the recognition as well.
It truly is an honor.
I'd like to thank my parents, my partner, really Mason, as well
for the wonderful way in which they brought me out, teaching me
both the importance of
education and integrity.
A little bit of myself.
I come from a family of eight.
I have four older sisters and a brother.
Hobbies I'm interested in is.
I greatly enjoy the outdoors.
I like to fly fish, I like to hike.
I enjoy skiing.
And when I'm not too busy, I like to read as well.
It's a little bit about my school involvement and service and community
involvement would be that I'm currently a member of the Hershey volleyball team
and I was also involved the Hershey track team as well.
I'm a current member of the National Honor Society
and I was a member of Key Club, International Service based
her school as a freshman.
I also co-founded a club, the Rubik's Cube Club in this club in 1780
to meet with like minded students to collaborate on a skill and the talent
we all care
for, and also get the opportunity to teach those interested in learning
the talent of animals.
So excuse
me, opportunity to learn and teach those interested as well.
Service related involvement is that I have participated
the Boy Scouts of America through this organization, have been given countless
hours duties to serve in my community
and to the fellow scouts I worked with.
I also was involved in the youth group in my love of the church associated with.
Through that, I was able to be given other countless opportunities here as well.
Through my many opportunities to serve
some one of my favorite service projects I was involved in.
It was a
hygiene kit drive
for a local less fortunate homeless people in our area.
I enjoyed this service project because it was something that took a lot
more dedication and time wasn't something I was able to just do in an afternoon.
I took a time of
informing the community about the needs of which we were trying to remedy.
I included a collection of items that were donated and the organization
and such items.
I'd also included going to downtown daily Bread, where we were able to distribute
the hygiene kits that we were giving out to
those in need of such kits.
A little bit about my future plans is right out of high school.
I'm planning to serve a two year proselytizing service
mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
These missions are randomly assigned to anywhere
in the world speaking any language in the world as well.
I'm currently waiting on my call.
I should be hopefully in the next week.
So I'm excited for that and looking for a time to serve in that manner
for the next two years, after which I plan
to attend Brigham Young University at Brigham Young University.
I plan to study mechanical engineering
with the intention of taking pre-med requisite
so I can ultimately go to medical school once I essentially undergrad.
Once again, I want to thank everyone that recognized me for Sue in the month.
It truly is an honor and it's good to know that people recognize hard
to put into both my academics and in to serve my community as well.
Well,
thank you and congratulations to all to both students.
Moving on now to item
two D on the agenda, President Communications.
I would like to announce that the board met in executive session prior
to this meeting to discuss matters of personnel
and consultation with attorney or other professional advisors.
Item e Recognitions of citizens Agenda items.
This is an opportunity for residents and taxpayers
to address the board on matters related to the agenda.
Those who speak, if present, are asked to come to the microphone
and state your name and address.
For the record,
those who are attending virtually are asked to raise your virtual hand.
In order to be recognized, you must have your first
and last name typed into the livestream registration.
Once recognized and unmuted, please state your name and address
for the record to provide other residents with an opportunity to speak.
Each speaker during the public comment portion is limited to 5 minutes
of speaking time Once recognized and limited to one opportunity
to address the board during each of the public comment periods.
If necessary, the board may set a maximum time
for the public comment portion of any meeting.
This portion of the board meeting
is for comments to the board as not a question and answer period.
Those wishing to present private concerns or questions needing follow up
outside of the board meeting
may go to the district website and submit a community correspondence.
And as we had done in the past couple meetings, we'll put a 40 minute cap
on this and 45 minute cap at the end as necessary.
Are there any residents or taxpayers who would like to comment at this time?
Anyone here in the room?
So we will go over to virtual
any participants virtually, who would like to speak.
Mr. President.
There are three virtual attendees.
First up, John Miller.
You have been admitted.
Mr. MILLER.
Well, thank you, everybody, for taking my
comments this evening.
I appreciate it. Appreciate your time. So I'll make this quick.
There's really three main points.
I just wanted to
bring to your attention.
Number one, I would I would ask that Derry Township School
District released a comprehensive empirical justification for the decisions
you've made to this point.
To be completely honest with you.
I don't think you could.
I don't think you could, based off of what I'm hearing.
It's unacceptable.
For example, what are case numbers
here?
Well, there's elevated tests.
We have to case numbers.
It's the PCR technology
which the inventor of the technology, Kerry Mullins,
He said this is not the right test to, to check for a virus.
