001welcome to the Wattsburg Area School District where we are student centered and future focused for world class education uh I now call to order the regular board meeting for Monday March 17th would you all please stand for 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 may I have a roll call please Mr Blazer present Mr brumagen present Mrs Burlingham here Mrs heatherington here Mrs Lee here Mr morv here Dr push here Mr Williams here Mr Young present uh the board did meet uh prior to tonight's meeting uh an executive session uh for the purpose of discussing the WEA teacher contract negotiations uh we'll start off on the agenda
002this evening uh first order of business uh I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda as presented or amended Nicole so moved Blazer second all in favor please say I I oose nay motion carries uh next order uh to approve minutes from the regular board meeting on February 17th I have a motion so move push check Nicole second all in favor please say I I oppose nay motion carries uh also to approve minutes from the March 17th work session may I have a motion to that end Blazer second all in favor please say I I oppose name motion carries uh next on the agenda is school [Applause] reports uh Mr President uh at this time I'd like to introduce our high school principal Mr hudnell and he is going um to uh give us
003an update on all things sen high school and the Bobcats Dr you might have to turn it on yeah there's a just click it I think towards you y there you go Dr Berlin thank you I have three items this evening we have two student presentations and one quick uh data summary involving Student Activities so our first presentation this evening will be Gabby Matson Gabby come on up um hi everybody my name is Gabby Madson and today I would like to share mine and Chris's H hayne's 20time project with you our 20time project focuses on expressing our gratitude towards the teacher teachers at senica who we feel play a pivotal role in our academic and personal growth my project partner Carissa Haynes and I have chosen to collaborate with Mr hunold to develop meaningful ideas
004for teacher appreciation week some of the ideas we brainstorm include organizing a cart filled with a variety of snacks to distribute to teachers on a designated day um another idea we had involves hosting a send off similar to the ones we have for sports teams with the drum line and concert brand can play this would give all students an opportunity show to show their appreciation to the teachers We Believe with the combined efforts of the student council and Leadership these initiatives will contribute to creating a memorable week for our teachers who have given so much to helping students become the best they can be thank you nice work Gabby Gabby and Carissa met with me probably uh several weeks ago maybe over that and initially they had a different type of project they were working
005on and uh as we started digging into the logistics of it we rerouted and uh we saw an opportunity to join forces between Administration and students to help uh plan and promote teacher appreciation week and I tell you there are things that they thought of that I could have never thought of in a thousand years so they've been extremely helpful for me in planning uh Teacher Appreciation Week will'll be coming up here shortly so our next uh presenter you know senica has a strong tradition in our theater department and that tradition is going to continue with this young man coming up next his name is Bren beus and he's going to talk about the upcoming theater good evening everybody my name is Bren beckus and I am a junior and a member of the senica
006high school uh musical theater I am here to tell you about our show today which is Little Shop of hores and tell you a little bit about our program so I am one of the male leads Seymour kbor Seymour is an orphaned and timid florist a little sneak peek into our Musical he works at mushnik's skid flower shop and he discovers a strange and interesting plant and this plant has an unusual diet so our casting crew have been working very hard our set looks fantastic our props are amazing this is actually an example of one of our props right here our cast has been working very hard going over lines and choreography and singing and I am very proud I'd say it's one of our most hardw worked on musicals within the last couple years
007I've been inside so our crew is stent LED and then they designed and created four plant puppets from the size of a paint can to the size of one able to fit a human and the one I'm wearing right now I will Puppeteer but there are two other people that will be puppeteering the rest of the plants our show is on March 28th and 29th and we will have a basket raffle before during and after the show as well as a bake sale tickets are reserved seating and can be purchased using the QR codes that are on on our Flyers so we can hand out to you does anybody have any questions regarding ticket purchasing or anything about our program I'm very excited to come see it I can't wait thank you so do you
008play the young Seymour I do and then is that the is that the smallest one this is the plant this is Audrey 2 okay so Audrey 2 came from Outer SP yeah came from outer space and he's here to eat people and take over the world and I raised the plant throughout the show oh okay all right I knew there was a I'm having a lot of fun we have a great cast and crew we have a great time and we're working very hard so who made who made that our crew is with a bunch of different people we have a bunch of artistic members who put a lot of time into this took maybe I don't know five days but it looks really good it really does look good everyone did a good job
