001hang up from the ceiling. It's pretty cool. All right. Good. All right. Jump the gun there. All right. The time is now 7:04 p.m. May 3rd, 2025. We'll kick off the Montoursville Area School District board meeting with the pledge of allegiance. Join me. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. And before we continue on, uh I just want to let everyone know we met in an executive session prior to this to talk about personnel issues, things that we don't talk about in the public setting. And I appreciate your patience. We had a lot to discuss and we're starting a little bit late tonight. So, uh, roll call please. Mr. Smith, Mr. Albert here,
002Mr. Badger here, Mr. Eisenhower here, Mr. Gardner here, Mr. Housenick here, Miss McCoy here, Mrs. Meyer here, and Mrs. Overheim and Mr. Young are absent this evening. All right, for recognitions and presentations today, we have Crabtree, Roarbox, and Associates here tonight. come on up. Good evening. Uh we're gonna uh present to you an update on the lighter elementary school project. Uh with me is Drew Kurjanic from our office and um we're going to give you kind of a feel of what we've been up to today. Uh what we look forward to in the in the um as we develop the project further and talk about a little bit about the details. So I'm gonna turn it over to Drew. Good afternoon everyone or evening. Which one? All right. So, we just want to give a
003quick uh overview of the project status of Lighter Elementary here. Uh Scott and I will be talking about uh the design updates on the design, the schedule, and the estimated project costs. So, a design update. Um we'd like to quick go through things kind of we've accomplished to date here. Um just got through a variance hearing uh with AHJ. Uh we were requesting um civil variances for uh numerous things. Maximum uh building coverage, maximum impervious coverage, off- streetet parking uh minimum space requirements, off- streetet parking minimum saw dimension requirements, and uh extending a permit um sorry, the permit of a period from 6 months to uh 24 months uh to obtain a a zoning permit. Um all of these have been since approved um with no conditions and we're we're moving the project forward then.
004Um from from a design standpoint, we're working through schematic design and programming with the design team uh both the owner and uh the actual design team. So, we've uh established bi-weekly meetings with the district admin that we meet every two weeks uh reviewing scope, revisiting budgets, um revising the program, things like that. Um, and we're also meeting uh with our consultants, civil, structural, MEP, mechanical, engineering, and plumbing or sorry, electrical and plumbing on a bi-weekly basis as well, moving the design uh from schematic into design development and then eventually uh the construction documents um to get out to get the project out the bid. uh upcoming items. Um right before the school school uh lets out for or the the uh the district lets out for summer break, um we plan on bringing in our
005interiors group. Um we like to sit down with the staff and teachers and review classroom layouts and other aspects of the schools um to get the teachers perspective on things from them. Then we take that incorporate it into the design over the summer break. And then we'd like to reconvene with reconvene with them um kind of as a round two following summer break uh early September is is ideal uh to revisit those designs, present kind of the ideas we came up with and get additional feedback. Um shortly after that then we'll be going out to bid once we incorporate uh those comments and remarks. Um shortly after school lets out for the summer, we'll be getting the entire design design team together on site to do an existing building survey. Um we have obtained all
006the existing drawings of the of the existing facility. Um there are sometimes discrepancies between those documents. I mean they date back from into the 50s. Um and there have been multiple renovations over over time of that building. So, uh, we like to kind of double check those drawings, do a comprehensive survey of the space. Um, you know, mechanical, electrical, plumbing will all be there surveying those systems as well. And, uh, you know, just making sure that everything's in line and we can move the project forward accordingly. Um, additionally then the act 34 hearing, uh, we plan to hold sometime in the summer of 25. Uh and then just a quick update on the site plan uh where it stands today. So this is the site plan that was um presented at the variance hearings. Um
007you can see the existing building outlined in dark blue there and then the addition the proposed additions in yellow. Um some of the some of the design elements um that are incorporated into this site plan are uh the biggest ones are the separation of the bus loop and the vehicular loop. So, we have a new entrance coming off of Tool Street wrapping around the building in the rear um attaching to the new parking lot and um you know then transitioning to the front of the building. In total, we're able to stack about 45ish vehicles um the key word there being off street um separate from the public uh rightways um on the site and you know in a safer manner than what you guys are are how they're stacking now. Um, addition to that is
