In his weekly email, Superintendent Marseille shared two items that will be on the WSSD Board’s meeting agenda this week. But before we get to that, I want to note that the agendas for the most recent committee meetings have now been posted to Board Docs! This is a good step forward for the district, and makes it much easier for us to follow what’s happening in the district. The first major items on Monday’s agenda are the proposed calendars for the next two school years.

Please join me at the December 13th regular board meeting where the administration will present two proposals for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 calendar. For the 2022-2023 calendar, the board will be asked to take action on a proposed pre- or post-Labor Day start, and for the 2023-2024 school calendar, a pre-Labor Day start. Calendar proposal information can be accessed here.

You can find the proposed calendars on the district’s website. It appears the primary difference between the pre and post Labor Day calendars trade the week before Labor Day for a week in June.

• Proposed pre-Labor Day start for 22-23.
• Proposed post-Labor Day start for 22-23
• Proposed pre-Labor Day start for 23-24

The calendar does not include any recognition of further religious holidays. See the previous post for information about a petition. I also note that the list of holidays the district has taken from the ADL includes many non-religious holidays, but does not include holidays from several significant religions like Shinto and Wicca. When Swarthmore College’s Interfaith Council had this same discussion a while ago, I believe we looked at Princeton’s calendar, which seems more comprehensive including Shinto, Jain, Pagan and Wiccan holidays. The district should reconsider approving two calendar years when it appears they do not yet fully understand the lack of inclusion for minority religious communities. It is good to see though that these calendars give students off each Election Day. In past years, school was sometimes held on primary Election Days, resulting in precincts having to move from building to building.

The other major item in Superintendent Marseille’s email regards the school safety plan. Last week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the governor’s mask mandate in schools. Without the mandate, masking policy reverts to individual school district’s safety plans. Current WSSD policy imposes mask mandates as long as certain metrics are met – which they have been since the start of school. Thursday alone was the 7th largest daily number of Covid cases in DelCo since the pandemic began, so cases are not even trending towards meeting those metrics. Superintendent Marseille is calling for an end to the mask mandate in WSSD schools.

In addition, I will be sharing information about the Health & Safety Plan, specifically my recommendation to begin using district-level incident rates related to individual building numbers, in lieu of county-wide data, to develop a plan that would allow the district to move to a K-12 mask-optional model effective February 7, 2022.

The superintendent seems to want to provide a sense of certainty for the district with a clear plan. Given current conditions, this is likely a bad time for such long term plans. Just the day before the DelCo Times ran with a story about the dire condition of local medical facilities as cases continue to spike. Omicron has arrived in the US, and research into the protection from Omicron offered by current vaccines is still in the early stages. With the state’s masking order ending immediately, we will soon have an unfortunate experiment where we find out what happens in districts that enact the superintendent’s proposed policy. As I wrote earlier this year, the previous examples did not provide a great deal of optimism, and another month seems likely to yield useful guidance. Vaccination rates among school children remain lower than what is needed for herd immunity so there’s little reason to expect spread of the highly contagious Delta and Omicron variants will be limited without mitigation measures. Other school districts in the state are now sending out letters immediately ending mask mandates – effective Monday. This is something that can be done almost overnight. Its not clear why the district feels a need to commit to a three month lead time under such unstable conditions for a policy that can be implemented so quickly when they feel its appropriate.

The superintendent’s entire email follows, for those that missed it.

Families,

I hope this letter finds you in good health and good spirits. I want to share with you some key pieces of information from this week. On Monday, December 6, we held the annual school board reorganization meeting. Congratulations to the recently re-elected and newly elected board members: Dr. David Grande, Kelly Wachtman, Wendy Voet, Mary Jo Witkowski-Smith, Kevin Henry, Nannette Whitsett, and Rachel Holbert. Please visit our website for more information about the appointed officers and committee assignments.

We sincerely appreciate the time, energy, and dedication of our board members, and I look forward to continuing the work ahead of us. Thank you for your commitment to supporting our students, staff, and community.

As a result of the restructuring and the newly designed configuration of committees, the board has moved to monthly regular board meetings. Please see the schedule here. In addition, each of our standing committees meet once a month and we encourage your participation and attendance there as well. The upcoming committee meetings are Facilities / Finance Committee on December 21 and Policy Committee on December 22. These will take place in Room B226 in SHMS at 7 p.m. Agendas will be posted on our website and on BoardDocs before the meeting.

Please join me at the December 13th regular board meeting where the administration will present two proposals for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 calendar. For the 2022-2023 calendar, the board will be asked to take action on a proposed pre- or post-Labor Day start, and for the 2023-2024 school calendar, a pre-Labor Day start. Calendar proposal information can be accessed here.

In addition, I will be sharing information about the Health & Safety Plan, specifically my recommendation to begin using district-level incident rates related to individual building numbers, in lieu of county-wide data, to develop a plan that would allow the district to move to a K-12 mask-optional model effective February 7, 2022.

Since the start of the calendar school year, our district incident rates has not risen above 3%. The district has faithfully adhered to mitigation strategies and has implemented test-to-stay procedures with success. We have upcoming vaccination clinics for children ages 5-11 on December 20 and January 12 to receive their first or second shot. A February 7 target date allows for the worst of the flu season to pass and transmission spikes from post-winter breaks to have subsided while giving families time to get fully vaccinated. I hope that you can join us for the meeting or you can tune in to the live stream.

This has been a very busy time of year with a lot of exciting things going on in WSSD. Our Strath Haven High School Hi-Q team recently hosted the first event of the season and defeated Chichester and the Academy of Notre Dame. The WES third grade team of teachers and staff received the 2021 Freedom Medal for Dedication to Education from the Delaware County Veterans Memorial Association. The SHHS football team made it all the way to the state championship semifinals, with both coaches and athletes setting records along the way. And Haven Cheer qualified two teams for the UCA National High School Cheerleading Championship in Florida in February.

As we continue to demonstrate in a myriad of ways in which we define excellence, the SHMS Fine and Applied Arts Winter Concert took place on Tuesday and Thursday, with the final event taking place on Tuesday. The music performed in the auditorium and the artwork in the hallway speaks to our students’ commitment and work ethic, and I was also reminded how powerful it is when individuals come together to create something beautiful. They could not accomplish this without their dedicated and passionate teachers.

Likewise, this past week, Dr. Mosakowski and I accompanied several SHHS students to the Equity Coalition Student Forum hosted by the DCIU. They have been meeting with other student leaders from around Delaware County on a monthly basis since last year to explore intersectionality in areas they care about: Race & Culture, Mental Health, LGBTQ+, Climate Change, and Art-ivism. Watching the students light up through their connections and sharing their voices was inspiring, and I am looking forward to the culminating event they will produce this spring. I am thankful for all of the experiences that allow our students to showcase their passions and skills.

Please enjoy the weekend and stay safe,

Wagner Marseille, Ed.D.