001okay i now call the april 25th meeting of the wallingford swathmer school board to order in opening as you're willing and able please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you uh mr will you uh please take the roll call vote dr granty mr henry here miss holbert here mr cutis here mrs here yeah just what's that wikowski smith here ms walkman here let's welcome we have nine voting members present excellent thank you okay we will begin as we uh traditionally do with uh today we have um asha pandy here as our student representative and uh miss bandy if you'll give
002us your student representative reported thank you april flew by just like that we have only 38 school days left this month we ended the quarter with one of my favorite school activities i've ever been to haven heartthrob it was a fundraiser for mini thon a club that supports pediatric cancer with his amazing dancing and presentation skills senior zach zwieko was crowned the 2021-2022 haven heartthrob the week after went by super fast and it felt like we went straight to spring break for a lot of high schoolers spring break was spent in europe the silvertones toured italy and many of the french students went to france for the week friday was earth day so miss shepherd's ap bio classes all went outside to take care of the trees that they planted before break srs celebrated a
003whole month of caring students collected donations for the food pantry participated in a little crumb creek cleanup and many other earth day activities the srs 5th graders installed a beautiful crochet project on the trees outside the school as well junior prom was on saturday it was held at king's mill and i had so much fun the dj wasn't great but i had a great time hanging out with my friends at the end of this week the student council is going to be hosting the spring fling a fun festival with the dunk tank food activities live musical performances and more come join us from 4 to 6 30 at the ortho watt to lead up to this we're having another spirit week you know what they say when in doubt have a spirit week that's not
004actually a saying we just love dressing up at the high school wes had jump rope for heart last week the students all enjoyed participating in activities in the beautiful weather though the high schoolers will be stuck taking tests for the first half of may we're all looking forward to getting out more and ending the year with fun events thank you so much it's always so fun to hear the the report of what's happening um actually in the buildings we appreciate it uh dr marseille uh turn to you for a superintendent's report um thank you ms walkman i have a short um relatively short report um this uh this evening welcome back from uh from spring break um we do have um excited to have uh srs here uh to hello how are you good to
005see you um we're excited that you're here thank you for coming um and dr tuck and her and her team are going to be talking to us in a few minutes as part of the focus uh topic uh conversation but a number of things that i want to uh speak uh briefly uh about um to the board and uh and to the community um so i wanted to share um with respect to our healthy safety plan and as we um were anticipating that there were going to be spikes um in terms of our incident rates um um the graph that you're showing at kind of reflects where um we were as a district during spring uh break um and that um the forecasting did follow its natural progression as it has been um for um
006the uh two years that we have been um experiencing uh and living with um covid uh 19 and to the form that those numbers did uh did spike anytime there is a large uh an opportunity to bring a lot of people together for an extended period of time this usually is what has happened over the last two years and um we are seeing that and um as a result though um too tiny for your eyes um the presentation is there that um as of uh as of today our numbers did exceed our incidence rates did exceed our threshold per our uh our our health and safety plan and as a result of that um tomorrow when i sent communication out that unfortunately srs will go to fully mask in order to alleviate the spikes that
007we are seeing i understand that this continues to be a polarized conversation that individuals are unhappy with that but we want to honor our commitment to making sure that we um as much as possible uh contain that we believe that um that uh that window will will pass very quickly um and we will communicate to the community and to srs family in terms of when we are able to uh to return there's a number of items that are on the on the agenda that i want to speak to um a little bit about because there is several motions that the board is going to be asked to to consider and one of those is a a way in which we are thinking about our debt restructuring i don't want to i'm sure that the committee
008representatives uh or board representatives of the finance committee are going to speak to this uh as part of their of their update but i did want to share that on january 19 uh for those who were not in attendance and the powerpoint is on our uh website uh on on our webpage and i also made reference to that in one of my communications that in that meeting we had a conversation about some of the challenges that we were seeing as a district and some of the structural deficits that exist and a manner of wage of thinking more critically about our long-term financial health and what does that mean for this district in this community and um one of the things that we had identified there were a number of other uh challenges that we faced
009as a community but one of the things that that stood out was really our our debt uh our our debt service and when you see that we're among the highest in delaware county on relative basis what we looked at is our total debt expenditures how much we owe in debt uh how much we pay every calendar year and compare that to other districts in delaware county and compare that to per-pupil population and as a result while some of our neighbors um have significantly lower ratio of debt per student um some are zero uh some are a thousand dollars per student we're at a little over 5 000 per student in terms of debt right not the highest but one of the highest um and we're looking to think about and i say this not because
010this we were reckless in terms of our debt um actually it's the opposite i think this community and this board made a commitment that they were going to aggressively pay down this debt right and as a result of that um one of the things we're seeing is that we're seeing a structural deficit that if we were able to stretch out our payments it would alleviate some of that burden um to uh the fact that we wouldn't necessarily have to think about the way in which we are raising to um fully act one index so there are some savings that we could realize from that particular um restructuring then we talked about the fact that um over the next several years what you'll see is that currently right now um seven percent um annually goes towards
011our expenses for debt it moves to 6.5 um it goes to 3.24 our 3.4 in 2029 it drops um after 2029 right uh to the extent we're almost debt free and then zero in 2035. we thought about ways in which we would attempt to address that burden and other ways in which we're exploring as well so on the 20th we had a finance meeting where our financial advisors shared with us the potential and some scenarios on what could take place so raymond james public finance came and shared with us some scenarios around restructuring 13.6 million dollars of debt as a result of that structuring it could alleviate approximately 1.8 to 1.9 million dollars for long-term debt services if we extend it out a little bit further and part of this conversation is slow sustainable because
012we didn't get here overnight in terms of attempting to alleviate some of that some of that burden so for example that last bullet shows that um we could um hypothetically move from an annual debt payment of seven million dollars to an annual payment of five million dollars significantly um lessening the burden on on our taxpayers uh and i know that that's an important conversation that uh this board has been having a commitment to that but it's not the only solution i want to say that it is one of several um and we wanted to bring that to the board for motion for consideration for a vote uh for vote tonight um this slide is out of sequence because we don't want to talk about the ssas um right after that there's no motion on that
013but we know that pssa's are taking uh place uh and um uh and unfortunately pssas are happening at a point where we had to go to them asking for srs but um i also another thing that's on the on the agenda is that in february i shared with this community uh in writing and then later i shared a couple days later at a regular board meeting um the shift uh in terms of reorganization and um and the rationale for that uh in terms of meeting our long-term um our long-term goal is anticipating outcomes of our equity audit our curriculum audit our communications audit and the strategic plan conversation that's going to take place in the fall as we develop a five 10-year strategic plan and we do have uh two uh two candidates that i'm
