Episode 1 - Return to School Steering Committee Planning with Mr. Fred Peterson

SHOW TOPIC
Return to School Steering Committee Planning

SPECIAL GUEST
Mr. Fred Peterson, Seneca Valley Return to School Steering Committee (RSSC) Member

Mr. Fred Peterson and his family have lived in the Seneca Valley School District for over 20 years.
He and his wife, Cece, have two sons who are Seneca Valley graduates. Mr. Peterson serves on teh Seneca Valley School Board representing Cranberry Township West IV and West VI, Region 4.
Mr. Peterson earned a bachelor’s Degree from Tufts University outside Boston where he completed a double major in Sociology and Education. He later graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine with a master’s Degree in Public Health. Now retired, Mr. Peterson worked in emergency preparedness and public health and served as the Executive Director of the regional Emergency Medical Services Agency.
Most recently, he was also a highly valued and contributing member of the Seneca Valley Return to School Steering Committee, and he joins us today to share his insights on both the committee and COVID-19.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW
• The creation of the RSSC and related benefits of having people in the conversation vs. getting things done quickly with less input
• The evolution of the thinking and conversation from discreet topics to a systemwide view
• The realization that the school system reaches much further than its central mission of education
• The continuous evolution of knowledge about the disease and its multifactorial impacts
• The understandable and significant concerns school staff has/had about creating a safe and effective learning environment

USEFUL INFORMATION
www.svsd.net/ReturntoSchool
www.svsd.net/HealthSafetyPlan
www.svsd.net/RTSFAQs

Transcript

FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)  

Voices E1 Fred Peterson

File Name: Voices E1 Fred Peterson.mp3

File Length: 00:13:41

SPEAKERS

Int - Introduction

JK - Jeff Krakoff

FP - Fred Peterson
 

00:00:02:24 - 00:00:07:24

Introduction: Welcome to Voices, a Podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District.

00:00:10:06 - 00:00:33:00

Jeff Krakoff: I'm Jeff Krakoff here today with Fred Peterson who's part of the Seneca Valley Return to School Steering Committee. Fred, thanks for joining us. I know in addition to being part of this steering committee you've been in the district for a while. So tell me a little bit about your history and I believe that children who have gone through the district.

00:00:33:17 - 00:00:40:21

Fred Peterson: We do. My wife and I have two boys, both grown now, but they both went through pretty much their full twelve years at Seneca Valley.

00:00:41:04 - 00:00:56:12

Fred Peterson: And once they were done I've always been sort of interested in the school board job and once they were done I threw my hat in the ring and low and behold I got elected so I'm in the middle of my second term now. But six years on the school board.

00:00:56:28 - 00:01:33:02

Jeff Krakoff: OK. Well, it becomes obvious when I look at your bio why they would want you to be part of this steering committee. You earned your bachelor's degree from Tufts in sociology and education went on to earn a master's from Yale University in public health and before retiring a few years ago you were executive director of the Regional Emergency Medical Services Agency. So you've got the professional background the public health and education and you've been a parent in the district so you can see this from every perspective.

00:01:33:04 - 00:01:45:04

Jeff Krakoff: So tell me about the process. I understand there are more than 30 people involved in this steering committee. Give us an overview of what the process was like.

00:01:45:06 - 00:02:17:10

Fred Peterson: Sure. I will freely admit that I was flattered to be asked to serve on the school committee but once I found out there were 30 plus people I thought oh gee this is not going to be good. This is going to be a lot of sort of people talking over each other and whatnot. And I have to tell you, Jeff,  that the administration organized this process incredibly well and that organization was sort of tactically carried out by Dr.

00:02:17:12 - 00:02:44:12

Fred Peterson: Roberts and Dr. Palano so that every session we met Mondays and Wednesdays from 1 - 2:30 p.m. for I think six weeks and covered two components each meeting. And Dr. Roberts and Palano really guided us, led the discussions. I think everybody got to say what they wanted to say, but we didn't get sidetracked. They kept us really on task. So it was a good experience.

00:02:45:04 - 00:03:13:13

Jeff Krakoff: Yeah I know just watching around the Pittsburgh area and nationally a lot of school districts are struggling with what is our plan. A lot of districts are announcing very early this is what we're gonna do. Behold things change. Tell me about a little bit of the process of having all these people involved in the initial conversations vs. trying to get a solution quickly without all this input.

