They can totally do that. Okay. So it looks like they're just looks like they're just uh thinking about the stage. And it looks and I'm pretty sure and I'm pretty sure they haven't I'm pretty sure they haven't selected a new stage. I guess we'll we'll figure that out by the time they by the time they open a new stage. by the time they get a new stage. That's what I mean. By the time they get into the game. Alrighty. And while we're waiting for this next round to start, I just want to give a quick shout out to Frederick's Photography. So, both individual and team photos for the esports program have been provided by Frederick's Photography. With over 35 years of experience, Frederick's provides studio and outdoor photography. On location options, as well as professional retouching. If you, your family, or your dog, or your team needs a professional photo taken, check out frederick'sphoto.com.
>> Sarah Beth. >> Well, if we don't, the school committee doesn't have any control over whether students choice out of our district. So if they're choicing to Chestnut Street Academy or to Shootsbury or to Springfield, we don't have any say over that. It's that's up to the Ammer school committee if they choose to receive school choice students. >> Okay. They have not indicated one way or another. >> That is I mean >> that's that's for the Ammer school committee to decide. I don't know if they've decided if they will continue to be a school choice receiving district for next year >> or >> okay >> future years or not. That's that's not a thing that we have any control over. >> And it's also how many spots they have available in that grade if if they do. >> Yeah. Their school committee first has to decide if they will be a participating in school choice and then it is up to their administration to decide >> if and where those seats could be.
So, in a year or two, if it doesn't help, then we'll re-evaluate and see what else we can do. So, >> I appreciate just looking at that, >> Mr. Spring. >> Okay, Mr. So, so one thing that that we've been doing this year, Darla and I went to to Pit State and we went to Pit State and then also um ESU is is one we were able to um this fall recruit a student teacher to high school ELA. Um and then from Pit State, we brought in two people to interview. Um unfortunately, they went back to their hometown. Um and so it has been successful and as we're talking to kids that we it's more like a meet and greet in the fall and then in the spring it's the interview piece like they remember us and they come talk to us and uh we were completely >> schedu >> so us going I know we're out of the building but going and and just talking to kids and we got some actual swag that um the kids kids want and remember us >> and so [clears throat] that has been that has been pretty successful I think >> I'll add on there too that Um, not only did Matt and I go to have full days when we went to state the other day, but I had several PPS school and we had I had several people that stopped and said, "I tried to get on your schedule, but it was already booked." So, we had more people than we had slots for.
Hearing none. All those in favor say I. Any oppose? Same sign. Motion passes 6. Item number 13, the Lakeside Learning Virtual School. >> Okay, so with the board motion to move forward um closing the Wilson Elementary School, we do need to have a conversation about the Lakeside Learning Virtual School, we did talk about this just a little bit last year on whether we thought that it would be um easier to run that out of a high school and middle school setting. So, with this building being closed next year, you know, we need to discuss the pros and the cons of moving it. Um, you know, we do have a pretty good setup here, but there's not going to be, you know, as of right now with the board motion, there's not going to be anybody here except the virtual side of it. You know, on the other side of it, if it is at the high school, middle school, um, right now, our high school students that are taking egeneuity classes, they go to teachers in the library during that time.
We're now at a point where we can demo the old building. Um, and with that, we'll be able to have the same bank of parking that's up here, which will be utilized for, uh, police efforts. Um, as well as those who are visiting the police side of the new building, and a completely separate, uh, municipal side that will serve, um, any, you know, the municipal staff as well as, um, the, uh, any visitors that need to go pay their taxes or of the sort. Um, additionally, all the ADA uh, spaces will be in effect at this point. and um they will be able to to serve the public as needed. The final phase of this uh this project is the existing building's been now removed and um the final steps are to install that that storm water basin as I mentioned earlier and finish up the remaining site and tie everything together for the finished product um that you saw earlier on that that original site plan.
We get donations for the gifts that the students get and it was fun. We had games. We had Santa Claus and his gave out gifts that it was a good afternoon and a lot the students had fun and the parents also had fun. And these were the when we gave out the awards lower elementary, upper elementary, middle school and high school. So I spoke about tutoring. Tutoring has been going on since the first week of November and it goes up until I think the end of March. Till the end of March 15. So, our students have been involved in the tutoring um session since the beginning of November and we're hoping that whatever the teachers have been working on with them will translate into the benchmark that is happening now as well as our state exams that come up in a couple of weeks in the beginning of April.