014excited to bring forward that hoping the board approves as we think about this work um for assistant superintendent and a director of stem teaching learning and innovation uh to continue uh our work um i wanna say that i um i received a number of letters um from our students uh because we believe in student voice and i believe in acknowledging that student voice so um at west i received a letter as students were working on a persuasive essay and shared with me um and they were persuasive that's why you write a persuasive essay um and they followed that with research and they also follow that with their own informal research because they surveyed their classmates on their perceptions of some of these particular topics so a young man sent me a letter from team scott
015at west and said dr marseille i'd like you to consider the research that supports a four day week and we should not be scared to move in this direction and he proceeded to this student proceeded to provide a rationale that said here are the social emotional benefits of moving from a five day to a four day the student articulated what the potential fiscal savings work you guys we like fiscal savings we're talking about that and that student also compared what was happening across the world in terms of other countries that have moved towards that and one of the best reasons to do it he indicated that i probably would be nominated as the best superintendent ever right that should have been the first bullet right so i said and so i was excited about that
016because we are going to be we have been having we've been having a conversation about school start time about schedules um this is not a foreign concept there are approximately 1600 school districts across the country who have moved to a four day week right um right so i was taken aback at the research that our staff members allowed for this to take uh to take place and i say that only because those are type those are some of the innovative thinking outside the box that we should go and have conversations about right and what i like about young adults is they don't see the obstacles they see the opportunity right the first thing oftentimes what happens to adults is how much they're going to cost and how is it going to inconvenience my schedule what
017we're going to do with you on that friday there's no way that's going to happen who's going to take care of you right um so i appreciated that and i think there's opportunity when we have this conversation about school start start time to really open and disassemble that box and think more about what is what is the possibility of those things happening so um i remember of the scheduling team that person doesn't know that yet right and then i got a series of letters from um dr corson's team persuasive writing fifth grade and one particular student actually i should say several students um um wrote passionately and said why are we still following a model that was created in 1905 right i said i can't answer that question it's really good um and wanted to
018rethink the way in which we assigned homework provided rationale for the benefits the social emotional impact the stress that it's causing um the time it takes away from family and the importance of that um which by the way is a topic of discussion that i'm really interested in and i think we should have as a policy then they talked about recess [Music] they spoke about the fact that the research suggests taking breaks for unstructured play is critical in increasing focus and attention and is linked to better student outcomes so dr marseille we are asking you to please consider thinking about increasing our recess time oh i got a vote in the audience with hands up right now wow maybe that's the person who wrote i don't know but uh absolutely so um i was really
019taken aback by that and i love that which is a conversation then um several students talked about gender neutral bathrooms they talked about a sense of belonging it take they talked about the idea that um what's happening at the middle school what's happening at the high school and it'd be nice dr marseille if you can please have designations for maybe non-gender bathrooms so individuals can feel more comfortable i see a lot of thumbs up on the other side of the eye over there too as well thank you um and then there was conversation with dr marseille please summer is not long enough [Laughter] right and they provided and articulated the social emotional impact and the positive impact and also the positive impact on student outcomes so they're speaking my language with wellness and student outcomes
020right uh in terms of that and then one student said listen i know it might cost a lot of money to get a vending machine ice and the students said students said but caffeine is really good and we would love some more caffeine and vending machines that would allow us to choose between water and caffeinated drinks please consider that dr marsett and then another um was standing desk it was the idea about constantly being stationary is there ways in which we could be more mobile but still do our work right and the research suggests i love when they keep saying the research right that there are it is attributed to better learning opportunities when students are able to move around and if the deaths were a little bit higher it would do that and they
021said it increases test scores and better grades right um and the caveat with here's an idea of how to do it that wouldn't cost the district a lot of money right so you know they're speaking our tune as well in terms of that so i want to say that uh i want to thank um all the students um who spent time writing the persuasive uh essays and i want to thank those students who were willing to share those essays with me and i felt that i couldn't just hold on to them by myself right and i had to share with the community in terms of a little nugget of what our students are thinking about and obviously the skills that you are seeing at home when they come and have these conversations so thank you
022thank you and there are a number of topics that really are on the agenda as part of strategic thinking that students have already identified in terms of that and i think when we have um the strategic plan conversation we do have to find ways to get input from our younger children around what do you imagine in vision what would be the ultimate elementary experience what would that look like what would you need right and we can extrapolate and learn from that so um this was absolutely awesome and again um uh and i mentioned this and it's on our social media web pages uh a wonderful set of activities taking place uh throughout the week from spirit week to jump rope for your heart uh a wonderful mental health resource night for our student services team
023i attended that it was absolutely phenomenal already thinking about what that looks like next year i was talking to dr mccullough in terms of that uh process i took a lot of stuff home brought it to my wife in terms of what that means to us so it's it's it's awesome um so um a lot of things and then um some accolades uh as we see that and um the fact that um this district uh continues to be recognized and i should say uh the district staff um continues to be recognized for their excellence and the work that uh that they do um and the award um that goes with world language department and having a really sequential set of experiences that students can take a part of our own dan shaffer who was um
024who was recognized for excellence in teaching award again we're heading out of the park with one of the best communities in music education uh for i think it's if correct me i think it's ten years in a row uh that we have that is testimony to um our staff the experiences that they provide uh to our students and obviously our parents who are committed uh to that and i know uh that cello is really heavy for cheyenne i said but you're carrying it right this will give you a wonderful experience i i see her in the morning and she's trying to drag it onto the bus um i offered her a ride but she goes i want to ride with you i said fine um so take the bus with your cello um so it's
025a testimony to the work that we do and how we support that as well and then uh coming up uh on the 27th um the jazz night so we're looking forward to having um as many people there to to recognize our students and our staff for the work that they uh that they are doing and then uh next week is obviously we attempt to appreciate um the work that all of our teachers are doing but specifically may 2nd through the 6th teacher appreciation week um they have a number of requests no emails during that week that would be nice right but a number of pictures of our staff so it's exciting we want to thank them and we'll uh obviously uh thank them during that week as well and all the weeks uh with the
026work that uh that they do we have some upcoming uh meetings that i want to put on your calendar um we have ed affairs committee meeting coming up where we're going to talk about our comprehensive plan what that means as we move forward to strategic thinking uh we have a we schedule a regular meeting of the uh school board uh on the night because we have a number of motions that we want to put on the calendar i'll send a reminder and then our facilities and finance on the 18th as well we'll tell you about that and then upcoming uh policy meeting uh this wednesday um or no is it not is that the wrong date yeah that's the wrong date um so wednesday at affairs it's may it's may 4th right so there's some