008a bus pull off off the pool street as well. If this has a pointer or not. Um, but again safety concerns with separation of vehic drop off and the bus buses. Um, and also it it kind of simplifies the site too because you don't have buses now maneuvering through the site. They're simply pulling off Tool Street there. Um, and students are loading that way. Um, oops. So, as you can see in red here, um, and what you saw in the site plan in yellow are the proposed additions. Um, as most of you already know, this is this project is consolidating, um, lighter elementary and loyal valley elementary schools into one. So, um, with that increased student population, we'll need to, um, increase the the size of the building essentially, um, by adding these additional, um,
009classroom wings. Um, so we'll be doing K through four, six wide, um, with an additional STEM classroom and some, um, support spaces such as SGIs, small groupoup instruction, and other, um, special education classrooms. There's kind of a quite a virtue of that. Um, along with the building additions that I've shown in red, we're also defining uh what we're saying is more of a heavy renovation. And this is where we're removing walls and these spaces are kind of almost completely gutted um and and renovated. Um, everything that's kind of grayed out is going to just be your moderate renovation. That'll be um uh just simple finish upgrades, you know, coats of paint, new flooring, new ceiling uh base, stuff like that. And then all the existing windows will also be replaced um as part of this
010project. Then just just to give you a quick idea um of what this may look like from the exterior, these were quick renderings we did for the variance hearing board. Uh just to give them a visual on, you know, what these additions may look like, the materiality we're using, and then emphasizing that that bus pull off off of Tool Street there where you can see uh to the right of your screen. And then that's um moving north down Tool Street, I believe. I'll now turn it over to Scott to go over schedule and budget. Any questions so far? How many classrooms are you adding on? We are adding a total of it's a good question. So it's it's seven. Uh so it's seven plus a seven classroom uh in that centralized wing and then an
011additional um three um off that north northwestern wing. Uh and they'll be part of that kindergarten section. Okay. And are we figuring a little wiggle room here? Yeah, we actually when we when we first did the first iteration of this, we actually had a little bit less classrooms. We based it on the enrollment projections, which um those of you around when we did the study, uh we had we projected declining enrollment. The district's been declining over the years. So, we're actually using a forward projection of declining enrollment in our capacity calculations. Uh but the district thought we needed to have a couple extra flex classrooms to handle any bubbles or anything that might occur in the future should that you know should you not decline to those projections. So we do have a little bit
012of extra space uh worked into here. Yeah. Because that I I think that's I mean that was one of the big things that we were getting feedback on is we do not want big classrooms either. Yep. So you know it's better now than later. Yeah. So if you're putting an additional, you said two or three total. No, a little bit extra space. So Oh, yeah. An extra. Yeah. So, so the first iteration had um as Drew mentioned, we're kind of we're six deep, which means six classrooms per grade. The first iteration had five classrooms per grade with a couple extra flex classrooms to handle bubbles. The decision was to go a full six classrooms per grade for each grade level. So, there'll be adequate space for for smaller class sizes. you have the potential of
013having nobody in one of those classrooms. Well, I think the the goal would be to balance that or depending on teacher staffing, you might you might um have a vacant classroom. But I think if if staffing's there, then I think the goal would be to lower that class size. Kind of like buy them out and do buy two get one free. Well, unfortunately, we don't bid the project. We don't decide the construction cost. We just design it. So, what was the So, I know I noticed right away there were six per grade, which is awesome. Um, what was the basis of uh capacity like? So, did you do kindergarten smaller or I mean you went six per grade. So, what did you base the classroom size on? The classroom size or based on your existing
014kindergarten is larger. So, it's like around a thousand square feet and then your existing classrooms are around 8 between 850 and 900 around 900 square feet. Okay. for the new classrooms that we added on here. Okay. So, thank you. Oh, one other question. You said you were talking to the teachers. Will you be including teachers from both schools or is that up to the administration? Okay. Will be a representative. Okay. Thank you. So, schedule as Drew mentioned some of the things that we've been up to to date. We've been working on this since the fall. We took a little pause with the conditional use. We didn't want to get too far ahead of ourselves in case um excuse me the variance hearings in case in case something happened there. So we're back on track now.