It's, it's, it's, it's flagging yes or no presence, No presence, and it's
running at levels that
are exceeding what typical board
reviewed, peer reviewed
research would allow for.
So what that means, it's going to flag cases
of a coronavirus, not even COVID 19.
A coronavirus. Okay,
look it up.
I'm again, I'm challenging you to present
empirical justification for the decisions you've made to this point.
Are mass safe.
And I'm hearing.
We're not going to have gym class.
We're going to keep our.
We're going to keep our heart rates down in gym class.
We can wear we come on.
What world you guys live in this?
It's ridiculous.
At Stanford NIH website,
Stanford published a paper, Psychological physiological effects
of wearing face masks and the potential health effects.
I would take a look at that.
You're looking at a whole lot.
Situations, conditions, what it's going to exhibit.
Fight or flight?
It's going to exhibit elevated cortisol levels.
Okay.
You are creating an uninspiring environment of fear.
No one is going to learn in that environment.
Nobody. And for example,
government reporting discrepancies.
All right, Dr.
Winslow, you just admitted that there's discrepancies on
on the site on Department of Health, and you're just hoping
somebody straightens it out or, you know, that's unacceptable.
As educators, I expect that you should be partnering
with local and regional experts and you should push back
against regulators through your own use of empirical evidence.
It's out there.
You have the world's encyclopedia in your pocket.
Use it.
All right.
And with all due respect,
if anybody on the board does not have a scientific background,
you should really expand your knowledge base because the decisions
you're making or they're impacting thousands of people for years to come.
We don't know what what the impact of this is going to be.
All right.
Number two.
I'm honestly I'm.
Very disappointed that Derry Township School District
is not going to have any
caution to the vaccine
in high school for the high school students.
This is this is an experimental vaccine
that got pushed through with emergency use authorization.
It's m RNA technology.
And the Pfizer vaccine in particular has for anybody
that's considering this or has not done the research, you can go on CDCR gov
and take a look because if anybody
has experienced anaphylaxis in the past or if you have allergies that that trigger
anaphylaxis, you definitely want to do some research.
Okay. That's all I'm saying.
And that's the least that you could do is put that forward
because we don't know what there is no long
term studies have been done with this technology. All right.
This isn't learned immunity.
It's not a regular vaccine.
And third, we have some elections coming up.
I think it's May 18th.
I would urge everybody again to take a look at the candidates.
I can tell you, I've done some research.
Again, I'm a registered independent, so I don't have a horse in the race here.
But just looking at the candidates, there's one I'm seeing tweets.
I'm seeing social media posts on one side of fear.
Fear and division. Discuss 30 seconds.
Absolutely disgusting.
We need solutions.
And if a school district model can't it,
there are other.
Options. Look into the wall.
Do some research.
But I would say that we'd be better off having the students
that do steam lead this school than than what we're hearing from you guys.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Morgan. You tell us your ideas for the recording.
And I know I know you're for sure. Sure.
329 Coco Avenue.
Thank you.
Good.
Up next,
next, Mr.
President, is Edward Brooks. Mr. Brooks.
Mike has been a muted
Mr. Brooks.
Hey. Yeah.
Hello?
Can you hear me? Yes.
So, Edward Brooks, I live at 1740 East Caracas Avenue.
I have four children, one Almajiri, two.
Male school and one in high school.
I've spoken these means before.
And while I was encouraged that.
The amount of forward.
Thinking I have heard from this meeting has been far better than previously.
So I want to give credit to the board where credit is due.
But to echo the previous speaker, the fact that anyone
seriously proposed that the six foot rule is, even
in the option a thought like a
an intelligent thought at all, is laughable and ridiculous.
First of all, multiple states have.
Issued these rules, issued masks, and they're.
Doing great.
They're doing far better than we are on caseload and deaths.
Secondly, there is no real.
Risk to our children, and that's per the CDC
analysis of fatality rates of this virus.
So the precautions taking and the bootlegging that I'm seeing in the school.
Board for abject what is the state.
Telling? And we can't even tell.
Mr. BROOKS. This is Mr.
Zenas Lister.
I'm going to ask that you be respectful in your comments.
Fair enough.
I feel that there is an impetus
upon the members of the board to the community, above the state,
and to the science that has been generated
by multiple institutions like mittee
on the restrictions of six feet
or just the raw numbers of states
that have gone past our current mitigation measures
and are doing better versus ourselves who are not as doing as well.
The fact that we're doing social distancing and masks
and then mask quarantining whenever a student is.
Exposed.
Shows that there's no faith in the masks and the social distancing
in the first place.