027errors there it's may 4th in terms of that but i'll clean it up and make sure we give you the right dates because we don't want you showing up and they said dr marseille did a bait and switch um in terms of process that wasn't our attempt so i'll make sure i'll clarify uh those dates policy is scheduled for this wednesday 7 p.m right okay so we'll correct that before we post it uh to um to our website and um in vape 15 right um uh so i had a very long spring break because a lot of those dates are wrong um so we'll modify those uh for uh for the community and then we'll push them back out uh for you all right and that is uh end of my uh superintendent's uh update
028all right thank you so much are there any students here who helped write those uh letters that were sent to dr marseille did any of you write some letters you don't want to admit it there's somebody excellent well so if you ever think yes there you go yeah that's really impressive and uh thank you for doing that see it matters because we are in fact talking about those things and i want to thank the teachers too because i can tell it's persuasive uh letter writing i got a three point persuasive uh dissertation from my fifth grader about why she did not need to go with me to the uh function that we were going to on sunday so and it was quite persuasive so she didn't win them um at this point i think uh
029we it's time for our focus topic and dr tuck good evening everyone and thank you very much for coming out tonight we have a lot of excited srs students that have come out just to share with you some of the wonderful things that are sharing with you some of the wonderful things that we're doing at srs before the school board arrived i just want to say thank you dr marseille and mrs walkman and the school board directors for inviting us this evening to come out and to share some of the wonderful activities that our students are doing in the classrooms as well as to give a little shine to our students and before you arrive they were very very excited some of them were touching the name tags some of them were touching the the
030mics and so forth and exploring the room because truly we have future leaders and they're sitting right here in this room and they're in every classroom at wssd so therefore all of the the teachers doctors lawyers futures teachers doctors and lawyers they're sitting right in our classrooms and some of them are right in our midst tonight we're going to talk to you this evening about literacy and how literacy looks from the primary level to the intermediate level that was one of our my favorites welcome back when we were so happy to be back in the building so we are going to just talk to you a little bit about hegerty foundations and fonteson panel and we realize that having strong decoding and encoding skills are very important for our students and students are learning how
031to isolate sounds segment they're learning how to manipulate sounds and this is very important for the students to create or to develop sound literacy skills so they're they're isolating sounds blending sounds they are segmenting and they are manipulating sounds these are some of the activities that our students are participating in and the high frequency words are first grade teachers they place all of the high frequency words otherwise known as sight words throughout our building so when they do uh come across a word meaning that if they see a word posted on a wall or on a board or on a door the students touch the words and they say the words and they touch their hearts because these are words that they have to remember by heart and having a good foundation will help with
032fluency as well as with comprehension and these are some of the activities that our students participate in they do the read-alouds with their teachers and one of our fifth grade students will share with us a read-aloud portion at the very end of their of the presentation this evening we also have the small groups where students are able to utilize and practice encoding and decoding skills with their teachers and they're also sharing their knowledge with their peers i'm going to share with you a clip a glimpse of first grade and how the teachers are isolating segmenting and they're also manipulating sounds so like isolating blending segmenting and manipulating sounds there are four activities that you're going to see in the video clip get on our gloves [Music] calendar d [Music] ow boys [Applause] [Music] is i
033like the other two i like the other two i like the other two go ahead and write it so look at the cover and the title the title is puddles where on this cover do you see puddle abby um where two kids are standing very good what do you notice about those puddles oliver [Music] craft now let's tap it out and write it [Music] go ahead and write randy runs races randy runs races very good jim jump in jello jim jumps in jello jerk good lilly likes lipstick lily likes lipstick oh i see no time to nap or sit in like to thank the school board just for investing in this literacy the three literacy programs that we are implementing at the first grade level and at the kindergarten level and soon to be second
034grade we're building stronger readers they're being they're able to decode and encode so at this time we're going to see how encoding and decoding works for our older students we have mrs brooke who's going to come forth and she's going to share a few poems with that they have created the students have created for national poetry mom mrs brooks going to come forward and the excited students do you want to um hello everyone what a pleasure to be here um and to have these ladies with me they're very excited so i am jill brooke i've been teaching in this district since 1998 fourth and fifth grade and every year with my students i usually do some deep dives into poetry three to four times we we start with poems from the japanese then we move
035into color poems and explore um similes unique similes and and metaphors then we do usually we do a winter poem and then we do a poem um something in nature and then by the end of the year i make an anthology of their poems so i have i have an anthology of my students poetry from almost every year of my career and these um when i think about the things that are um i'm not someone who loves possessions very much i'm tend to be a minimalist but when i think about the things that are most important to me it's my collection of student anthologies my students can attest to this i pull these out and i i just never tire of them i have poems from hundreds of children in this district amazing amazing poems
036and when i read books of poetry from bookstores or from a shelf on a library in the library i think my poems the students poems are are better than these poems i i i have maya rosin's poem wendy's daughter dewdrops i think this i think her daughter's poem comes up about once a year somehow um this incredible poem that should be known to the world um the sparks are here i have the poem that their son daniel wrote and their and their daughter taylor and i just still i have a gold mine here um so we have we did um study poetry this year and i have um one poem they did this was a very quick assignment this one was just to write metaphors about home and eleanor vasilevskiy came up with this home
037is the creaky wooden door home is a soft carpeted floor home is the worn handle of a drawer home is the heater drawer home is my comfort store home is the warm golden light home is the quiet night home is a lantern sprite home is a flying kite home is a one place freight now we have jane meyer schultz jane as brand new to srs she came in january her family's right over here and she wrote a poem about home too so lots of metaphors describing home home is the crackling oak floor under our feet palm is the yelling of my sister when she's finished a puzzle home is heaters humming and cats meowing home is coming back from school to the smell of fresh cookies home is the sound of the vacuum my mom's
038obsessed with and the quietness of hide and go seek home is hearing the banging on the walls for my friendly housemates home is arts and crafts spilling out of boxes home is bunches of flowers sitting in a face in the middle of the table home is rubbing my hand against the bumpy brick that makes our fireplace home is the sound of the leaking water from our skylights home is somewhere for all of us okay this next poem by finley johnson um this this poetry idea came to me from a swarthmore college student and she's now a teacher in new york city a fourth grade teacher and she had the kids write about poems about a color and that was all similes so i always ask the children to try to choose a color that um
039like lots of children choose gray and blue and black so i try to um encourage them to maybe not choose those colors finley chose clear and it's a wonderful unique poem clear as clear as the window of opportunity clear as a crystal in a damp dark cave clear as the feeling of sadness and a happy place clear as something too easy in life clear as a feeble lie clear as a tear streaking down my face clear as a thin strip of fabric tied endlessly to a tree clear as the air we need to survive clear as the plastic choking the world this is so much fun okay and now um our last poetry um unit that is on to create our anthology so something about nature we just started this um dive into nature poems
