001[Music] uh open the meeting promotion for uh waiver formality second questions uh number two is announcements republic tonight board met in executive session to discuss personnel litigation comments by members of the board just relate to the board agendas from say he's in the audience as well as mr jackson and that's the process are you sure always appreciate alums coming back to coach our kids um number four is items important information and discussion i'm sorry there's any comments but now to the board um 4.01 is the review of the annual audit chris everybody have a copy of the uh quality in front of yours to uh all right thanks good evening everybody my name is chris herm a partner with melee health we're the independent auditors for the year ended june 30 2021 very happy to
002be here with you tonight to present the audit results um i did you should all have a six page executive summary i figured this would be a little easier than going through the whole hundred page report i'll hit on the same highlights here so just going through the summary the first page the results of the audit the financial statement audit does express an unmodified opinion on the financial statements that's um also known as a clean opinion it's what you want to have it's the most positive opinion you can have on your financial statements what that essentially means is that in our opinion and the statements are free of any material misstatement they're a compliant gap that's generally accepted accounting principles they comply with all gatsby governmental accounting standards or pronouncements and there's just scope of
003limitations we come into the audit the very lengthy document request list to the business office everything from bank statements and reconciliations to every employee's w2 to invoices and receive transactions we did receive everything that we needed to fully conduct our audit the opinion did have one thing on it an emphasis of matter it's not a bad thing it's exactly what it sounds like it's our ability to emphasize a matter to a reader in this case that's just stating that for this year we implemented gatsby statement number 84 for fiduciary activities not a big deal mostly cosmetic has to do with the fiduciary funds which are your student activity and scholarship funds uh in the past in the financial statement we would always present just an asset as an offsetting liability uh the gas we changed
004the requirements for those activities and in the fiduciary activities we now show the cash being held by the school district for those activities and then instead of a liability it's a fundamental it's very similar to the way your general fund your food service your capital products are presented and then this year the the changes we actually show a revenue and expense statement for those as well so mostly cosmetic and it only impacts those activities no instances of no instances of non-compliance material the financial statements and no findings related to the audit if you did have any of those those would have to be presented in the report or in a separate letter we do not have those things we do review internal controls as part of our audit uh really anything that impacts key financial
005data receipts disbursements payroll bank reconciliations things of that nature and have no issues as part of the audit the uniform guidance audit also known as a single audit or the audit of federal awards again this is an unmodified opinion no issues in regards to the internal controls over the program we did have one sort of significant change here the major program we audited this year was the child nutrition cluster historically we tended to audit the title one or the special education cluster idea funds with the pandemic what we've seen across all the schools is that the child nutrition cluster the subsidies that school district received increased dramatically because all the children were fully covered by the program so there was no paid lunch it was all sort of subsidized so your revenue went 240 000
006in the past which was a relatively small amount to almost 700 000 this year so that was a program that hadn't seen a lot of audit activity in the past that we did look at this year again looking at eligibility criteria making sure those things are working verification testing reporting requirements no issues in regards to the child nutrition cluster the next few pages are just some highlights regarding some of the numbers in the financial statement the next page covers some of the significant accounting estimates in the report capital assets uh depreciation accumulated depreciation total cost of school district assets for the year just shy of 170 million dollars accumulated depreciation on those is about 60 million what that tells me is you're about 35 of the way through the useful life of of uh school
007district assets that's pretty good that's on the low end of the conversation i've been having this year i've had anywhere from 50 60 70. so to be at 35 percent that should be still a lot of life left in the assets net pension liability this is your share of the piecers the state pension plan plant pie so to speak your slice 89 million dollars of liability last year to the school district rose to 95 million dollars this year one thing i want to point out here is your share of the i don't even know what it is these days 40 50 billion dollar shortfall in the state pension plan your share is based on your contributions for the year the reason that rose so much even though this is a june 30 21 financial statement