There's just
a logical inconsistency to all of this that is alarming.
And I think the school board needs, to do some deep.
Soul searching. On.
Who they work for and what their job.
Is, and it is not to enforce.
The state's.
Edicts, it's to educate our children.
Multiple other schools around us, lower dolphin, notably.
But many other counties have figured this out and are already in-person
five days a week.
Hearing that
the fact that we haven't figured that out yet is shameful.
Just shameful.
I want you to do better.
And I imagine we're going to sell this. Bye.
Thank you.
Next,
next, we have katherine bearse.
Katherine, you have been unmuted
now. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can. Okay.
My name is Katherine versus Burris.
And sort. Of
I have some.
Feedback here.
What's worse is.
I live at 163 high point.
Drives and hummelstown.
Thank you for giving me an opportunity
to speak at the
We're.
Having a hard time hearing it and am
I can't hear anything.
Of it now.
I still can't hear you.
I'm under two names,
so I'm wondering if she needs to mute the other one entirely so that.
I could get.
Will give you a It looks like.
She dropped off. Drop off that.
She should drop off.
Okay. Is there anybody else in the queue?
No, Mr.
President, there is no one currently with their hand raised just.
For fairness, can you unmute her on the other one?
Because she had to.
Yeah. Now her hands raised. Yep. Okay.
Katherine, you've been unmuted.
You were able to get my address.
Here we go.
Yes. Okay.
All right. I'm
addressing the board today because I strongly oppose the COVID
19 vaccine clinic that you have arranged for this Friday.
And I ask that it be canceled.
The district states,
in their messages to the parents
that this is for convenience to families.
And I find that
this rationale is extremely weak,
especially since there are multiple places to get the vaccine throughout the town,
including one that is about two blocks away from the school
that I pass all the time.
Just because
we are in the phase where 16 and 17 year old
children can get the COVID vaccine does not mean that it is okay.
This vaccine is highly controversial
and there are many concerns regarding its safety
that are being censored heavily on the Internet every day.
Some things
include the VRS data,
which is the vaccine Adverse Event Reporting system
has reported already 31.
86 that have died.
From these vaccines and 1200 permanent disabilities.
This age group.
Does excellent.
Recovery from COVID illness.
And there is.
Great concern and the unknown long term adverse.
Effects.
Of this vaccine, especially on young people.
So I think it is very inappropriate for you to be having a clinic
in a school setting. For this age group.
Additionally, I have reviewed the.
Informed consent.
From the Hershey Pharmacy
and it is missing a lot. Of.
Which to me seems very concerning from all legal aspects.
For the school.
It does not state in the informed consent anything about that.
The person that is receiving the vaccine is part of an experiment.
It does not explain what emergency use authorization. Is.
It does not talk about any of the long
term adverse reactions and what to look for does not talk about.
Who to contact if adverse reactions occur.
Weeks or months after the vaccine.
It does not talk about contacting
their vaccine adverse event reporting system.
It's pretty pathetic. Of.
Informed consent and
I think that should be looked into
before you offer a vaccine clinic at the school.
So I would ask that you cancel this clinic this week.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Yes, President. There are two more.
Michelle DAVIES, You have been unmuted.
Thank you.
Michelle DAVIES 1524 Church Road, Hershey.
I wanted to speak pertaining
to next year's return plan.
By the start of next fall, teachers and staff
that wanted the vaccine will have been able to get it.
That being said, if masks are no longer mandated by the state,
which they shouldn't be anymore, get the mask off.
Our children.
You have said that you are really focusing
on social emotional impacts and learning.
With them.
And with masks on every face.
It is so difficult for elementary students to learn how others are feeling
and for teachers to see if they're struggling.
This needs to be
part of the plan for a full return next fall.
The youngest of our students are not
spreading COVID per the science.
Please get the mask off our kids.
Thank you.
Next next is Angela Wieder.
Angela, your mike has been muted.
Thank you very much.
Angela Wieder, 1778 appeared
like Ed Brooke said earlier, You know, I appreciate the efforts
and stuff went into putting together the presentation
for the reopening plan in the fall.
While it was being presented, I actually had my children in the room,
Grade six and nine, and they were the ones to remark to me,
Mom, we're already doing these things,
you know, And I know that they're not privy
to everything that goes on behind the scenes,
but I just thought it was an interesting perspective from the actual students
where middle school and high school that maybe there's not going to be much
different in the fall.
And I thought that was an interesting perspective from a student.