040but marca dove right in and she worked very hard on a poem about a fox and here's hers flocks of jewels legend says the foxweight of jewels can heal your mind and fox's rule a diamond black nose like the dark moon with opal eyes they shine with doom sonic ears hear sound waves like a group of moonstone caves and mighty clouds grip the ice like 20 pounds of emerald dice from the ruby fur to the mouth of prowl you can always hear that foxes growl and we also have a student here for mrs knox's fourth grade class we have mira sparks and she's going to introduce herself she wrote a little introduction for to introduce herself good evening my name is mira sparks and i am i'm a fourth grade student in mrs knox's class
041at srs thank you for inviting me to read a poem to you my poem is called the last words of a falling soldier it tells the story of a soldier in the trojan war who was dying i was inspired to write this poem because i love reading tales from greek mythology i hope you enjoy the last words of a falling soldier by mira sparks the roses bloom in the cold warmth of spring as the birds sing their eternal song as all creation comes along the world goes round and round the gleaming sun sends its glorious rays to gaia and iris sends her pittering drops to gaia and persephone sends the spring to gaia o mother earth say to me you'll grant me immortality as the liar makes me cry with orpheus's sad sad song phaiathon's
042cries he burns up the sky with the glorious corona of the sun the world is changing and with eos his dewy drops as my tears i fall to hades in ahri's bloody battle thank you very much mrs brook and mrs knox for their wonderful inspiring poetry units thank you very much students thank you i do appreciate all of your your words of wisdom and your your exploration with the various subjects for poetry thank you very much i do appreciate that okay thank you thank you okay this time we're going to ask miss dr corson to introduce kasaya and leadership through literacy we saw the individuals who have learned to decode encode and how to put words together to create beautiful poems and now we're going to talk about leadership through literacy we're going to have
043dr corson introduce her student josiah jay pasaya jay thomas there you go thank you thank you dr tuck i'm privileged to introduce josiah thomas um just to attach it to the literacy uh presentation today we use uh calkins in fifth grade with third third through fifth uses calkins and that means it's a writing and reading workshop approach which allows for a wonderful amount of student choice and it also allows for a building up of uh leadership through literacy which actually is the first time this has happened for us because kasai is an amazing leader um we partnered with mrs kennedy's class um and kessiah weekly reads to mrs kennedy's class and it has been more than just reading and i think she's going to talk a little bit about that so let me introduce kessiah
044thomas hi my name is kasai thomas and i read to ms kennedy's third grade class reading with ms kennedy's third graders are really fun every time although their book my book selections might not be everyone's favorite book they still enjoy it the third graders always listen to me when i read and i know that because they give me great body language even when they're sitting beside their friends every time i pick in the store book or a colored book every time someone will share about what happened to them or how they've seen things happen about people or some things they experience third graders are really smart and amazing although i thank ms courson for letting me read to those third graders and also miss kennedy the third graders are very smart that miss miss kennedy
045has created and great body language because i and i have a little page from the story called the big umbrella and i chose the last page and the thing says there's always room and i chose this because in miss kennedy's third grade class they always have room for one another and they will always share about their experiences when i read every book thank you thank you very much josiah and i invited two of mrs kennedy's third grade students we're going to have dakota and we're going to have noah reid just a response to cassaya's reading and this will conclude our presentation for this evening hi my name is dakota smallian casaya's reigning quality books made me feel empowered to stand up for others and to be proud of my individual identities in the book the
046big umbrella the red umbrella grew as the people gathered under it there is room for everybody we had conversations about how we can be like the umbrella and to be our unique selves the book the books were an inspiration to show us and so was josiah [Music] thank you very much dr marseille this is like walkman and the school board directors thank you for giving us this opportunity we were trying to stay within that time frame okay awesome thank you okay thank you very much and thank you very much families for coming out tonight as you guys are all leaving thank you so much for visiting us today that was really awesome it was really nice to see just all of you and how excited you are and it was really nice for the board
047to also see the use of the um the programs the um literacy program and the um with younger students and actually put that like action to to uh that approval but thank you everyone i know they're all going so now we need to do the uh the less exciting work of the board right um so first i'll i'll share that um the board did meet an executive session this evening to discuss uh personnel matters and with that we get to um audience recognition for response to items for action on the agenda do we have anyone who'd like to speak about an item that is for action if you could um please approach the podium and just share your name and the street on which you live good evening dave sarator 620 morris lane um i
048had just um i'd like to understand a little more about um item agenda item 11m and i know that you spoke of it briefly that earlier this evening and um i'm not quite certain if it's an agenda item for voting this evening or not for the the refinancing of debt or the hiring of a firm to look into the refinancing of the debt so it is the ladder sir so we are not refinancing debt this evening no we're not okay but i would like to just ask a couple quick things and maybe we can hear the discussion later when it comes up um i would just like to hear the possible the potential ramifications of refinancing the existing debt that we have we have if it's the entire debt or a portion of the debt
049and how that refinancing will be extended into the future i did see what was discussed last wednesday briefly i couldn't make the meeting the possibility of restructuring the debt that would extend us from 2034 to 2042 as one of the possibilities so i'm not sure if that's in play at this time but i'd like to further understand that and if we are intending to refinance that this school i mean vote for it this school year for next year or the following year how that restructuring would affect the budget and more specifically the tax increase that was mentioned a few months ago of 3.4 percent and i think that's all i had for now i just wanted to hear about people's opinions and what we're thinking thank you mr thor well um when the conversation comes
050up we a member of the committee will share out the report and then i'll have our business manager come up and address any questions thank you i know you know the drill but if you could just share your name in the street on which you look good evening amy caruso colonial drive i had two brief comments regarding items both in finance and in personnel um i too want to learn more about the debt restructuring program as was outlined initially at the finance committee meeting last week i am encouraged to see a series of steps like this one that creatively look at ways to work on the repayment schedule of the debt since it is the highest in the district as well as what the current needs will be as you prepare the budget for next
051year but also um with the taxpayer burden the assumption it looked to me that the assumption was a 3.4 percent increase to taxpayers for 10 years and i would encourage the committee and the board um to sharpen your pencil and take a closer look at that i don't like i don't like that assumption for 10 years so i'd like to see what else we could do with that regarding the personnel also extremely encouraged for this opportunity for the stem program in the district and i'm really hopeful about that and i think that that will bring about more equity in all levels throughout the district for many of us especially in the elementary school where i feel like the programs could be strengthened and i look forward to the way that that shapes out along with