008for you there's actually a one year look back so you're actually reporting june 30 2020 peace or state and when we think about june 30 2020 we were three months into the pandemic we've seen a lot of uh investment turmoil out there in the world so unfortunately the liability had a big jump because the value of the assets in the plan went down earlier on the pandemic and i would expect this number to sort of rebound next year we should see a nice decrease in that liability for the june 30 22 financial when we're looking back to 230 21 for casers the net open liability this is um other post-employment benefits compensate absence below that both pretty flat with the probably about seven million dollars of open about one point two million dollar property absences
009which is your employee's bank uh time the next page just a couple graphs covering revenues and expenditures these are your governmental funds these are the modified accrual basis of accounting so this is how you're typically used to seeing your numbers on a budget and you know monthly reporting basis local source revenue that first column is the current year orange column is the prior year current year local source revenue 46.8 million it's up about 600 000 from the year before really three things play into the change in local source revenue real estate tax was up about 1.3 million dollars this year up to about 39.8 million about a 3.2 3.3 percent increase and that put that alliance and was directly with the millage increase that you had for the year unfortunately while you had a 1.3
010million dollar increase in real estate taxes your eit revenues were down about 300 000 uh to about 3.5 million dollars investment earnings also down about 300 the year before you had about uh roughly 340 thousand dollars in investment income and um again the pandemic uh unfortunately uh we saw that go to about thirty thousand dollars so about a ninety percent drop in your investment revenues again pretty typical for anybody given the past year state source revenue 16 about 16.9 million of revenue this year versus 16.1 million last year it's up about eight hundred thousand dollars a big thing there your rental and sinking fund the subsidy that you received from the state was up about 1.2 million dollars it was offset a little bit by retirement subsidies from the state down about 400 and then
011your federal source line was about a million dollars last year about two million dollars this year doubled really related to the new um esser and provide corona buyers funds that we're starting to see come into the schools i'm expecting that number to probably double and increase dramatically over the next few years as well overall revenues were up about 2.5 million dollars in your governmental funds the next graph the expenditure composition expenses overall 64.4 million this year 68.1 last year so we had a 2.5 million dollar increase in revenues with a 3.7 million dollar decrease in expenses so both things kind of going the way we would want to see them instruction virtually flat on the year before about 34.5 34.6 billion so very flat with construction expense support services down about 900 000 20.4 million
012down to 19.5 that decreased solely driven by less transportation costs again pandemic driven debt service you had 9.3 million dollars of expense and debt service last year down to 6.1 million this year so that's where most your expense drop came from other than that just shy of a million of transportation 3.2 million decrease in debt service really the reason for that you had a 2012 bond uh the year before the event final came on you paid that off the last principal payment on that was uh 3.1 million so it was a 3.1 million debt payment you didn't have this year uh the next page long-term debt there at the top um 89.9 million last year down to just just a little over 89 million this year about 800 000 decrease you did have a three
013million dollar of principal payments this year on the other bonds um so that was a three million dollar decrease however you did take out a new blind this year 2020 bond for 17.3 million dollars which refunded 15 million dollars from the 2013 a series so you took out 17 million dollars of debt principal to pay off 15 which doesn't initially sound like a great deal but when you figure in the interest that you saved uh my calculations were future cash flow savings about three million dollars by doing that refund and taking advantage of lower interest rates the chart at the bottom there fund balance again this is a modified pool base of accounting for your governmental funds this is the way you typically see the numbers this does not include long-term assets long-term liabilities debt
014and pension liability things of that nature so just looking at the funds that first line the blue line that's your general fund so two years ago you ended fund balance 13.8 million dollars you ran a little bit of a deficit into the june 30 2020 your end fund balance went down to about 12 million fund balance is the difference between assets and liabilities it's what you would have left over if you paid off all your bills so to speak and as i mentioned earlier your revenues were up your expenses were down so we see that blue line come up you ended up with about just shy of sixteen million dollars and one thousand end of the year so rebound rebounded a bit from that deficit the year before and you know with some of the