More importantly, I guess I'm
just still wondering when will the accountability
be taken for the lack of planning up until this point?
I think that's what many of us are missing.
Who's Going to own up to the lack of action
up until now, this plan is great for the fall,
but if it's still not, if it's so similar to what's happening right now
and it's kind of not working for
what, up to 27% of the student body that chose to come back,
how is this really going to be sustainable for the fall?
Additionally, another question I had is I haven't heard
and in fact I've done a lot of asking around about asking other school districts
and involving other school districts and asking them,
What are you doing that's working?
It seems to be working better than Hershey and why aren't we consulting
with our area school districts and and kind of not starting
to reinvent the wheel constantly and starting over and spinning our wheels.
So, you know, I'm just going to end with the idea again.
Like I said, from the perspective of some students here just in my own home,
you know, they don't see next fall
looking much different than what it's looking right now.
And although I appreciate the plans and, you know, there's no no guarantees
and I get that, you know, we're kind of working still on some uncertain times.
There's so many answers that are already on the table
that other school districts have answered and we refuse to to accept them.
And thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Next.
There are no more virtual hand.
No more virtual handshake.
Moving on to standing committee report,
Finance Committee met today.
Ms.. Drew, do you have a report?
Yes, Mr.
Abell, I do.
One second to go back to.
Okay.
The Finance Committee met today, and our first item
was reviewing the 2122 budget update.
If you'll recall, the last
Finance Committee report, the Finance Committee have requested
that the proposed budget not move to the full board until we had time to review
it. One more time here in committee, which we did today.
And it has now been approved by the Finance Committee to move to
the full board for proposed budget review at the May 10th meeting.
A couple of items of note that the Finance
Committee requested as it was previously mentioned.
Field trips had been taken out of the budget for next year.
We asked for a detailed breakdown and reviewed those today
and felt that it was important to add those back into the budget.
Understanding that with
COVID restrictions and mitigation efforts
continuing to remain in place, that the field trips are not guaranteed.
But we wanted to make sure that there were funds allocated for those.
Should we be able to make them happen in any possible way.
We also requested that the estimated amusement tax revenue
that was projected be reduced just to a mark
what we felt was a more conservative level to make sure that we are approaching,
you know this as conservatively and realistically as possible.
There were some increases to expenses
and with stimulus funding and other cost
measures in place,
I am happy to report that the proposed budget is
not projected to have a deficit.
There will be no tax increase and we will hear all of the details
at the full board meeting.
One other important item to note is that we provided
an update on the payment that we receive in lieu of taxes
from for the giant center
through the ICD financing and continue
have that on our radar as they continue to project
additional years without being able to satisfy those payments.
We also had a stimulus funding update.
We've reviewed this a few times now, but we've received more information.
The first round of funding we received of $480,000 was spent
last fall for getting back to school and safety precautions.
The second round that was approved in December,
we will be receiving and that will be applied
to our 2122 budget to help balance that budget.
And that is $2.2 million.
And then the third round that was most recently approved,
we are anticipating to have an allocation of $4.5 million.
We have been awaiting guidance on how those funds are able to be used.
20% must address learning loss, which is approximately $900,000.
The rest, or 3.6 million,
would fall into one of 18 categories that able to apply
for use of those funds.
They all must be spent by September 30th, 2024,
and it will be where we're able to submit
through the grants program
to outline and show what
the use of those funds are going to be so that they can come back.
So those funds will be able to help us through the
the 2223 budget year as well.
We also reviewed some pieces of information
just to have a better understanding of that.
But we will hear an in-depth budget proposal at the next board meeting.
And that concludes my report.
Thank you.
Any questions for the Finance Committee?
Moving on, Student Representatives report. Mr.
Bordo and Ms.. Lewis, do you have a report.
Mr.. BRINDISI Oh. Mr.
PADAYACHEE Oh, that was a last minute change of plan up here. Mr.
Desai or Ms..
Lewis, do you have a student from Student Representative?
Mr. Producing.
Hey, Mr.
Ball. Mr. Friday. You have a. Report?
Yes, we do.
I apologize for the confusion.
Ms.. Lewis was having some some technical difficulties,
so I'll be taking over for her tonight.
We'd like to start out.
Let me get my document up here.
I apologize.
I'd like to start out by
notifying about the outdoor band
concert on May 20th at the high school.
We'll be enforcing proper social distancing protocol.
This past weekend was many saw on the many fine
event over the two of the both the in-person, the virtual event.
Hershey High School has raised over $16,000.