009all right will that be it do you have a favorite song I have a lot I'd say Suddenly Seymour is my favorite yeah all right thank you everybody very nice look forward to [Applause] that okay uh one other thing I would like to highlight before we move on uh just about the the character that exists within our students you know obviously everybody knows I took over the principal job here in January we we had a dance we called it the Morp dance and it really struck me uh as that dance was going on we didn't have one problem the entire evening and the best part the dance ended was it 7 to 10: I think ended at 10:00 and about 9:30 without prompting all the sen kids started cleaning up they cleaned up the chairs
010they cleaned the gym they helped the DJ they did everything so you know to see that occur without me you know going over to him saying you know get this done get that done was was really impressive and these two students are just an example of that so impressive students but even better people so my last piece here tonight as we're finishing up winter sports uh and activities going into the spring I wanted to get a quick snapshot uh to see where we're at in terms of student involvement so the way we looked at student involvement was you know sports activities clubs Roc and these types of things for me give our students the why that sometimes needs to be attached to the educational process so things outside our regular curriculum that students can involve
011themselves in that all of a sudden they start getting involved in school in terms of academically it gives them a reason to start going to school so these are the numbers we're looking at here uh n9th grade you're looking at uh 66% of our students almost seven out of 10 are involved in some activity in one form or another and you can see I outlin them there as you go down 61 63 53% for our senior class six out of 10 students walking our hallways are involved in some sort of sport activity club or Roc okay but when you throw in the votch right so votch again that's one of those academic programs that gives our students the why for going to school you know and anytime you have that when students start building intrinsic
012motivation in what they're doing that's a really powerful uh indicator for academic growth so when you look at our nth grade we're at 66% look at 10th grade almost eight out of 10 kids in our hallway are walk in our hallways are involved in something which is really really impressive same thing with 11th 12th we're at 64% and overall when you factor in votc obviously they don't have votc in nth grade but when you factor in all those things you you go well what's it look like for our entire student body basically seven out of 10 kids right so that's you know and that gives us important information one seven out of 10 kids are involved in something so that's a kudos to our advisers our coaches our guidance counselors Mr Engler as the former
013principal for getting everybody involved that also lets us know that there's some kids that aren't involved and we want to identify who they are and do our best to get them involved because you know this isn't just my opinion School culture is built this way and when you look at really high performing schools you'll notice that the more kids involved the higher uh the academic outcomes usually are so that quick uh snapshot as far as the data goes uh does anybody have any questions uh I I do I actually I don't have any data so I'm curious um I think in the terms of sports and now when I graduated here in 1998 our class sizes were a little bit larger um but we had ninth grade football we had JV football we had JV
014well I don't I think we had maybe we didn't have JB soccer we might have only had one soccer team I don't recall um I think sports are kind of explanatory activities in clubs what would be examples of what activities and clubs are popular in our school uh and then I was going to circle back to what do we offer for JV anything anymore do we have JV teams if so what what sports or do we have those participation levels high enough for that thank yeah so I'll start with sports you know I think across the board county wise at least in my former job uh JV teams aren't as present as they used to be that is it that's a fact for sure and as far as our athletic programs go off the top
015of my head we do have JV teams for uh our basketball programs I believe football has one I think soccer used to they no longer have that anymore so I think Sports participation is declining overall but for us for me you know it's not one size fits all so there's different Avenues and we want to make sure we provide different avenues for all of our students to get involved whether it's sports for instance the musical uh plays we have a club called envir Environ uh you know various clubs that all our kids can get involved in and and that's what I look for is to make sure we we're getting you involved in some capacity to do something so you know when you walk around our building tonight and know Mr angler is aware really