Um, and we won't replace them with people with 30 years experience because they're not usually looking for jobs and it's usually a pay cut if you change districts with that many years of experience. So that means our classroom spending will go down slipply because of the number of years of the people who are in the jobs. So there are lots of things that impact it. Um I also wanted to talk about um on this report they had a segment on inefficiency and the inefficiency was um based on data from the last three years that they had combined. It's the first time that they've had an inefficiency report and they reported like statewide. One of the things that they reported on and said schools are operating inefficiently because they're maintaining empty classrooms and empty space. So as school districts are like abandoning buildings because they you know like need to close schools, the auditor general is dinging them for continuing to maintain unused space.
They can be identified for high ability for ELA English language arts for math or for GT which is English language arts and math. So maybe a student that's very strong in math, they will be identified for math or ELA or both. So um when you kind of look at that, we have a large concentration of students um that are identified for high ability math and we'll get to a little bit of what that looks like when we think about our courses coming forward. We also take a look at um our identified students and we look at our diverse population and we look to see are we identifying the right students and are there any barriers that we're not identifying students and that could be anything from a language barrier when we're taking the certain assessments to help us identify students like Kogat or NWA or the I learn checkpoints.
So, the red ones were put in in 2000, a rooftop air handling unit. So, that's makes up the other part of the major equipment for HVAC in that building underneath that. In 2019, I think it was, we put 100 VAV boxes. So that's each each space like this gets one thermostat. That's one zone. So we put a hundred zones underneath all of those units. So prep rooms for chemistry labs, all that stuff. Everybody, all the offices get get their own thermostat. That's what was done. So one thing Google Earth isn't updated. We did your science lab to what 2024. So, uh, that system's, uh, been upgraded. >> Can you jump back to that slide? Those ones that are circled in red. What about the condition? >> Oh, yeah. So, those units were made by train. I was going to get it on the next. >> That's okay.
We're going to show you those three things as we go through. They also took a deep dive into the science of reading. If you're paying attention, they're about to take a deep dive into the science of math. That's the next thing that's coming up. They changed the titles of courses and the courses that we need to teach in middle school and high school. And we are working on those changes even as we speak. As you guys know, we were uniquely positioned for the changes in the diploma. Uh the accountability law just was made known to us last week and I was one of the few people in the state that was kind of happy. I was like, "Oh, check check. Oh, we're going to change this whole thing." We'll talk about that another time, but we're set up for that really, really well. They changed STEM requirements and then of course they completely redid iLearn and checkpoint data.
Um especially this year we were um very cognizant on the skill that we're teaching them like Amy said um teaching them the skill and then they are going back and teaching it with their buddy classrooms. So this shows some of those connection pieces and then them doing those connection activities that we taught in the morning PD um with their buddy classrooms. Pretty cool. Um this is uh if you see Dina down in the bottom um like all of our students doing it like that's in our moderate room, right? And that kiddo is doing it right along with us too. So things that they um that is um accessible like to all of our kiddos was the goal. Make sure everyone was included. So are you ready? This is where you're going to have to um that we said we were going to be vulnerable, right?
That's frederick's-photo.com. Special shout outs to Frederick's photography, I tell you. Cuz I've been looking at the pictures they've been taking of the team. Chef's kiss, I tell you. It looks like they have opened the game. And it looks like they're sending out the link first one more time. Sending out Link First one more time. And they also selected Battlefield as their stage of choice. Battlefield is a bit different from Pokemon Stadium. The main difference being the fact that there's a top platform and Eli is using that to his advantage, I tell you. Yep. Using that using that to his advantage trying to kill Link off the top using many grabs cuz I will say Donkey Kong is amazing with that. He throws a player up. Instead of throwing them up in the air, he just puts him on his shoulder and throws him into the stage and he misses the tech immediately losing the first stop.
>> Okay. Thank you. >> Um what are your contingency plans if you don't fill a cho school of choice seats? Um >> so right now we do have so just for instance if we had no school choice students next year um and we had no revenue at all it's this is a very hypothetical not likely to happen but if that were to happen we do have some funds still in the school choice balance that we could use for the next year's operating budget, but I don't anticipate that all of a sudden one year Pelum has absolutely no school choice students. Um, but there is a balancing act that has to be had with how much do you use for the operating budget, how many students are choicing in, and what's a a way to balance that that it doesn't put us in a very difficult position if we were to lose school choice students.