015We're still on schedule to u open this 2728 school year. So there you'll see the design schedule in in um green at the top. So we're looking to go out to bid after the start of the new school year. We once again we want to have the teachers once they come back have the final final review of of the plans and then we'll be ready to release for bids. Uh at the same time on a parallel uh schedule our civil engineers going through the municipal process with land development approval with um with Monttosville Burough. Um so we're looking to bid in October, November time frame and then award contracts by the end of the school year in December uh excuse me by the end of the year in December. And um it's about the the
016key here is we want to get two summers of construction. Um so that's why we kind of built the schedule the way we did. They're not going to probably mobilize in December. They're going to be getting a lot of their contracts in line and and submitts in line and long ordering a lot long lead items. Um we'll probably phase the construction where they start in the spring on the additions. We need those additions so we can have swing space to try to have as little disruption as possible during construction. So once again, we'll focus on those two summers. We will be the bulk of the interior renovations. Um, but then we'll we'll look to use those additions to to phase kids around, move move classrooms around as we begin to renovate the rest of the
017building. You know, Drew mentioned the excuse me, the moderate renovation areas. You know, so we're still going to be going through there replacing the HVAC system, all new lighting finishes. So, those spaces have to be evacuated in order to uh renovate them. And as we get more detail on what that phasing schedule look like, we'll we'll share it with with the board. Uh so this is our estimated project cost. I always say this is this is um as the project develops this es and flows. Um so this is kind of a snapshot of where we're at now. Um the existing building renovation you see there at the top about 66,000 square feet is right around 10 million. A lot of those are are what we call the systemic building upgrades. So once again uh upgrading
018the building current standards. Um and then some of that includes reconfiguration of the spaces getting the secure vestibial things like that in there. The additions are um just shy of 19,000 square feet and that's so the cost estimated cost for that is about 6.8 million. And then we have escalation contingency. When contractors bid it, they'll bid to the midpoint of construction. So we got a forecast out what escalation is. We're using conser 3% per year right now. Um we have some also some estimating contingency in there. Then one other thing that's kind of popped up in the ca past couple months here. I'm sure everybody's aware of the tariff impacts that that are happening out there. We are seeing a pretty big significant impact currently on bids. We're hoping that settles down a little bit
019by the time we get to bid year project. Uh but right now we have about one between one and 2% um to handle that tariff impact. We'll we'll get a better feel of it at the end of the summer here where we stand and hopefully uh hopefully it doesn't increase from there, but you know change as everybody knows it changes day by day. Um, so that gets you the subtotal, that 19.7 million, that's what we expect to receive from the contractors when we bid it out. That's our estimating cost of construction. And then below that, we have construction soft cost, which includes testing, inspections, regulatory review fees, things like that. Uh, and then project soft costs, which are design fees, financing fees, and furniture, FFN, which is furniture, fixture equipment. So any like tables and
020chairs and the loose equipment that's not part of the construction contract that the district buys separately. That's all in that line item below. TVs, things like that, cameras. So that brings you down the total project cost of of 23.8 million. So that gives you an overview of where we're at, where we're heading. Um the next time you'll see us, we'll talk about the act 34 hearing. There's a whole process involved with that. the board will have to adopt the maximum building construction cost and we'll talk more uh further on in the summer about what that's involved in and set the date for that. Any other questions for us? Okay, thank you for your time. Thank you. I'll just comment that is the first time um and it's because of some of the work we've done
021here recently that that I've seen the number um that size. So, we have a lot of work to do to continue our discussions and and trim that down. Um, we again are not raising taxes to cover the cost of any project and um we have to hold the line on on some of our costs. I know a big thing for me was making sure the kids had new um cubbies to move into. Um those I think you said were the the casework and such were coming in at $400 for the existing classroom about 40,000. When we did the study we didn't have those but I think that those are things we have to continue to discuss to trim this number down. Um we discussed flooring looking at what we can keep there because some of
022that has been replaced recently. So there's still a lot of work to to do. Um, I was a bit stunned at that number today when when it came through. So, um, we'll continue plugging away in. Thank you guys. Thank you. All right, moving on to the reading of the minutes. This is approval of the regular meeting minutes from the April 8th, 2025 and work session minutes from April 22nd, 2025. I'll take a motion to approve. Motion to approve. Any questions, comments? I missed the student. Yeah, we have egg here. Okay, cool. We'll uh we'll vote on this and we'll go back. So, we got a first over here. We get a second. Yep. All right. Any comments on that? All right. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. All right. That was just a
023test to make sure that Mr. T was paying attention. She passed. Good job. It's kind of things I have to do once in a while to get back to. So, we'll go back to the public comment or content. Somebody else. So, we have uh Noah Phillips from the A Days here today. Um hello everyone. Um thanks very much for having us here tonight or this evening. I'm I'm Dylan Saul, the FFA chaplain. I'm Connor Campbell, the FFA Sentinel. This is the first year that we've had a day at the high school. This is also the first year that we've had a two-day event, one open to the students and one open to the public. Um, a day was May 2nd and 3rd. There was roughly 300 students who attended, fourth graders from the valley and