016aware of this there are kids everywhere um you know when you think about even our our Arts programs you know I think a lot of people think of well yeah the the people on the stage but it's not just the people on the stage there are countless kids Behind the stage that are doing really important things and I feel like this is purely anecdotal but I feel like there's like 40 or 50 of them because they're everywhere they are literally everywhere so those types of things really add to our school culture and you know for me going into next year I'm going to keep a close eye on our eighth graders coming into ninth to see where they're at club- WISE because as you can look at those numbers you go well you know as
017they get older they do sort of subside a little bit right but I think the key is getting them in ninth grade exposing them to a bunch of different things and hopefully finding something they can hang their hat on and give them a reason to really really perform well in school yeah another thing that I feel like I want to point out that I noticed that we are doing here in Wattsburg too is when you think about the activ we also have the leadership that work together to fundraise and put on these big events in in our community that brings the community together and it's pulling out everyone from different aspects different Dynamics which I think just shows the growth we have in our community to bring a strong culture of family and community so
018that's another thing I think I appreciate about what we do like our the carnival that we have the end of the year you know fire that they do and everyone shows up to that but it's showing our kids even if they're not involved in activities Community coming together celebrating what we do in Wattsburg so that's just another thing that I feel like just pointing those out that those are important things that in involve involvement that don't do sports or activities it's just leading and growing leaders so yeah absolutely in fact you know I mentioned the Morp Dan answer earlier how impressed I was with our students ran by our leadership class and uh you know really truly student ran as well you know they did everything I know that because I had to interact with
019them to plan the event and they really did everything so yeah absolutely any other questions or comments from Mr hudel just appreciate your effort to appreciate your efforts to uh get to know the students settle into the principal ship um very much very ve very much um enthusiastic uh uh enthusiasm over in the in the high school and um we hope that uh this will continue uh to grow and and and just get stronger um under your leadership so thanks for all your efforts absolutely thank you Dr BL thank you Mr ad all right next on the agenda is guest and citizen comments do we have anyone signed up for this evening all right so we'll move on uh and recognize Dr kimberland for the superintendent report I do not have a report this evening
020Mr President thank you Dr bruan uh the chair now recognizes Mr Vicky bendik for the business administrator report thank you Mr President uh for this evening I just have the treasures reports that were presented at the work session uh so for general fund at the end of February uh 12,910 3775 um I do not have a year-to date budget versus actual report this month I was traveling and working on contract negotiation um data crunching so there time did not permit for that report I will have an updated report next month that will include um February and March capital projects Treasures report in that account uh $17.22 the cafeteria fund has a total of$ 738,000 was not prepare not ready to be submitted yet so I will have an updated report next month with all of
021that information and then the Student Activities balance at the end of February uh total in all of the Student Activity accounts 78 I'm sorry $4,875 23 uh and then for the bills for this evening um checks written prior to the work session last week check's already written general fund $95 , 51046 and cafeteria has $ 48,8 180 in bills then checks written between the work session and the board meeting general fund $ 27,9 2241 there were no capital projects or cafeteria bills written between the meetings the bill list uh for board approval tonight for general fund uh that L total list totals 40 488 , 36558 no capital projects and cafeteria $ 46,7 1867 and those are all of the um all the information that I have does anyone have any questions from Mrs bendig
022on her report hearing none I'll entertain a motion to approve the business report payments and invoices as presented so move push Che second Burlingham all in favor please say I i oppos n motion carries there are no under items under legal advisement for this evening so the chair will now recognize Dr push Jack for finance thank you Mr President we have one item this evening under finance that is to approve the monthly budget transfer from budget to actual report as attached so moved Nicole second any question I just wanted to mention that there is no attachment because there is no budgetary transfer prepared not so I'll withdraw my motion motion withdrawn that's all I have Mr pres that's all thank you Dr PJ moving on to building and sinking grounds uh the chair now recognizes
023Mr Blazer thank you Mr President uh I have two items for this evening without objection I'll move both of those together uh A is for security glass for exterior door project to approve the purchase of security glass for exterior door project at senica high school from committed funds for Safety and Security as uh attached and facility use requests also uh seen below uh for Miss Lucy's dancing school so moved Nicole second any questions on these two items hearing none all in favor please say I I oppose name motion carries thank you Mr Blazer thank you Mr President uh the chair now recognizes Miss Nicole Lee for personnel thank you Mr President um I have five items for tonight that I would like to move as one motion uh they include a appointments as listed on