015pandemic impact a little bit of a bounce back to the um so many lower expenses and higher revenues the orange orange row there that's your other governmental most of the capital projects funds it was about 6.6 million for the june 30 year end jumped up to 15 million the reason for that was you took out a bond uh the 2019 bond for about 10.7 million for capital projects and then as we see that money starting to be sent we see that line come back down to about 12.7 a fund balance at the end of this year and then food service is that bottom line and it's it's hovering right around negative hundred thousand dollars next page this is net position very similar to fund balance um in that this represents assets less any liabilities but
016this includes long-term assets and liabilities so this actually includes your capital assets but then reduces for that pension liability opec things of that nature you can see you're hovering right around negative 41 million dollars so you're in the red negative 41 million but every school district is when you figure in you know 90 million pension liabilities that you're getting from the state that um you know not necessarily a real liability of the school district just what you have to afford as your share the last page this is something i like to show the boards just so they kind of see some of the things that we're doing as the audit firm in the background you know when it comes to the audit process assets liabilities are relatively easy to audit you know bank statements we
017get payable listings we can look at money coming in subsequent to year end for receivables revenue is also very easy to audit you can confirm a lot of that pde confirms a lot of grant money you receive expenses tends to be one of the areas that audit firms have the most difficulty getting their hands around is because there is so much activity in so many different accounts um so one of the things that we like to do is show some of the things that we're doing to audit your expenses one of the things we do is the benford's law test which is what this first graph is bedford follows a mathematical law you can apply to any randomly occurring population of numbers i've seen in a kind of major league baseball batting out because it
018works in pretty much anything and what it says in any large randomly occurring population of numbers the first digit will be one about thirty percent of the time it'll be two about 22 percent of the time three about 17 and it just drops off this graph is also about 30 40 000 transactions of the school district uh for the june 30 year and you can see that your activity falls right in that curve so whether it starts with one dollar ten dollars one hundred one thousand whatever it would be uh everything falls into that graph um we also will do the first two digits so the first two digits one one one two one 3 all the way to 99 that's where we'll tend to start seeing some spikes the graph will start having some
019red columns and orange columns and those are things that we'll look at from an odd perspective most often it's recurring payroll activity you know things that are happening 24 26 times a year for virtually the same amount some other things that we do there at the bottom we do pivot table analysis we'll take all of your data load it into our data extraction analysis tool and analyze all you know 40 000 transactions looking for any unusual spikes or values and activity throughout the year and if we see anything unusual that's where we'll focus on testing because we've been your honor for a number of years we can also do that in a multi-level year or a multi-year level so if we see a spike in an activity in april we can look at last year
020and see if we had the same you know spike or valley and activity if we did we can usually you know chalk that up too uh you know just timing and if it didn't yeah that's something that we can look at predictive analytics is something we started doing a couple years ago looking at a history of data for the school district looking activity over the last four or five years coming up with the projection of what we think this year's expenses should be preparing that the actual results then again if our projection doesn't match would actually happen that's what we'll test as part of our expenses we look at all your w-2s looking for any unusual changes in employee pay we do journal entry testing we look at vendors you know in the gl we
021look for duplicate payments so these are all things we do and the the idea is because expenses is such a big part of the school district there's so many transactions this allows us you know this allows us to have a risk-based approach rather than just coming and looking at the same expense accounts every year at the same time every year so yeah just something we like to show because expenses do tend to be one of the areas that are there's a lot of volume that's all i've got i'd be happy to field any questions if there are it's much nice to see uh you know the results of our bond refunding and the savings of the thank you 4.02 uh discussion on policy upon our appropriate display of content we are the process of forming
022a subcommittee to address anything displayed in the classroom that is important 4.03 is the pspa required training thank you mr armor it's just an item that is being brought to the attention of the elected franklin defense of the board pspa pointed out that new board member training will be held january 8th board members didn't have the opportunity to participate that in the past that will be held on saturday january 8th from 9 to 3 15 at harvard middle school and board members who might like advanced training are also eligible to participate uh saturday january 8th from 11 to 3 15 at haverford middle school any board members that would like to participate in that training just let myself know and we'll get you registered for that um i also have the representative pspa reach out