024lighter as well as uh seventh graders from the middle school. The seventh graders arrived in the morning and the se or the the fourth graders, excuse me, arrived in the morning and the seventh graders arrived in the afternoon. There was a total of 16 stations which ranged from a variety of animals like goats, miniature horses, lambs, chickens, and dogs as well as tractor safety, logging safety, and dirt bike safety. Um, we were very thankful to have the game commission and the mobile blacksmith, Seth Green at the end, as well as contributions from fish and bow commission. Not not only was it interesting to see the younger kids get excited for A, it was also very neat to see our FFA members get involved, it was also very neat to see our older peers come out
025and enjoy a day. Yeah. Um, I had a station uh for a day and it was neat to see um I used my business. So, it was neat to see the way the students got involved and how excited they were for a day and uh how excited they were to get out of the classroom. Um I also thought it was interesting to see how um uh the kids uh how many of them I asked them I said I mean fourth graders obviously their view is going to change but especially seventh graders how many were interested in taking a class when they get possibly older. I asked them the question of what they thought a was and a lot of them thought it was just farming and stuff. So I tried to explain to them how
026a lot of what we had there was um a related. I mean a lot of what you do a lot of what you eat and wear is aggreated. um Mr. Phillips has taught us and um I just think it was a great day and um I think all around we have some pictures I guess. Yep. So this is we also did this is our first year that we can join tractor day as well with like a day. So we had a total of six tractors come in. The ones hiding behind the group of kids. Um so that also played along with our tractor safety. And then this is up front. We sorry we um we had all the animals out in the practice field. We tried not to like destroy the practice field with all
027the stations. So, we kept them up front. Everything was comfortable. Great. Um, and those are just some of the pictures of the kids um with the dogs. We had car or cattle versus house dogs. And then that you can barely see his head, but that lamb there is um his name's Rocket. He was graciously brought in by Mr. Phillips. So, we've been raising him. And that's Michaela Phillips and Jillian Koig. They use Rocket as their SAPE, supervised agricultural experience this year. So, it was a great way for them to show off the hard work of raising Rocket. And those that's the miniature horse station with uh Desiree Knight and Nolla. I'm not real too sure how to pronounce her last name. So, then this is also the uh fishing station. This is run by Noah,
028I'm also not too sure on his last setting. Excuse me. Yes, they were a lot of freshmen. Uh Jacob Shown and then Brennan Lynch. They did a great job with implementing a classroom setting, but also keeping it like uh interactive. So, they had the pamphlets provided by Fish and Boat Commission as well as a double-sided coloring uh paper where they could color a bluegill as long or as well as I think it's just a turtle. And then this was the uh other game commission station that came in. He focused on pelts. A lot of the kids really enjoyed this. A lot of um there were skulls there. He defined the difference between herbivore, herbivore, omnivore, and then carnivore. Got very good feedback on that one. And this was Mr. McInness. he presented um his uh
029we we tried to keep it so like it wasn't just mainly a because a is a very broad term when it comes to doing things as long as or as well as jobs. We get the whole a department involved because it's a day so we figured getting metal wood and a involved getting people familiar with the whole a building. Oh, skip one. This is our the mobile blacksmith that we that came in. A lot of kids also really enjoyed this one. He did multiple demonstrations. Very uh appreciative towards him. And this is inside of our uh animal lab. Uh this station was chickens and chicks. Um this was Harley Chamberlain and Brady Brown. They talked about uh our rooster Oreo. He was the lone rooster from our batch of meat chickens earlier this year as
030well as four chicks brought in. And this is our logging station ran by Levi E, Isaiah Pepperman, Savannah Folk Rod, and Austin Street. They did a very good job. Everything was very safe. Um, and they also did a a lot of demonstrations. And this is back out front with Ryan Agiri and I'm drawing a blank here. Landon Mhart, excuse me. Uh Ryan brought in his goat, William, and he talked about him and let the kids uh pet him as well. Yeah. And these are just pictures of a day. Yeah, it was it was all around I think. Well, it was all around a good day. It definitely the next day with the public, I thought it went very well uh having the public involved and good. Yeah, it's pretty much it. Thank you for having
031us. Have a good one. Thank you. Nice job, Bois. Thank you. Mr. Dietrich, you got I do just um I missed the last board meeting. Apologies on that. I was the Hershey with the FBA. We meet at the state leadership conference and as the board meeting was happening um Andrew Zoo was placing seventh in financial occupation or business calculations. Um I placed third in no second in UX design. Uh Andrew Truman, Shaw Simpson, and Jimmy Msina were placing first in sales presentation, and Brady Cohen, and Carly McKenna were placing third. Um and the six of us, uh Shaw, Truman, Jimmy, Brady, Carly, and myself are all headed to Anaheim the summer be at the national level in our respective events. So that's where I was last actually last two weeks. Um last yeah last two
032weeks we had the concert series at the high school started with the choir concert last Monday I believe. Um that went really well. Followed on th Thursday by the high school band concert where it was band and concert band and jazz band. And then I will give a shout out. Last night there was the elementary choir concert here. Well, not a high school concert. It was at the high school and I ran the lights and that was pretty good. Um, so we got the FBA concerts and then since I am a student representative, one thing that is clearly on the students minds and also on the parents minds it seems is the physics program and the concern of what's happening with physics. Are we having it at all? Are they going to losers? What's happening?