024both the agenda and the addendum b resignations as listed C leave requests as listed D conference requests as listed e tuition reimbursement as listed F cafeteria head cook position Mo MOA G job descriptions as listed and H addendum for ESS substitute list additions so moved second push check any questions from the board on any of the items presented by Miss Lee hearing none all in favor please say I I oppose nay and those motions carry thank you Mrs Lee the chair now recognizes Miss Britney Burlingham for policy thank you Mr President I have two items underneath policy tonight um a is the first reading of the policies to approve the first reading of policies as outlined and attached and then B we have our second reading of policies to approve the second Reading and Review
025of the policies as outline attached and that is all I have Blazer second any any questions on the policies this presented hearing none all in favor please say I I post name carries thank you very much M Burlingham the chair now recognizes Mr morve for curriculum Mr President there are three items under curriculum uh this evening I'd like to move them as one motion uh if there's no objection uh the first item is item a alternate uh education for disruptive Youth Services that's the agreement between uh Wattsburg area school district and the Bethesda the Lutheran Services per the attachment um Item B is the educational services agreement again between Wattsburg Area School District and The Meadows Psychiatric Center uh for Educational Services and the third is the substitute staff services between Wattsburg area school district
026and the uh ESS Northeast for uh agreement for substitute staff those are the three items I have Mr President so moved Blazer second uh any questions on these three items hearing none all in favor please say I I oppose n motion carries thank you Mr President thank you Mr Mor uh the chair now recognizes Mr Jesse Williams for technology Mr President I have nothing for tonight thank you Mr Williams the chair now recognizes Mr Greg bragen for transportation Mr President I have two items for tonight and uh I would like to do them separately since the second item does increase our expenses uh item a transportation request to approve the transportation request and ratification of field trip since last meeting meeting as attached so moved second push check any questions on the transportation requests hearing
027none all in favor please say I I oppose nay Mr President my second item for tonight is the addendum the addendum to the transportation contract uh for the Duram School Services as attached for the transportation of our pupils so moved Mor second any questions on the amended trans Transportation contract Mr President I I have just one question and that is I know with ins side of this amendment we're going to be doing a increase in rate but my question is is how much is that rate getting into the driver's hands as in the amount of money so for example if I raise it by $3 for rate does that mean $28 sense is getting in the driver's hands for that rate or are we increasing the rate and Durham is the the company is taking
028a large percentage of that I was just curious on that uh rate percentage should I say it is my understanding that um the total we agreed upon or discussed a flat dollar amount rate increase to the drivers which then translates into a per run increase on in the contract and that what we said is going to the driver will then drive up their benefit costs for their um uh so you know Social Security like health insurance and all of that all of not maybe not health insurance but um all of the the F right like so that increases and I don't know what their retirement looks like or what they're so we agreed to a flat dollar amount raise which is quite healthy for the drivers um the percentage increase is not anywhere near the
029increase to the driver so I feel confident that all of that is going to the drivers okay because they're feeling the pain that we're feeling not being a to especially if we want to keep bus drivers obviously running I I want to get as much money into their hand is not necessarily overhead cost of a company of some sort okay any other questions on the amended Transportation contract hearing none all in favor please say I I oppose nay motion carries thank you Mr bragen chair now recognizes Miss Lee heatherington for athletic and extracurricular oh I'm sorry I apologize Mr President um I have one two three four five items tonight that I would like to move at once if with no objection and they are a volunteer list additions as you can see on the
030agenda with a couple um addendum additions there is athletic Training Services to approve um athletic Training Services agreement between UPMC sports and Wattsburg Area School District um as listed in the attachment there is C the athletic appointments as listed uh D extracurricular appointments as listed and E game help list additions as listed so moved second push check any questions on those five items Mr President if I make um just a little plug for the UPMC agreement with our athletic trainer um Todd is doing a uh very good job job and uh I would just uh recommend to the board that we continue to keep that agreement in place thank you thank you Mr Mor any other questions or comments hearing none all in favor please say I I oppose n and those motions carry thank