052the information that becomes available in the different audits the communication audit the curriculum on it the equity audit uh so that is wonderful very happy to see that thank you thank you very much is there anyone else who would like to comment this evening okay see none we will then uh proceed with tonight's agenda so our next uh item for action on the agenda is the approval of the march 28 2022 regular business meeting and do i have a motion for approval um and a second second mr henry hi miss holbert hi mr cutis hi miss lentz hi miss vote hi miss whitsett hi miss mikowski smith hi miss walkman hi motion passes nine to zero thank you and we now have our board committee reports i'm going to um ask everyone again if we
053could please keep the updates um from the committee meetings uh is as brief as possible while still being informative uh and so first we have educational affairs and uh is that sorry who's do it mr henry thank you thank you all right yes uh thank you dr mozakowski for putting together and making them so concise thank you uh so we did have an educational affairs committee meeting uh held uh here on wednesday april 6th um dr marseille doctor jones and dr murkowski did a presentation on the students academic achievement based on pssa and keystone scores spanning the last five years which actually was very helpful being a new board member and the other new board members and that was very helpful for all of us to see so thank you for that they also showed
054a county-wide comparison of students performance on the pssas this comprehensive collection of data incorporated information on students performance that was imported into the hanover research data dashboard for the purpose of the equity audit that was conducted for the school district additionally they also presented map data from assessments that were administered to students in grades k-8 starting this year so the most important part of this meeting was this information enabled the team to do a comparative analysis of the performance of subgroups of students based on race economic status and individualized education program identification the data revealed ongoing gaps and and inequities and achievement among some subgroups of students the team discussed some ways to address these challenges dr marseille reiterated the strategic plan that the district will embark on will detail strategies to close these achievement
055gaps the process of data collection and analysis is ongoing and this initial presentation is the first glimpse into the information the district is gathering and looking at to evaluate student academic performance uh the powerpoint presentation that was presented was it was uh there was a lot of data in there so anyone watching at home or anybody here wants to see it it is on the district website a number of uh citizens local local uh citizens came to the meeting as well to offer really uh important perspective and asked a lot of good questions we have some good conversation so for those people that did come for that to that meeting thank you that's helpful for everyone on the committee everyone on the board dr marseille dr mozakowski dr jones here and talk about those things
056so that was a really good uh productive meeting i thought thank you thank you mr everett uh next up we have uh facilities and finance i think uh mr cutis are you doing facilities this evening thank you good evening in light of the earlier presentations from the srs students i wish i had written this in poem before right so anyway on april 20th the facilities and finance committees met in attendance where committee members david grande kevin henry rachel holbert and myself other board members present we're kelly wagman mary jo wataoski smith jennifer lentz and nanette would say administration president were superintendent marseille mary martin and peter clablunde mr blundy conducted the facilities committee meeting he briefed the attendees on work accomplished the past month he then reviewed the capital projects underway he went over the
057current projects being advertised for bid and he talked about projects being investigated for future uh performance uh there was actually a resident in attendance who asked for a couple of improvements for the baseball fields uh kingfield visitor bleachers and the walkway along the baseball field from sykes lane uh that meeting adjourned and next meeting is wednesday may 18th uh next we had the finance committee meeting again same attendees [Music] miss martin conducted the the finance committee meeting a big chunk of that meeting was about the proposed uh restructuring of debt uh there was a lot of interest from the attendees especially the committee on board other board members present to proceed in a timely manner so that we could take advantage of some of the more attractive financing rates and packages that are available now
058and i think tonight we are voting on starting that process basically asking for information related to uh various types of of restructuring and what type of rates we may end up getting so it's it's it's an ongoing process but we're just starting the process uh we talked about um the projected uh proposed proposed budget for 2022 2023 and um we um we were all provided with uh budget binders and we are still in discussions and in various steps to to um get to where we have a final budget that's that with the board will vote on um other things talked about uh in in the financing arena is the athletic trainer contract um the approval to have a interim authorized signer on our new lockbox account and the approval of the delaware county community college
059budget applicable to our participating uh boroughs next finance committee is may 18th thanks uh mr cooters um dr mercedes do you want to offer some more um insight into the the proposed um evaluation of debt restructuring and and maybe um mrs miss martin yes actually i would like if ms martin if you can come and share some highlights of that of that meeting and our financial advisors in terms of the way in which they are helping us think about the opportunities that potentially could exist so just go to the mic and then let's talk about the potential ramifications of debt uh whether it's portions how much is it how far does it push it out and how would that structure uh impact the current proposed tax increases okay so i'm also i'm going to address
060some of the questions that came up with the community comments the amount of the restructured debt that we're looking at is about 13 million seven out of a balance right now of about 50 million dollars so it's a portion of what we have outstanding right now the uh repayment year goes from uh 2034 to 2036 however that is so it's not just two years though it's the the amount of the payments are pushed to the later years um in order to free up our budget in in the next five years which is really where we feel is it needs relief um so again we feel that our debt service is too much for our budget to handle it's it's uh it needs to be right size for for our budget so uh the debt relief
061each year is going to be about 1.8 million dollars and that's the amount that we're going to be freeing up our budget each year for other expenditures um and and so that we don't go into a deficit right now we're expected to have a deficit fully use our fund balance within the next five years so we're we're trying to prevent that we're addressing what's what we call our structural deficit each year we cannot raise the revenue to meet our expenses so we're we're right-sizing our expenditures uh so that they they match better uh an appropriate amount of revenue we we can raise um so the ls so the whole presentation is on the website the entire presentation and in the meeting we we talked about restructuring the current debt um and we also spoke about
062you know we answered the question if we do restructure this debt is it going to affect our ability to go out and and raise debt for capital projects in the next few years and so we we showed a hypothetical situation where we would go out and borrow more debt maybe in two or three years and could we still manage that and so that was shown for illustration purposes but right now we have no intent to go out and raise more money other than this restructure of 13 million seven and the one question came up uh that we're assuming that we're going to raise taxes 3.4 percent over the next 10 years that was a hypothetical example that we used we raise taxes to match how our expenses are raised so we just use for hypothetical
063purposes what the act one index is right now but we're you know we we try to raise our taxes to match what our expenses how our expenses go up in terms of how this is going to affect the tax rate it's it's really going to depend on each year uh the purpose of this restructure is to uh address the structural deficit so again we're running a deficit each year we're eating into our fund balance each year so so we're addressing that by the restructure the tax rate stands alone we we have to look at that each year to see to see what the effect is but we won't have this heavy burden on our budget from from the debt service thank you okay all right we'll continue um with a policy committee report thank you