And um, we're going to see we're we're seeing the benefit of being at PDS school um because even as we interview people that, you know, I haven't met that like they're like such and such says your school's a great place to be. So, I do feel like, you know, the deposits are getting our bucket like Burlington is getting named as a place that people want to student teach or we're on the radar for hoping to land a job. Um, so I think that's really I mean, we did feel like it was really positive for you last weekend. There definitely is um definitely when we were at Pittsburgh even people like we have talked to you before. So, I think that is >> I think you mentioned before all the wine was lined up these other >> and and I'll just add the student teacher we have >> we actually interviewed for a position today and the selling point for him to get him down here to student teach was if you do a good job you got first dibs on this.
So if we actually had a setup for the virtual to be at the high school middle school, those students could actually go to that parah or whoever's in that room to actually do their egeneuity classes and not be in the same room as a teacher that's trying to teach. So that's kind of one side of it. You know, the diploma side of it and the way that the transcripts run through us as a district um have to be signed by myself, the high school principal. Um, usually the counselors are the ones that kind of look at those transcripts. Um, we don't have a high school middle school counselor, so we kind of have a protocol here where it runs through me and kind of goes that direction as well. So, we just need to kind of have a discussion on what that looks like for next year.
Um and the intention is that this would be a smooth transition from from start to finish um to the best of our ability given the site constraints. Uh lastly, this is the landscape plan. Um as you can see or barely make out with this these faint lines, there are a handful of existing trees along 71. Those trees with the exception of one because of shifting the uh the driveways here. One tree will be removed, but the remaining three will stay. We're going to introduce a whole handful of new street trees along uh Union Lane and 71. And additionally, there is a large amount of landscaping proposed at each of the islands, additional landscaping in the the green banks over here as well as over here. And for those wondering um will the police efforts on the western side of the building, will they be visible from the school?
These are just a few of our students, the classes, the teachers um that teachers took of the students in their session. So for our second semester, we are still talking about a field trip. We've been trying to get a field trip for the longest time, but things just have not been aligned for us to get one done. But we're still trying as best as we can. Um we also have our field day for the disable medical students which is in May and our graduation our annual graduation banquet for both the seniors as well as the eighth graders are promoting for this year. Oh, hi. I just I have one comment. Um, back to the SRO thing. Um, the P County Sheriff's Department SRO's or deputies are not allowed on the reservation. So, they would be they would contact TOPD to do whatever that would whatever would need to be done in that situation.
We all know we've all seen it, right? Just driving around our own community. If if there's a house that's empty and isn't being cared for, it deteriorates. And the same is true of classrooms. Just because classrooms are empty or buildings are empty doesn't mean a school district can just put a fence around it and walk away from it. So, it's very interesting to me that like what they're choosing to um call in efficiency when those are things that are largely out of the control of individual school districts. Um, one of the things, um, John and Marty and I had an opportunity last Thursday, you'll remember a few months ago, the auditor general re released a report that they had never released before with all kinds of new statuses for school districts. And approaching high risk was one of the status points. And our school district was found to be approaching high risk for declining enrollment and control that for uh moving money from capital to M which we're legally allowed to do and we had squirreled money away in capital during COVID so we could choose to move it later.
So we do keep a pulse on what is our overall population which you can see on the left side of that screen and then only looking at and pulling out our identified high ability students. So really thinking and bringing this to our broad-based planning committee of just saying do we have the right mechanisms in place? Are we identifying our students? And so we're always kind of taking a peek in and looking our ethnicity as well. And so I want to show you some of our high ability data. So we are going to just look at students that are identified for high ability. And so when we look at I read, we pulled out the students that were identified for either ELA or GT. So um this does not include the students that were math only identification. When we look at our I read data in second grade, remember that is a third grade assessment that is given at the end of third grade.
You're okay. Tony knows this stuff. >> All right. So, what we have for each of the buildings is a is a equipment list. So, like Tony was talking about those air handlers. So, those are rooftop air handling units. They're made by train. They're 35. Expected life is 35 years. They were put in in 2000. You got nine years left. It was the best unit that train ever made. And you got those units. They'll last 35 years. Ashray. Oops. I You're right. I swiped the screen and it does. It does work. All right. One more time. Here we go. So, 35 years put in 2000. Best units train ever made. They'll last 35 years. They're great units. you're lucky to have them. Newer equipment just doesn't last as long as some of that stuff. Couple things. You guys have done a great job, like I said, on the learning environment places like entryways with the cab heaters.