031you Miss heathering Jun there are no items under miscellaneous for this evening so the board chair will now recognize Mr Steven morv for the irie County Technical School joint operating committee report Mr President this is the February joint operating committee report so I try to give you a brief overview of what transpired at that meeting um that if you also recall was the uh meeting of the 99 day so some of you that may have taken a tour and uh visited the facilities as well as heard a presentation by Dr uh Mr LTE uh kind of as a state of the union I'll try to summarize some of those points for some of the board as well as for the uh public use as well uh first off though I'd like to uh recognize that
032we had three students under the January uh student um recog recognition program that the tech school does we have Katherine Cesario under Auto Body um Allison Ken connect under health assistant and then josin good now under Hospitality management those are the three students from Wattsburg School District that were recognized in January um just also some updated items for the tech school coming up next month is their nocd testing and again that's the technical testing that gets them a cred or their uh credits for the U classes that they do take so that's coming up for students uh next month which is frankly very soon probably in about 3 weeks to Mid mid April usually um we also renewed an articulation agreement with rosale Technical College which allows uh students that are taking classes now to
033get credit at that Technical School uh going forward so uh very similar to our kind of um dual enrollment or rmu situation where those uh U credits are transferable to rosale Technical College uh and then a few items under the State of the Union as uh Mr ly might have presented uh during that day but reiterated for us um currently there are 956 students in the tech school um and projected to go over a th000 next year 1,50 is kind of their projection um right now 12 of the 20 programs are currently full and uh within the last uh five years um we've talked about here as well as staff turnover in the last five years they've turned over 57 positions out of 69 um through various reasons retirements uh uh teachers going back into
034Private Industry um Etc you name the reasons it's it's part of their uh the world that's happening there at the tech school um in addition there's uh We've uh in the last few years if you recall the new programs Sports Therapy emergency and protective services and then heavy equipment that was approved as well and we remember that the heavy equipment program won't kick in until 2026 in the fall of 2026 and then we also expanded the health assistant program cosmetal and construction trades again if you recall those are now double versus the uh original single Labs is what they're called um and then uh through also the uh the tech school is also continuing to research grants uh I know the state uh apparently this past year has been more favorable to Tech schools regarding
035grants as uh so there's been more of those coming in uh We've renewed the Erie Community colleg uh agreement to use some of the facilities so that partnership has has been solidified as well as whatever addition funding paths the technical school is trying to find uh in addition to being funded by all uh 11 districts that uh go there um just also an update on the solar project I may have mentioned last year last month um the grant request was submitted um it was approved by the joint operating committee not the project just the grant request um so there'll be additional steps if that project is continuing to move forward I'll report on that as well um in addition as part of the uh uh growth there there is a small small project within the
036facility itself actually to renovate and upgrade the health lab um that is a uh another Capital project that's two $250,000 probably um and that's already within the budget allocation so that was already known um in the current budget so there's no additional monies that need to be uh um requested for that um and then lastly for 2026 uh which they done they did the recruiting which I recall was back in the fall and then in the spring there have an addition 530 applications that have been um presented into the tech school so obviously 12th graders will graduate out and then with the uh hence the um larger increase in student population uh with these new applications so um currently the uh um tech school is uh is booming I'll say and uh that's all I
037have Mr President unless there's any questions for me yeah any questions for Mr morv on this report yeah it was uh I know Mr Blazer was with me at the 99 lunch in and seeing the turnover numbers and then kind of chit chatting with staff as we work through and it's just a big transitional period and seeing the influx of students and the expansion of programming is all a positive um and and we're happy that you're able to bring this report uh every time you come back so thank you very much Mr Morgan absolutely Mr President thank you all right chair now recognizes Dr Andrew pushchak for the north cast North West Tri County Intermediate Unit report thank you Mr President I gave a brief report uh after the towards the end of the work