064miss walkman as the board chair of policy committee this is the summary from the march 23 2002 policy meeting which met in room b 226 at the strathaven middle middle school uh committee chairs that were present were miss walkman miss holbert miss buckowski smith and myself uh mr kevin henry was also in attendance as was our superintendent and our school solicitor kyle berman in addition our administrative chair dr sandberg following the approval of the minutes from the previous policy meeting the committee revisited policies 108 which is about the adoption of textbooks and 109 which is about resource materials as second uh as second readings following some revisions specific to specific to policy 109 the committee was in unanimous agreement to advance both policies to the full board at the school board meeting for adoption on
065april 25th legislative meeting which is tonight the policy committee took questions from the community listened and responded to concerns specifically to specific to those policies 108 and 109 and how they might best be used to empower teachers to provide instruction on matters related to diversity equity and inclusion next the policy committee took procedural steps related to policy 0-1-1 concerning board governance standards which the committee agreed to advance the full school board of directors in order to propose that be repealed and replaced using the most current guidance provided by the pennsylvania school board association also known as psba next the policy committee discussed its considerations for an electronic device aka a cell phone policy that the board chair myself intends to propose to this district dr marseille and kyle berman furnished examples of existing policies and
066proposed policy language for consideration in advance of the meeting the committee discussed how such a policy might affect students teachers and administrators at each of the various schools and specifically how such a policy might be enforced different among the elementary to the middle school to the high school the committee agreed that it would further examine the documents in preparation for our next committee meeting which you already heard this wednesday and make a plan for soliciting administrative and teacher feedback in the meantime finance finally the policy committee talked about preliminary considerations for a revised attendance policy that would provide increased latitude and discretion for students to be excused from school due to religious mental health and other reasons the committee discussed the nature of the input thus far received from students on this issue as well
067as the legal parameters surrounding compulsory school attendance and how students are already coded as present and absent under various circumstances and more broadly the challenges associated with students making up missed school work following absences from school that a possible new policy might seek to to address our next meeting again it's this wednesday at on april 27th at 7 7 p.m in the middle school b226 please come especially if you're interested in discussing cell phone policies and the other policies that are on this week's agenda thank you miss lance next we have the uh psba update um mrs witkowski smith um psba the pennsylvania school boards association has just completed its annual state of the education report and uh overall the state of pennsylvania oh i'm sorry thank you all right psba report this is uh
068from psba's state of education report and uh i've included parts of the uh report that are that are mostly important to our district so uh overall uh parents are satisfied with the way that uh schools have handled learning during cobit and at most at this time most schools in the state are open and students are participating in in-person learning some of the challenges schools are facing one is that there has been a loss of in-person enrollment due to students attending remote charter schools and this is for the state overall us this in the state special education population continues to grow in the state of pennsylvania truancy has increased during due to remote learning there continues to be staffing challenges significant teacher shortages exist across the country and significant staff shortages as well uh covet challenges
069continue uh continually updating health and safety plans has become cumbersome for schools to continue to do community division on covet responses exist and uh has caused some strife in some communities and uh schools are now uh you know having to balance social emotional learning with uh you know academic achievement so a student another challenge that schools in pennsylvania are facing is that it is the assessment process how to assess student progress during this time to identify learning gaps and identification of students who are in need of the most assistance there's also budgeting challenges that schools across the state are facing and that school budgets because they rely most almost exclusively on taxpayer revenues that schools are facing funding challenges across the state pennsylvania's contribution to school funding the state's contribution is one of the lowest
070in the country and schools in the state are feeling that and growth in mandated expenses such as pension funding and charter school payments continue to affect schools in the state at this time special education expenses outpace revenues for special education from state and federal agencies and the state and federal funding is actually decreasing at this time so overall across the state fund balances are being drained due to increasing expenses that school districts are facing and that information was gleaned from participating families and chief of school administrators you thank you uh ms wikowski smith sobering assessment certainly um i believe the uh there is not a wellness advisory committee um update today no meeting tomorrow thank you uh delaware county community college uh liaison uh mrs mulberry yeah last month i attended a meeting to hear
071from with other representatives throughout delaware county um to hear from five nominees for two dccc board of trustees openings and tonight we will vote to approve the two most highly regarded nominees thank you and that brings us to the delaware county intermediate unit update mr cutis um two things of interest from the last board meeting uh two two things of interest to this district one is the uh the contribution from this district to dciu uh board budget and it actually remains unchanged and has been unchanged for several years now um the other item of interest would be there's five uh members of the board being voted on for uh from the member district says to be voted on to the dciu board and i believe that vote is tonight so [Music] there's one absolute new
072member uh the rest are returning members thank you mr cutis uh and then a delaware county school board legislative council update miss what what's up do you have an uh this evening um i just have one announcement i sent out emails that they're having the legislative breakfast and it's open to all administrators from schools as well as the board um it's a time for networking and um to meet other board members from different districts across the county and so hopefully we'll get people from our board besides me to come and also spring advocacy day which was announced where they're going to washington to to promote educational advocacy with charter schools special ed and it's you can either go in person or do it virtually and that's it thank you i do encourage um board members
073anyone who can come to the local legislative breakfast it is a really good opportunity for face time with our local elected officials um you know we we heard the report um the sort of state of the union report on the status of uh what schools are faced with and the challenges and uh this meeting includes people who make decisions on that funding that um districts in pennsylvania sorely need uh so anybody who is available i really encourage you to go uh let's see that brings us to uh that was our last item on update so that takes us to personnel we have uh six items for action and personnel this evening are there any items on the list that anyone in the board would like to separate from the rest none okay uh first in
074retirements and resignations we have the approval of the retirement of dr citarelli jones director of education we have the resignation of janine shea language arts teacher at the middle school and the resignation of bruce vogel maintenance carpenter we also have the approval this evening of a resolution to elect dr james conley as assistant superintendent and we have the approval of the appointment of andrew benzing as the director of stem teaching learning and innovation we have a change in the retirement date for mary fergura assistant to the superintendent as stipulated in the agenda we have the approval of four leaves of absence as listed in the agenda and we have the approval of two changes of assignment as listed all items in this section are attached or described in the agenda do i have a motion
075[Music] any discussion on these items i would simply like to offer my uh very uh sincere support to our candidates for the assistant superintendent and for our direct director of stem and that very long title that comes after it we have two phenomenal candidates with us this evening uh and so i hope that um my fellow board members will welcome them as well um dr dr marshay did you want to offer any comments here or uh later in the agenda i'll do it after the board okay uh let's see any other discussion on on tonight's items okay um would you please take a roll call mr henry hi miss holbert hi mr cutis hi miss lance hi miss vote miss whitsett aye ms winkowski smith hi dr grandy aye miss walkman aye personal items pass