Some activities included for the virtual session
Minecraft among us virtual escape room, Zumba, cooking lessons.
And during the in-person session, they took part in a luminary walk and.
Student Elliott style Break spoke spoke to the attendees.
Hershey won
an award of merit at the National High School Model U.N.
Virtual Conference for group members who achieved high ranking
positions in committee committee sessions.
And, yes, similar to the model U.N.
Conference, Youth in Government held a similar statewide level convention
where students were able to run for different positions as well as present
what they had been working on throughout the year.
Soon, 23 Hershey students actually recognized
for the work that they did, whether it be bills,
if they're in the legislative branch or they wrote briefs as judicial members
and as well as the other three major statewide position elections.
They were won by Hershey students,
a use firm is a speaker of the House for legislative
and more is in this year is the youth governor of Pennsylvania,
which is very huge and rare to see our Hershey delegate win that sort of role.
He'll oversee
nearly 100 delegates as they
meet usually at the Capitol in a regular year, and also shared
with one chief justice who she oversees the judicial branch now for the state.
And I understand the last meeting to discuss
some senior events but I'd just like to solidify that.
May 14th is a parent organized senior picnic at Schenck Park.
So that's a special group of parents that organized this for us seniors.
And we will be able to get together in sort of a more informal
setting and have food and enjoy the night.
So hopefully there's good weather for that.
And we can confirm that May 26th
for graduation will be at the giant center.
And there's some more hopeful details to come with that.
But it's looking like it's going to be a very,
I guess you could say, regular graduation.
So we'll keep that regular feel and be able to walk this stage and
other festivities like that.
So that's all we had prepared.
Thank you.
Anticipated agenda items for the next board of directors meeting.
The following items will be on the agenda for May 10th, 2021.
Public Board of Directors Meeting Approval April 26, 2020.
Board of Directors Summary Minutes
here New Agreement for School Way Special Education Services
Course Proposal Elementary Health and Personnel Moving US two one, two, 343.
Unfinished Business.
Mr. McFarlane.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I just wanted to give the board a quick update on where we are with
those that wanted to come back four days a week
at both the middle school and high school and those that are currently virtual.
So at the middle school level,
we currently have about 29%
of the student body is back four or five days.
It's 157 students Out of the 828,
we have 442 students who are still in the two day
hybrid at the middle school and 229 that are still fully virtual.
Just to give you an idea there at the middle school, in
beginning of March, there were 65% that were total in-person,
the hybrid four or five days, it's now at 72%
at the high school.
They have 426 students
that are back four days a week.
24 students are back five days a week,
and they have about 135
each day A or B that are back two days a week.
So it's a total of 265, two days a week,
426 day a week and 24 or five day a week.
They still have 460 students who are virtual at
the high school have chosen to stay virtual.
That's just to give you an update on on where that all all the work that went into
making that change and where it where it ended up.
Thank you and any questions about that data or unfinished business.
Thank you.
Moving on to item number four and our agenda consent agenda items.
The consent agenda contains routinely adopted items and items
that normally do not require public deliberations of the part of the board.
Our board member may pool items
which will then be discussed and voted on separately.
May I have a motion to approve the consent agenda items as listed?
Some of Cathy Secker Second, Lyndsey.
Is there any discussion?
This is a standard voice vote.
All those in favor signify by saying I
anyone opposed motion carries.
I will take us on item number five, New Business
SBA Policy Maintenance Program Agreement.
Mr. McFarland.
Thank you.
The administration recommends the board
approve the SBA Policy Maintenance Program Participation Agreement.
Now, the motion to approve the SBA Policy
Maintenance Program Participation Agreement so moved.
Maria me second. Cathy Decker.
Is there any discussion?
I just had a question a while back and I just forget
so somebody can refresh memory.
I thought we had explored the idea of possibly adding the administrative regulation
program participation to this
agreement, and I just don't recall what became of that discussion.
That we do that in any form
or that we just getting the policy.
Turn on have the answer to that question.
I can get it for you.
What was this question?
It's about the administrative regulations piece.
I think that it doesn't it?
Well, my understanding is that it
provides a policy maintenance
department for us, but
administrative regulations are something that we produce.
They might provide
a format for that, and that's that Mr.
Rife Strider was trying to work through.
But I think that given this year, that was something
that sort of got pushed back and that process.
But that's something that's still sort of on the
in the Q on Policy Committee.
But it says in the part in this agreement that IT policy guides
and administrative regulation templates. Yeah, it's a template.
You get access to policy and administration guideline template. So
I think we already have access to that.