038session with particular numbers related to our district regarding the proposed preliminary budget for the IU uh the board of the IU did approve the preliminary budget so it'll now go out to the districts for review the Director of Finance met with superintendence met with the business administrators and met with the board so um I do have executive summary should anyone want to view that with the particular numbers um but other than that that was the main focus um and our next meeting will be March 26th so short report Mr President thank you any questions for Dr push all right hearing none I will'll now uh move on to board correspondence and dialogue does anyone have anything for the good of the order this evening Mr President if I can uh I know last week at
039the work session a shout out was given into um some of our winter sports programs in basketball um I want to uh shout out to to recognize again the success of winter sports but some sports like wrestling uh it's hard to read box scores when you see loss after loss after loss um doesn't tell the full story for a program like a wrestling team where it's really a one-on-one nature due to the small numbers that we have you know it's very tough to compete with full rosters and get box score wins as a team uh so so you have to look at it much more of a of a individual nature but also the fact that uh we had a first uh year coaching staff so I think an update on that is is uh
040to be given and um the fact that this board uh prior to me being on here did approve and vote for a women's team so I wanted to give a brief update on that as well so uh real quick women's wrestling one of the fastest growing Sports in the country uh NCAA division 1 finally sanctioned that as well this past year so you'll start seeing see uh and that growing as well the opportunity for women's wrestling when we talk about our High School sports activities and clubs uh for a school district like ours where money is finite and where our students don't have the resources to continue on in life uh women's wrestling right now is that opportunity for a lot of people the fact that it is in its infancy the fact that we
041happen to live in the Keystone State which is uh I'll say number one in wrestling in the United States or at least we try to be every year uh just puts you at the head of the class uh when you enter the recruiting portal so there's a lot of money there uh for that so I want to make sure that our residents and that our our our students are aware of that um we had a first year coaching staff we had coaching turnover this past year uh Nate Smith uh head coach Wattsburg alumni uh took the program over trying to build back to the Legacy that he learned when he was here for that program uh and I think coach Smith did an excellent job all the kids KS improved again even though box scores
042you know don't show it when you look at Team things uh he also brought in I'm not going to say he brought in through advertisement I suppose we were also able to get to uh Edinburgh University not Edinburgh uh Ganon University Wrestling alumni as coaches so one female wrestling coach and one male wrestling coach from the collegate level um and that was really good additions to our school district and to our uh students so uh I think they had an excellent first year coaching uh we are young we are small but the kids the student athletes all did really well so thank you for that and seeing the improved results at States and I assume we're going to go one more step up next year right that's always their goal climb one more step absolutely
043anyone have anything else before I take my turn uh I wanted to say I traveled down to Penn West uh Clarion on Saturday uh met up with um Mr Grove and Mr semra and the high school and middle school Science Olympiad teams uh really really really super proud of the kids uh and their participation in the insane amount of hard work that some of these students did uh for the Science Olympiad Regional competition um our high school team uh ended up fourth place uh they were only 11 points out of qualifying for States um had a great great group of kids lots of medals uh coming out of that program uh Mr samra's group with the Middle School uh ended up third place so they did qualify for States uh just like last year uh
044but but the interesting thing with that group of kiddos is a full team's 15 students participating in that program and there was only eight students from our middle school and I think I counted and if I'm wrong somebody will correct me but I I believe two well one individual student and one pair of students that both took on five events each uh and if you know the amount of work that goes into some of these events at the Science Olympiad that is a huge bite to take for students that are working through their daily studies as well so super impressive watching those kids um really happy to be able to go down and be a part of of supporting uh our staff and our students for that and and the notation I wanted to make
045was as I looked around at our students we had student athletes on our Science Olympiad team we had students that participate in our our theater and music programs on our the one thing they all had in common was the academics um and to have a program that is extracurricular that they can get involved in and compete on a regional and a state level where all of those other things come together and we just focus on the academic side uh and the Sciences is pretty awesome so I just want to make notation of that myself so does anyone have anything else for the good of the order hearing none I will entertain a motion to adjourn Nicole so moved Burlingham second all in favor please say i i posos n motion carries meeting is adjourned