076by a vote of nine to zero thank you um i'll say a few words and i wanna thank the board for their vote and the work that lies ahead for the district we are fortunate as we think about candidates as we choose them they also choose us and we welcome them to this community in a different capacity for those who've been here for some time and for those who we welcome to our family who are brand new to us um so with that because i um don't want mr kudus to say anything about my length of time that i'm talking um so with that um dr conley i'd love if you can come and introduce yourself and say a few words uh uh to this board and to this uh community i'm really smiling underneath
077this you just can't you just can't see it [Music] well good evening everyone my name is dr james conley and i am now the assistant superintendent of wellingford's swarthmore school district i'm very excited so thank you so i'd like to thank certainly the the school board and dr marseille for this wonderful opportunity i'd also like to thank the wallingford swarthmore staff students and community for welcoming me throughout this process i look forward to working with all of you developing relationships with each of you and contributing to the outstanding effort you put forth into making this such a wonderful place every day during the interview process one of the things that impressed me the most about your district was your focus on student success and student wellness and understanding and teaching the whole child as an
078educator for the past 25 years i've always deeply been committed to doing just that for our students academically socially and emotionally and i immediately knew this is the place i wanted to be to the members of the school board i look forward to getting to know each of you and working very closely with you as we learn about our district's goals and me helping helping you to achieve them i look forward to partnering with you dr marseille and the rest of our leadership team to get to know our excellent schools staff students and community as we look ahead the district has recently completed audits of equity curriculum and communication over the past few months the data will help to inform our strategic plan that we'll be working on this fall and throughout that process we
079will engage all of our community stakeholders so that everyone has a voice for what direction they would like to see our district go in the future i'm truly grateful for this opportunity and look forward to officially joining the wallingfords baltimore school district team this summer but unofficially my work begins tonight however none of this will be possible without my wonderful family and they're here tonight support of my wife and best friend michelle my son's jimmy jr he is at home doing homework uh my son joey and my son john patrick and certainly my mother-in-law terry and my sister rose and her family are watching watching at home none of this would be possible without my family and truly i bring my family to join your family so thank you so much and i'm very excited
080to get started we welcome you and we welcome the whole family look forward to meeting them thank you at this time i um talking about family um i'd love to bring andrew benzing to the microphone who's been an integral part of our family many of you know the role he's played as a classroom teacher department chair the year where he was on special assignment we're really excited that he took the calling and put his hat in the ring um so uh please share a few words with us so thank you and good evening my name is andrew benzing i've been part of the district here um i did the math in the meantime for 21 years and i'm thrilled to be here with you this evening i would like to thank the board of directors
081and dr marseille for this opportunity as i mentioned in private session i came here as a young 20-something year old thinking i had all the answers a lot like most young 20-something-year-olds here i am now a late 40-something year old i'll leave it at that um realizing that there's you know far less that i know now than what i did back then and even so there's much much more to learn i'm grateful for all of my mentors and my colleagues some of whom are here tonight that gave me so many lessons to reflect on but i'm really grateful for my own students who taught me more through the years and probably i possibly even taught them they don't even know it don't tell them that but i learned so many lessons i'm grateful for that
082these interactions in general appreciation that's brought me here today stem's not about time on computer screens or repeating algorithms on nauseum until you have it down really fast i really believe that stem is about creativity tinkering problem solving and taking on the challenge and this is a district that as long as i've been here has always taken on the challenge and i really firmly believe it's our role as educators to foster this mindset and i look forward to taking that challenge on um with my community um and i'm very humbled and very appreciative for that fraternity so thank you so much again we welcome you both into into our community into our family here at wssd those who are continuing with us and those who are joining us anew we'll continue with our student services
083section of the agenda we have two items for approval and student services uh are there any items on the list anyone on the board would like to separate from the rest seeing seeing none we have first the approval of a related services provider contract for one student for the 2021-2022 school year and we have the approval of the 2022 graduation video production is listed we have the approval also of the 2022 extended school year tuition contracts for seven students also uh as attached or as described in the agenda do i have a motion uh that was um thank you do i have a second second thank you dr grande any discussion on these items uh see none um miss holbert hi mr cutis bye miss lentz hi miss vote hi miss switzer hi miss makowsky
084smith hi dr grandy hi mr henry hi miss walkman hi items pass nine to zero all right we have 14 items for approval and finance are there any items on this list that anyone would like to separate from the rest seeing none here we go uh first we have the approval of payments to vendors from march 19 2022 through april april 14 2022 is stipulated we have acknowledgement of receipt of the march 2022 financial statements for funds 10 32 51 and 81 as stipulated we have acknowledgement of receipt of the treasurer's report for march 2022 we have the approval of budget transfers as stipulated we have the approval of the delaware county community college budget budget resolution for the 2022-22 school year stipulated we have the approval of the agreement with the delaware county intermediate
085unit for internet service for july 1 2022 through june 30 2023 we have the approval of the dell financial services lease proposal dated april 8 2022 as stipulated final documents are subject to solicitor review we have the approval of the removal of obsolete technology equipment by easy pc llc we have the approval of the design implementation and maintenance of the new point voice mail system through e-com networks we have the approval of crozier health sports medicine proposal for a three-year term commencing uh july 1 2022 through june 30th 2025. this contract two is subject to solicitor review this is the athletic trainers contract and a continuation of that existing contract we have the approval of the e-com service agreement for district-wide phone hardware software maintenance for the 2022-2023 school year we have the appointment of
086mary martin business manager as the authorized signer for the fulton bank lockbox account this appointment is on an interim basis until the signer for the 2022-2023 school year is determined and dually appointed we have the authorization for the administration to work with pfm financial advisors llc as financial advisors raymond james as underwriter placement agent and fox rothschild as bond council and solicitor to proceed with restructuring a portion of the school district's outstanding debt we have approval of a contract with a to you services inc for a new turnstile at the srs basketball court all items in the section are as attached or described in the agenda uh do i have a motion thank you mr cutis a second second i heard uh miss woods up first i think and any discussion on these items dr
087graf so i just want to briefly follow up on the discussion about debt restructuring um you know i think that this is an important opportunity for the district to move forward with um as was mentioned earlier all that we're voting on this evening is not to actually restructure debt but to actually engage with our financial consultants to look at look at our options and continue to look at the costs obviously you know the costs of debt restructuring can change we're not at a point where we can be locking in on any current terms that does take a little bit of time uh but i i certainly think it's a good idea to move forward you know i think that the problem we face as miss martin laid out is that we have a very aggressive