033But clearly you're going to hear from that in a second. So that's all I have. All right. Thank you and congratulations. Nice job. First grader. All right. Moving on to the prior presentation period for the evening. Tonight we have Carrie Polling. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Jeff. Thanks for that um transition. That was perfect. So, I'm here to advocate today. I'm Carrie Pauling from 312 Tool Street. I have to say that I'm here to advocate for um the 35 to 37 11th and 12th graders, my son included, who plan to take honors or I'm sorry, he AP physics honors in AP physics next year. Um we all know that physics is a foundational science class for careers in engineering and research and development even finance and economics and obviously to produce more physics teachers which
034we need. So this is super important. Um as we know Mr. Barber is planning to retire uh welld deserved after 30 years of teaching but that leaves us without a physics teacher. Um the administration has made it clear that we're not going to replace Mr. Barber, because there's not enough students interested in taking physics. It's not financially sustainable to keep a full-time physics teacher. Um, but you've also expressed, Mr. Tormino, we talked today, a strong desire to keep physics instruction available to students, and the district has posted for a part-time physics instructor. So, problem is if there's a lack of candidates, is it possible, we're talking about options here, is it possible for Mr. Barber to return to service under the PERS emergency exceptions clause without jeopardizing his retirement pension. Um, I did a little
035research and you guys probably know all this too, but the return to service exceptions do list emergency exceptions. A member can return to service and continue to re receive retirement benefits from piecers if one there is a shortage of personnel or two an emergency creates a serious impairment of service. Um with only 14 physics teachers certified last year we are uh in an emergency. I would I would say that's an emergency. Um also I'm I'm no expert but I do work in state government. I have a government contact at Pacers and I spoke with him today and he said it is definitely possible there is a vi there's a viable uh possibility of hiring him back um as a substitute or maybe part-time and uh the thing to do is to submit a letter to
036piecers asking the worst they can do is say no. So that is still I think an option that is viable. I know that you guys talked about dual enrollment um talking about schools with loyal sock. I was curious if you talked to any other schools besides loyal sock my South Williamsport Montgomery or even maybe East Lake coming. Um I know considering logistics of our students going to Loyal sock I just I think that's an unworkable option just because of the way that they teach in the block. the semester block um format and we certainly don't so merging those schedules for students who would go to loyal sock to take that I'm not certain how that would work. I think other parents might talk about that a little bit. So I wanted to stick more with
037the budget. Um I know that you'd said removing physics gets us to a balanced budget. Uh but at what cost to the students? Um what's in our reserve fund balance now? and what expectations do we have from the state budget? It's not been voted on yet, so I don't know how much we're going to get from the state, but um there is some plan to still offer students physics and it will require some budget. It's definitely not 23.8 million like um the changes at lighter. It's a lot less than that, but there are costs involved. There's transportation. Uh are we doing buses? Would we do vans? Would the students drive themselves? Um, I know with med careers the cost of one day a week of transportation for 21 weeks to Gisinger is $8,610. Um, if
038the students drive drive themselves, excuse me, are there is there parking available? Are there insurance issues? Are there parking fees? Is there tuition costs? There are costs involved. So, they're not exorbitant, but there are definitely costs involved. Um, I think we just need to look at this budget-wise. What is the opportunity cost for having students go to another school versus figuring out how to bring some somebody here or potentially I I don't know but have Mr. Barber uh as a part-time or or a substitute. Um just to close I want to touch on the quality of education. Last weekend, Madison Ramsay, who was our 2021 validictorian, she graduated from Washington and Jefferson College, and she was once again the validictorian of her class there. I mean, that's amazing. Way to represent Mourville. Um, she graduated