Now this is just the.
Templates not to give the regulations.
We have to come up with those.
Okay. Thank you.
Any other discussion about that motion?
This is a standard voice vote.
All those in favor signify by saying. I.
And one opposed motion carries
approval of the athletic trainer services.
Mr. Macfarlane.
Thank you.
The administration recommends the board approved Drayer
physical therapy Institute to provide athletic trainer services
for the period of July one, 2021, through June 30th of 2024,
at a cost of $42,500
for the 2122 school year, 43,770
$775 for the 2223 school year
and $45,088 for the 2324 school year.
Thank you.
May have the motion to approve the Drayer Physical Therapy
Institute to provide the athletic trainer services.
Some of Lindsey.
Drew, is there is there a second.
Second. Second.
As many is there any discussion?
I just have a question with this contract reviewed by our solicitor.
Yes, it was okay. Were there any concerns?
There were some revisions made and submitted, but generally, no.
Okay. Thank you.
This is Tricia Steiner.
Mr. Abel, I have a couple of questions. Sure.
About on page four items, if through I when it talks
about sort of advertising their company within our district,
one thing about our current athletic trainers,
you know,
they wore Hershey High School or not Hershey High School, but they wore Hershey
shirts they were really integrated into our community.
So much so that, you know, I think it came as a surprise
to many that they were actually not
district employees.
And I know that, you know, and that's a testament to,
you know, to that company and how beloved they were, the community.
I know that they will be missed. I just want to take that opportunity to
let that be known, that
these athletic trainers that we currently had
were really well loved by the students and staff,
even though I know it wasn't our decision or their decision for this separation.
But my concern was that you know, with this new company,
you know, there there's in the contract to have a sign or banner place
to have a complimentary full page ad in any of the athletic programs,
to have a spot on the district website
and to make announcements
over a public address system during any athletic events.
And so I'm just I'm just wondering,
you know, are they going to be wearing our Hershey skirt shirts?
Are they going to be wearing a Draper Physical Therapy Institute shirts?
Are they really going to be sort of like this outside
presence
within our community that sort of coming in
and advertising in this advertising?
Will it be approved by the school board
before they just slap up a giant banner
and they go off of what Tricia is saying is that like common
practice across the board, I mean, we're already paying them.
So now if we're doing like marketing for them, it just kind of seems, I don't know.
Is that. Typical?
And maybe these are questions for for for Mr.
Governance.
And I yeah, you know we didn't have privy to the
the specific contract prior to this that.
That was just
I don't know if I can just shed some light from the Finance Committee perspective.
I can't speak to what the marketing practices, you know, have been,
but I believe that there has
some language like that regarding the,
you know, banners or whatnot
on the athletic fields in the past.
The reason all of this actually came about was because of asbestos health.
Our current provider
let us know that they can't provide the services anymore after this year.
So the separation was actually on their doing
just to the contrary of
you had indicated that
it was not there, you know, that this was being done
kind of that they didn't want it to be done, but
they let us know that they were ending services
so they could no longer provide it.
And there was also because there was an expectation of referrals
for that that they weren't receiving the qualified referrals.
So from this perspective, you know, we went out to the RFP
and reviewed this at length, discuss versus bringing folks in house
and hiring an athletic trainer versus using dryer.
Ultimately, Dreyer's quote was significantly,
we were saving money on the current contract, but we also now have a
athletic
trainer that I think will be very integrated
that provide services in the area and actually allows the district
to work with them
on the hiring of the athletic trainer who will be dedicated for Derry Township.
So I think that all of those
will allow for there to be great,
you know, synergy and representation in our community.
And just to clarify about the the sign in the banner,
it says Artwork and signed banner design will be approved
provided by the provider and approved by the school district.
So I have seen banners of previous physical therapists put up at like B
the 322 turf, so I'm sure it can't be like 20 by 20.
It has to be.
Right and it also has to the ordinances of Derry Township, which.
Yeah. There are specific.
And then the other G is provide a full page
added and complimentary high school athletic programs.
I know football might be the only one that hands out
a program at every game other than like senior night.
We have a but there aren't a lot of athletic programs.
They give you something every game.
And we had used Drayer in the past.
So as far as the the shirts, I can check on that.
I don't know the answer to that, but I can check with Mr..
GOVER. All right.
I and yeah, and I don't mean to Ms..
Speak.
I meant that, you know, the
I know I wasn't arguing that that did it.
I just meant like some of the individual trainers
I know were a little bit, you know, like are going to miss us that's all.