088schedule right now to repay our debt over a very short period of time um you know it's like trying to pay down your house mortgage way faster than you can afford to do so it's not that we don't plan to pay the mortgage but rather i think we do need to think about the timeline in which we do and so we do have a budget problem that i think is relatively acute in nature meaning there's a really there's a tremendous amount of stress on the budget between now and 2028 it gets a little better in 2029 and then it gets substantially better in 2030 and so we're not talking about restructuring all the debt it's a portion of the debt as ms martin pointed out about 13 of the 50 million in outstanding debt and
089the timeline i think that is being discussed is certainly reasonable pushing that out until about 2036. i think the 2042 that was mentioned earlier was more of a modeling exercise to see if in fact we needed to borrow additional money for capital projects in the future what would the repayment of that debt service look like and so um and we're really talking about having one portion of the debt go out to about 2036. um i do think at the same time like we need to really look carefully at how we think about this in terms of the sort of long-term budget view we've had a lot of capital needs that have not been addressed in the district and we can't continue to defer maintenance on things we have some projects uh that we've been looking
090at doing for quite some time so we do need to put this also in the context of our capital fund as well and when we think about decompressing some of the short-term budget pressures we should also be thinking about how do we adequately fund some of our capital needs going forward you know unfortunately some of the cost estimates that we had on capital needs was done before we got into an inflationary environment so i think we also need to look at what's on that five-year plan and think carefully about what what costs might be and i would encourage you know our director of operations to be discussing some of that with our district engineer to make sure that we're on top of what we think our capital needs will be so there's a lot of
091moving parts as we think about debt restructuring but i think it makes a ton of sense to move forward i think it helps address a lot of short-term issues but we have to think about it all in the context of a longer time horizon for the district and figuring out what it means for you know how we're able to support our capital needs going forward alongside getting to a point of structural balance in our annual operating budget so thank you thank you dr grundy any other discussion okay uh seeing none um miss laura could you please take a look mr cutis aye ms lentz aye ms vote miss what's up hi miss mikowski smith hi dr grandy hi mr henry hi mr holt miss holbert aye ms walkman hi finance items pass nine to zero
092thank you uh we have two items for action in the other category uh are there any of those on this list anyone would like to separate see none first we have the approval of the appointment of two new members to the board of trustees of the delaware county community college as stipulated and we also have the approval of nominees to be elected as members of the delaware county intermediate unit board for a three-year term beginning july 1st 2022 through june 30th 2025. um all items in this section are as attached or described in the agenda do i have emotion so moved with um thank you and do i have a second thank you mr henry uh any discussion not mr fabora could you also please take smith hi dr grandy aye mr henry hi miss
093holbert aye mr cutis aye ms walkman aye items passed nine to zero uh thank you mr uh now we have time for uh comments from the audience for items that are not on the agenda is there anyone that would like to speak tonight about a topic not on the agenda dave sarator 620 morris lane but you've heard that already back in january i attended a facilities and finance committee meeting and um i made mention of the the fact that the the school board or the or the school district has eliminated one of the two televised meetings and at that time as a non-parent living in the school district i made the suggestion that the agendas for this meeting be moved up at least a week so that the community members can look at the agenda
094and possibly you know ask questions you know shoot an email whatever the case is and it's been we're working on the fourth month now and they're still just being posted on fridays so i would like that's incorrect um on the website they're on fridays i lo trust me i look and i need you to trust me when i tell you that when we when you and i'm sorry for interrupting you sure um with respects to that strong you're incorrect um because when you made that proposal at that meeting which i attended i know and we discussed that yes we said as a team we believe there is validity in marriage in that particular request sure and we are going to work to make sure we get that um the last two meetings as a result
095of how quickly we've been moving to wrap up things at the end of the calendar year for new hires that yes you are correct but when we went back that that's happened most recently where we were not able to honor um one community's request for posting that forward so those previous have been posted earlier than the friday before that uh before that monday okay so the agenda for this evening's meeting was no when i'm saying that you said you went all the way back to january no the meeting that i attended this everyone was in agreement yeah i was very happy about it i'm saying this particular meeting you're absolutely right but we the last time we did post it significantly earlier okay yeah i must have missed that i i was actually i listened
096to you and i agree that we're going to work on doing that however we did not do that for this last meeting because of some time constraints but it's not because we weren't listening i agree with that and i didn't suggest you weren't listening i just wanted to make sure sure we were remembering to to get them posted in time so the community members can look them over and have an opportunity to to contact you that's all well we'd love for you to bring some friends there and i always say that so when individuals speak about um about we want more individuals involved right and you come out here and i've said this to parents at head affairs meeting i said bring a friend and then that friend could bring a friend and then that
097friend can bring a friend absolutely here we're gonna try to answer questions so the room is empty all the beautiful children left um right but we are open to that and i'd rather have that here than through the individual emails that i get i agree with that too um one one other thing real quick i've sent a number of emails because you you know me well enough and is there a revised um budget that's floating around that the public can take a look at at this time because one of my questions is what changes have been made since the 3.4 tax increase proposal back in january i think it was and we've had a number of retirements or retirements were are going to happen this year and how will they impact the 3.4 increase that
098was proposed and then i would also be curious about the debt restructuring how it impacts that because i heard possibly we could save 1.8 million dollars this coming school year if we refinanced and honestly the way i looked at that that ate into most of the proposed increase so me doing math in my head 3.4 became one i don't know if that's true but i'd like to better understand the effects of retirements and the possibility of refinancing on the budget and if there's a budget a working budget that we're allowed to take a look at i have one minute or and that's pretty much all i had thank you thank you uh well we were anticipating your uh your attendance at the meeting to address the retirement uh but you were not there but i
099know the reasons behind that but we want to thank you um so we'll get that to you and um the questions in which you raised will be addressed at the next facilities of the facilities meeting i have 30 seconds finance meeting i should say not facility i have 30 and one thing i wanted to address really quickly as a former board member and as kyle would recall we were we inherited every building was a wreck in the school district and we went through hard times to rectify a number of them i am sympathetic i i totally understand what you're saying about capital needs but i just like to say as a board member from then our school district looks great and the amount of needs we have today are far less than we had then
100i always hate to hear people say we need to raise funds for capital reserve i understand that and it's a smart thing to do but i don't want that hanging over the heads of board members when they're thinking of tax increases i know it's important i get it i really do but and thank you thank you mr sarah right uh do we have any old business this evening any new business this evening okay and with that they uh want to thank everyone for coming out this evening and the meeting is addressed