00:03:13:16 - 00:03:49:15

Fred Peterson: Sure. I give credit to the administration for having the patience to carry this out over multiple weeks. Each time we met we had as I mentioned before there were usually two components. So transportation and food services would be a dy and elementary curriculum and athletics would be another day so we would cover each of those in about an hour and then a half an hour for discussion and each session was guided by a series of questions, not statements not this is what we're gonna do.

00:03:49:17 - 00:04:04:18

Fred Peterson: Yes or no but here's an issue. Let's talk about it. And as I said the two facilitators did a great job of I think mining the thoughts and perspectives of everybody that participated. And it was a very

00:04:06:07 - 00:04:16:23

Fred Peterson: heterogeneous group. You know there are a lot of obviously skilled people but there were parents and their community representatives and there were two of us from the school board. So a lot of perspectives were represented.

00:04:17:09 - 00:04:41:14

Jeff Krakoff: OK, so you've got a lot of experts in different fields you mentioned everything from nutrition to different levels of school, to transportation. Tell us about the evolution from talking about very specific topics of interest and how you end up with something that could be implemented from a system-wide, school district-wide approach.

00:04:42:25 - 00:05:27:10

Fred Peterson: I think it's fair to say that like many of these kinds of things everybody came in with their little folder and you know their yellow line pad or their computer. And we're sort of parochially focused on their piece of the pie. And that's good because they were advocates for what they do every day. But it didn't take too terribly long. Just a few weeks into this process where I could really see from their school board perspective all these different people and all these different voices starting to work in sort of an inter-digitated fashion that now I was not just talking about my part but my parts impact on your part or how you could help me get my part to function better.

00:05:27:12 - 00:05:43:06

Fred Peterson: And I think by the time we were done we went from a series of sort of department-level conversations to a real whole-school concept of how we can best keep the kids safe get them back into school,

00:05:43:21 - 00:06:14:08

Fred Peterson: and quite frankly be cognizant of the fact that we've got hundreds of staff people; teachers, paraprofessionals, you know some maintenance people, the folks that work in the kitchens, all of these people too were sort of needed their needs needed to be recognized and their voices needed to be heard. So so again it went from I'm here to advocate for my piece to I'm here to make this whole system work

00:06:14:10 - 00:06:16:09

Fred Peterson: as one. It was a great experience.

00:06:17:00 - 00:06:38:23

Jeff Krakoff: It had to have been. So well let's talk a little bit about when people think of a school district they think of hey our primary issue is education. But as we know a school district is such a vital part of the fabric of the community. What kind of conversations were there about the school system outside of just the mission of educating kids.

00:06:38:25 - 00:07:15:13

Fred Peterson: Sure. I'm a list maker. I have to organize my life around sort of longitudinal logic. And after a couple of weeks into this I I came to think of three big chunks in this process. The obvious one was our essential mission of providing education to kids from K through 12. The second piece of it was this, we just talked about, meeting the needs of all of our staff people and making sure they were safe and that they were able to carry out their functions.

00:07:15:15 - 00:07:17:28

Fred Peterson: The third piece though was

00:07:19:16 - 00:07:22:27

Fred Peterson: a little bit more difficult to to wrap my head around.

00:07:23:14 - 00:08:01:11

Fred Peterson: And that's all the services that are provided to kids aside from learning their ABCs. So for instance an enormous number of kids get their breakfast and lunches through school. If they didn't have those lunches they probably wouldn't eat or they'd be eating macaroni and cheese out of a box three meals a day. The the the mental health issues that school psychologists, the social workers, the physical and occupational and speech therapists, the list just goes on and on of all these services that the school provides.

00:08:01:27 - 00:08:37:01

Fred Peterson: And even at a meeting last night we were talking about the physical buildings being a community resource and how we're really reluctant to open the buildings up because of the potential contamination by the virus. So it really drove home to me that, yes we need to educate kids. That's absolutely imperative. Secondly, we need to keep everybody safe so that for the obvious reason of wanting to keep people safe, but so that the system will continue to function. And thirdly, we needed to recognize that there's a lot more going on sort of behind the scenes.