023to me with respect to content specific training school board they're still willing to do that by zoom or in person on any topics whether it has to do with budget development diversity equity and inclusion work equity audits work around supervision of administrators compensation studies the sba is willing to come out and do that training for the board i'll pass along those topics with the board and let us know as well and if producers will set that up also thank you thank you comments by members of the public on agenda items is this an agenda item oh not an agenda hi amanda scott 413 hybrid lake and aston back to the agenda item on the committee can you clarify scope who will participate we haven't put it together yet but what's the topic exactly what it
024says on our network posters flags bulletin boards etc posted in our classrooms by anyone that feels inappropriate we can't we can't address something to put another policy forward okay thank you all right so we're going to start item six for page two we have page three four envelope page five references pendulum budget 2021 22 act 93 plan pea agreement pde spa agreement pds spa equipment pa school code section one with zero ep is administrative recommendation to approve all personnel and motions to to award approve the bus buyback to rubber bus sales of duncan pennsylvania as presented lowest responsible bidder in accordance with all bid specifications and sheet november 30th 2021 about this motion second questions or comments all those in favor pose motion passes 6.04 is a good award for the aston elementary school chile
025replacement motions to award the ascent elementary school children replacement bid to gen mechanical services of aston for a base bid of 339 000 and reject alternate bid one for an amount not to exceed 339 000 in accordance with the bid specifications subject to the solicitor's review and execution of the mutually agreeable contract about this motion second questions are coming those 6.05 accept local audit motions to accept the local audit completed by ali llp of oakspa in 2020 2021 school year as president second questions or comments those in favor aye opposed motion passes 6.06 is a presidency disqualification this enrollment motions to approve the administrative action to disenroll the following students to conduct the school district effective end of day end of school day december 9th 2021. student 43295 and 439.5 we'll have this month so
026ford mr president excuse me so for these disqualifications they they were on last month's agenda but we tech there are some technicalities that we do need to hit because on those disenrollment matters if my recollection serves me correctly you uh you consisted of the panel that was correct and then in order to move forward on each one independently each board member here would indicate that whether they were present which they were not because you were the only individual there but there was a transcript made of that hearing and then presented to the board members so in order to participate in this vote it should be a roll call note for each student individually and then each board member other than yourself should indicate that they reviewed the transcript as they move forward and then what
027their vote is on the motion to disappoint so a motion to disenroll for each student should be what takes place and then the query as to whether or not each board member reviewed them reviewed the transcript and that won their billions so the motion is for this enroll suit 43295 this is alice did you review the transcript yeah and your vote is yesterday mrs ashley to review the transcript did you review the transcript yes and your vote is yes mr c did you review the transcript yes and your vote is yes mr tinsley did you review the transcript yes and your vote is mr armor she would be the transfer i was there he was principal my vote is yes motion passes for student 43295 next uh is a motion for student 43915 this is
028alice mrs essler yes yes mrs powell yes mr seaside yes and yes mr tinsley yes yes i was president thank you thank you thank you uh motion for student 43915 passes comments by members of public hello again i'm sufi schaefer kirby lane and aston i sent an email to the board today i don't expect report but had time to read it so i brought everyone a copy of what i wanted to comment on and you can just pass those along so my comment is to urge the board to pass a resolution in support of the pa funding school funding litigation that's currently currently on trial in harrisburg um the the lawsuit is based on a clause in our cons our state constitution that says the general assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of
029a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the commonwealth this makes this puts it that makes public education responsibility of the general assembly the governor the state board of education and it is incumbent on them to provide this education regardless of the income level or property values of the community and so what this further actually further in 2008 the state legislature wrote into law a benchmark calculating the funding required for adequate education but they have not funded schools in this way so that has left the state short of funding by 4.6 billion dollars according to the calculation that they wrote into law that also according to this calculation would provide penn delco school district an additional 9.4 million dollars 9 million per year so i just think you know what