Just as much as we're going to miss them so and so.
I know it's just sort of a it's a bittersweet separation for for our kids
that that really love the trainer.
So I just wanted to just add that.
But thank you
and thank you to the finance company for looking at that so thoroughly.
And this is Judy.
Have a strict thank you, Lindsay, for clarifying
just so the community is aware of, you know, how this contract came about
and why we are voting on this, Because I think that's an important piece.
They might not realize what happened with the past trainers.
So thank you. Thanks.
And if anyone does have questions or would want to hear about this,
there was extensive conversation in the February and the March Finance
Committee meetings, which the full audio recordings are available online.
Any other discussion on this?
A motion has been made in second.
All right.
This is a state of voice vote.
All those in favor signify by saying, Oh.
Hi. Hi.
Anyone opposed?
Motion carries approval of comply agreement.
Mr. McFarland.
Thank you.
The administration recommends the board approve the Comply agreement with Edu Link
and the Derry Township School District, replacing the current CAIR program
named 48 carrots that is no longer being supported.
And the motion to approve the approval of the comply agreement with EDU and.
So move.
Donna Cronan Second Maria Mimi.
Is there any discussion?
This is a standard voice vote.
All those in favor signify by saying. I.
Oppose Motion carries Approval of Affiliation Agreement.
Mr. McFarlane
The administration recommends the Approve the Affiliation Agreement
with Derry Township School District and Wilson College, effective April 26,
2021.
We have a motion to approve the affiliation, agreeing with the Motion College.
So move to marry me.
Second. Cathy Secker.
Thank. You. Is there any discussion
sustained of voice vote all those in favor signify by saying I, i i.
Anyone opposed.
Motion carries approval of flexible instruction date application.
Mr. McFall.
The administration recommends the Board approve the application for flexible
instructional days.
They have a motion to approve the application for flexibility of action.
Doing so moved Maria May 2nd.
Cathy Secor Is there any discussion?
There's a standard voiced on all those in favor signify
by saying I. I.
Moving on to item F personnel resignations,
may I have a motion to approve the personnel resignations?
So moved Nancy Drew Sackett Maria me.
Is there any discussion?
I want to congratulate these individuals on their retirement and reiterate Dr.
Winslow's comment earlier that we desperately need bus drivers.
And further discussion.
This is a standard voice vote.
All those in favor signify by saying hi. By.
Motion carries personnel.
General Mr. McFarland.
The administration recommends
the approval of the listed personnel and recognition of any listed transfers.
Have a motion to approve the listed personnel and recognition
of any transfers.
So move Maria Mimi.
To. Second. Donna Cronan.
Ms.. Drew, is there any discussion?
This is standard voice vote.
All those in favor signify by saying.
I. Oppose Motion carries
delegate reports, Dolphin County Technical School.
The report is attached.
Mr. or Ms..
Haverstraw, do you have anything to add? I.
I did send the board the name of the Facebook group
that the Dauphin County Career and Technical School
is renovating a house in Harrisburg that was damaged by fire.
It was purchased, but then the amount the purchase was donated back.
So it was it was a very nice donation.
I know I saw on Pennlive that Governor Wolf visited
the school this week, so there was some press around it.
It's Just a really cool project.
If you have a chance to look on Facebook, they post photos every day and then
if you could, you know, read the article on Pennlive about what the is doing.
Thank you.
Anything else further?
I just wanted to comment.
I attended the Joint Board meeting
for the first time and I was pleased to see that Derry Township actually
had the most representation by board members on the drawing board calls.
So it was great to see so much involvement, but thank you to Mrs.
Harris, Dick and Mrs.
Dicker, because those happen the same week as our board meetings
and it is a full other board meeting night that is similar to this.
So I fully realized just how much additional responsibility
and work that is.
And they're doing really amazing things at the technical school
and would encourage folks to make sure that they're aware of that.
Thank you.
It's a very fun board to be on, but it is a it's a huge commitment of time.
The CIA
report is attachments on or do you have anything to add?
Yes, I'm sorry, but I just wanted to point out on the board,
especially for anyone that's listening.
If you click under under Dr.
Andrea, you're executive director.
There's hyperlink where it says, Click here for more information on the WITF.
Ready, set music.
And on that website, there's a bunch of different songs that have been
put together by Mr.
Music and his colleagues
who who have this program called Peace Speech.
And they use social emotional learning components and put it to music.
And so and we had the pleasure at our last for many on,
on Thursday of having Mr.