00:08:37:07 - 00:08:40:11

Fred Peterson: That was very very important to keep functional.

00:08:40:13 - 00:09:11:08

Jeff Krakoff: Great point. So I have to ask you this. I don't think there's a parent that's going to listen to this or anybody that lives within the school district. Probably not a day, a few days goes by, when something doesn't change whether it's federal, state, county, local guidelines. How in the world of you and the rest the committee dealt with this dynamic fact that things are changing and evolving constantly to come up with with a good solution to get back to school.

00:09:12:03 - 00:09:20:00

Fred Peterson: Well I think this is where the dumb within good luck of my having a background in public health probably was a little bit of a value.

00:09:21:21 - 00:09:45:21

Fred Peterson: All kinds of strange words we're using every day now like epidemiology and viral load and all those kinds of things. And I think it's fair to say that the people on this committee were very eager to hear and learn about and respect this outbreak and of course every week there was a different scenario because the virus kept going and going and going

00:09:45:23 - 00:09:46:10

Fred Peterson: So

00:09:48:03 - 00:10:18:09

Fred Peterson: I think that there was a tremendous tolerance. Maybe that's the word I'm looking for on the part of everyone that I've worked within the school system both on the committee and in the administration to understand that any given morning there may be a need to pivot. We keep using that word "pivot" because something new has been discovered or something new has happened in the evolution of the pandemic. And that's a real challenge. That's a very real challenge.

00:10:18:11 - 00:10:56:20

Fred Peterson: There's lots of different parts and pieces that have to come together in the face of lots of different challenges. There's sometimes in public health we talk about multifactorial causation that if we could only just see the endpoint we could get there, but we don't know the endpoint so we have to keep planning strategically, keeping ourselves informed, being tolerant of the need to change as new things come along. And again I found the challenge for me professionally was, I don't want to say it was good, it was stimulating.

00:10:56:22 - 00:11:07:11

Fred Peterson: It made me think, it made me go back to my roots. But I think for other people it was equally intellectually challenging as well as operationally challenging.

00:11:07:15 - 00:11:28:29

Jeff Krakoff: All right. So I'm sure that you've heard from whether it be staff, parents, administrators concerns about how do you best create a safe and effective learning environment. That's what it's all about. If you had to leave us with one comment to any anybody listening to this what would you say?

00:11:30:18 - 00:12:03:14

Fred Peterson: Well two things come to mind. One is we've kind of lost the adjective novel. It's a novel Coronavirus. It's new. We've only got in the world, about six months I guess, experience with it. So we have to be ready to pivot often. But the basic public health tools are a face mask, good bottle of soap to wash your hands, and to be able to hold your arm out and say OK I'm six feet away from the person next to me.

00:12:03:18 - 00:12:16:21

Fred Peterson: Social distancing, wearing a mask. Washing your hands. Maintaining a clean environment. I couldn't encourage people more. I give you your public health merit badge if you can pass those three tests.

00:12:16:28 - 00:12:23:17

Introduction: All right well thank you so much. It does make sense. Last question. What is next for the steering committee?

00:12:24:29 - 00:12:58:21

Fred Peterson: Well, the steering committee has stopped meeting. We accomplished our goals. We provided input to senior administration and the rest of my school board colleagues. And you know we've made the decision to do the cohort model two days. A-L two days and M-Z. We've added to the real-time streaming of the classroom activities and I think where we're like everybody else I feel like it's like a broken record but we're going to have to keep heads up constantly keep on trying to keep ahead.

00:12:59:11 - 00:13:11:23

Fred Peterson: And then being ready to change change as quickly as we need to. All the while keeping safety, a safe environment and focus. Right.

00:13:11:25 - 00:13:29:06

Jeff Krakoff: The old adage the only constant is change, right? Yeah, that's for sure. Well, again thanks,  Fred Peterson, thanks so much for your time and information. And thanks for all the hard work you and every other member of the planning committee has undertaken to make us get going back to school.

00:13:29:08 - 00:13:31:26

Fred Peterson: I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

00:13:31:28 - 00:13:33:14

Jeff Krakoff: Possible. Have a great day.

00:13:33:16 - 00:13:33:23

Fred Peterson: You too.