030would that mean to our district that would mean so many things that i know the administration would like to provide um additional nurses counselors um librarians reading specialists extra help for students who are struggling to learn especially over this last two years so many people their learning has been interrupted and they need we need additional support for these students so my what i'm asking is for the board to consider this draft this draft resolution which basically says you support uh the state equitably funding all of the districts and that would take the burden the tax burden of the residential property taxes for each district now and specifically in hinduco and if you remember i believe dr seinfeld said the increase in taxes this year was born exclusively by our residential property taxes five hundred thousand
031dollars additional revenue from raising taxes on our property our residential properties so uh i urge you to um support draft a resolution either this one or draft one for yourselves um in support of this funding change in our to to let the legislature know that the state should be funding more equitably that's it thank you hello my name is melissa lavry i live at 101 greenbriar place in aston i have two children who attend essen elementary school being a parent of young children during a pandemic is difficult my natural inclination is to look at any situation's effect on well-being is not just an absence of illness or dysfunction it is thriving being the best versions of ourselves when we approach life from this positionality we focus on many aspects of wellness like physical strength spiritual
032contentment emotional health and academic achievement if we are sparse with honoring our whole selves we limit our opportunities to achieve well-being we have experienced this time of great distress and uncertainty together many families in our community have faced difficult times pre-pandemic for example the most recent data from the future ready p8 index from the department of education's essay report card is from 2017 and 18. according to this report card 30 percent of children who attend penn delta schools are considered to be economically disadvantaged with specific school populations ranging anywhere from 20 to 40 percent what does that mean it means that on average one in three students in our district face barriers to resources which can include food shelter clothing books internet participating in athletics having access to reliable vehicles having a computer in the
033home i wonder how this diminishes the well-being of our students and their abilities to concentrate and participate in achieving academically i also wonder how the pandemic has altered this data as it has certainly affected the lives of our children as we move into 2022 we must begin to think about how we can design our schools to address the needs of this community's children and families how do we measure success of our students and our district how will we meet the challenge and grow from the perspectives that we gained in 2020 and 21 we now know that we can change adapt and provide we know that we are malleable and we have agency to change the narrative for so many of our students to bring opportunities to succeed closer to them today i would like to
034know how pandelfo plans to cultivate opportunities for well-being for all students and especially for those who face barriers to their potential successes what concrete actions can this board take to decide that socioeconomic status will not determine a child's experiences while attending our public schools ideally this work would take shape of a committee who identifies barriers to success and forms ideas on removing those barriers board members have already identified other issues of concern such as bullying or student enrollment and charter pro cyber charter programs after committing to this type of explorative work we may realize how better understanding students we teach leads us to being whole ourselves we are not just in the business of teaching a poor academic curriculum we are in the profession of teaching children thank you for your time thank you you
035guys and chris welcome congrats i know the boys are really excited to have you back and i'm sure kevin can attest to that especially you know the one player sitting in front of you my favorite topic on here are the retirees do we get to celebrate them this sure i mean year always nice to have in-person um recognitions again and i would anticipate that hopefully we can have a full house so people will be able to bring back some of the folks who are retiring i noticed one of these library at the middle school has been fantastic and it's the least we can do is to recognize the work of the district so i completely intend to put together you know an invitation have our have our retirees come out and have the administration that
036they work for say if you worked on their behaviors yeah i think everybody hasn't had the chance to recognize we'll yeah the retirees we'll schedule that tentatively with the uh may meeting i know sometimes the few months difficult people head into vacation homes or whatever um but the main meeting tends to be a better meeting for retirees is um so future meetings are january 19th the study session here and january 26th business both at 7 30. motion for germany you