Music and Bob Wells come along with a group of students from the Hilltop
Academy and, they all had these little they each had their own drum
and they knew all the songs and they were singing them.
And it was just it was just so, like, heartwarming and wonderful
to see these kids participate and actively engage
and sing songs about, you know, like being their best and using movement
and music to help inspire them to to be their best selves.
And, you know, you Yes, the question, you know,
what is what is peace beats mean and where does peace beats live
And the kids are like in your heart it lives in your heart.
And so it was just really inspiring.
And I encourage parents, especially of elementary school age kids,
to go check out this WITF ready set music because his songs are on there.
And it's actually there are several videos
by other artists.
So there's like different styles of music, but to the same words.
And and there's also little lesson plans that you can even follow along at home.
So it was just wonderful.
Another great thing that the IEEE is doing with with our kids in the area.
Thank you.
The SBA report is attached. Dr.
Curran do you have anything to add?
I'll just point out two of the four topics that are included
just to highlight them for board interest.
One was that the House passes legislation to provide
temporary grant of immunity from COVID 19,
and there's also recommendations from the PD
and the Department of Health on school reopening.
That, of course, would be very interesting and helpful.
That's it. Thank You.
Item number seven, special reports Board members report.
Are there any board members who would like to give a report at this time?
Yes. Ma'am.
I actually I don't have a report per se, but I do want to make a comment
because I know I've been hearing a lot of
talk about the vaccine
and certainly appreciate
both Mr.
Miller and make sure I get it right, Mrs.
Berry's comments.
But I do want to make it clear that this is a choice.
There's no mandate
for folks to receive the vaccine if they're a high school student.
I personally am appreciative of the school providing it as an option
because some places it's harder to get into than others for for for vaccines.
And it totally is up to the families.
Some families may choose to not have their students get vaccines.
Others may choose them regardless of the fact that it is
an emergency use approval by the FDA.
It still is something that I think is important
for families and individuals to have that that personal choice.
And also because I have been vaccinated myself, I that once you do get vaccinated,
you are informed, at least at my site, of what the adverse event reporting is.
So although it may not be in the informed consent, I personally did not read
because we're not we've already gotten our vaccines.
But once you do get the vaccine, you're given the lot number
and you're given the information about vaccine you received.
And you are not only given information on adverse events, but you are
plugged into a mobile app that I am still three weeks out of my second dose.
I'm still getting updates from me to report what I'm feeling and what symptoms.
So so just want to make it clear that even though it may not be in that informed
consent, there is very good monitoring
if folks comply with
with the able to report adverse events with the vaccine data is important.
So collecting that data is critical.
And then also I wanted to comment regarding some of the comments
that both Mr.
Brooks and I believe Ms..
DAVIES responded about, you know, what about
what the plan is in terms of masks or whatever.
And I just want to remind folks that we do a COVID task force.
And I certainly want to implore that our task task force stays very active.
And they're the that's the group that is engaging with the various authorities.
They're reading up on the data.
I know there are physicians that are on that.
I just ask that we continue to keep that task force active.
I that early on it hadn't met very often, which I was very disappointed in.
But I know there are community members such as those that spoke tonight,
really want to make sure that we're following guidelines.
And I just know just want to make sure that we as a district
are utilizing the experts, not only that are on the committee
from within the district, but from without,
from outside the district, I'm sorry, from the school itself.
But the community members
that are experts on that community have a voice so that we are making
decisions based on data and the data that's the most recent.
So that's that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Thank you. Dr. Cronan, any other board member reports
a superintendent?
Freeport McFarland I have no report.
Thank you for the report.
I just wanted to thank everyone for participating in the Spring
professional development retreat that we held last week on April 20th.
Narrowed to item number eight Recognition of Citizens.
This is an opportunity for residents and taxpayers to address
the board on matters related to the agenda or matters of district governance.
It's not on the agenda.
Those who speak are asked to follow the same guidelines outlined
at the initial public comment portion of our meeting.
Are there any residents and or taxpayers that would like to comment
at this time
any that no one is here present in the room?
Anyone there?
Virtually, Mr. President.
There are no virtual hands at the. Output.
Thank you, sir.
Is there anything else for the good of the order?
If not,
item number nine adjournment, The next public Board of Directors
meeting will be held May 10th, 21, starting at 7:00 PM.
Please refer to the district website for the location as the meeting draws closer.
Now the motion to adjourn this meeting.
So we have Lyndsey Drew second Secretary.
Thank you.
All those in favor signify by saying. I.
Oppose motion carries.
Meeting adjourned at 920 sharp.