039with a degree in physics, and she's planning to get her PhD in material science and engineering. My daughter graduated in 2022. She did pretty well here. She's at Penn State working on her environmental systems engineering degree because she had access to physics, especially AP physics. She was she had a competitive edge, you know, and she is doing well in working towards uh that degree. She was able to skip an intro class of physics at Penn State. That's it's helpful on the bottom line. Um and it's helpful for her to get get moving in her degree. the the 35 kids here and I know some of them are here who want to take honors or AP physics, they are worth it. Um, we have this awesome FFA program, FBL, FBLA program. We offer a lot for
040well-rounded education and it is super vital and physics is one of those things. Um, I know Mr. Barbara is willing to bridge the gap until another solution can be found if it's at all possible. But possibilities is really what we're talking about. So, I'm just asking the board to not make any hasty decisions without looking at all of the options in a transparent way. Um, if we can create a committee to look at things more closely, I am willing to volunteer to be on the committee. I think we should include Mr. Barber as the expert in physics here and some board members and um just keep the quality of education in mind here at Moursville. Thank you. That was excellent. Thank you very much, Mrs. Pauling. All right, we'll now move to the public comment
041portion of the evening. This is for residents and taxpayers to comment in matters of concern, official action or deliberation before the board. Miss ask, if you come to up to the microphone, please state your name and your address, please. Ron Snell, lower Manor. Um, I'm curious as to why the CR presentation for the night wasn't on the agenda for the community that would be interested possibly to come and hear what they had to say. Um, and the other thing I'm curious about is that 23.8 8 million. Um, is there anything in there that includes any any money in there for change orders should they happen, which they will. We all know that um any project has change orders and they need to be paid for. So, I'm curious to know if any money in that
04223.8 8 million is for change orders. And Mr. Terramino, um, I realize that nobody wants to answer my questions here at the meeting, but you have my information to get a hold of me and let me know the answers to those two questions. Thank you. Well, hi, I'm Paul Rinker. Uh, I'm going to pass on the address because this doesn't seem to be able to refrain from printing it when I say it. So, you all know that I'm from here. Um, I'm kind of excited about this budget thing to see what kind of uh tax relief we're going to get this year with the $10 million we're saving and the uh and the projected decline in enrollment. I mean, fewer students means fewer expenses. So, we should be saving a ton of money and I
043expect to see that reflected in the tax rate. Now, I don't really expect to see that because I know that whatever is saved will be blown somewhere else. But that doesn't that's not the way it should be. We shouldn't just keep increasing the cost of education because we can because we can dig deeper and deeper into the taxpayers's pockets. We never seem to cut anything. got programs been going on forever. They're probably doing nothing. We're still paying for them. We're still paying for outside people to do curriculum for us when we've got a whole staff of of qualified certified teachers who are educated to do just that. We've made them into babysitters while we pay somebody else to develop our teaching materials. I'll bet most of these teachers would love to actually teach. So why
044don't we let them and stop throwing money to outside consultants and firms to to come in here and tell us how to teach our kids. I mean homeschoolers do that. They buy curriculum. And you know what? They don't pay what you do for it. So come on, give us a break. go back to your budget, look at what you can get rid of, get rid of it, and give us a little relief instead of sitting there satisfied that you're not going to raise our taxes for one year. Oh, thanks for the favor. I expect you people on the board to look at that. I We did have one board member a few years ago, I don't know anything about budgets. Well, I expect you to know something about budgets if you're going to be on
045the board. And I expect you to be on these people working on the budget to control it to get it to a reasonable level. I'm all for teaching our kids and I'm even I even like to have some extracurricular activities for them, but we don't have to bankrupt taxpayers to do it. Thank you. Howdy. Brad Deacon, 431 Cherry Street. Um, I was a teacher here for 32 years, went here for 12 years. Uh, I've had four of my kids go through this school district, so I'm pretty vested in what we have. Um, and I'm talking I'm going to reflect what u Mrs. Pauling was talking about. Um, you know, physics is the most exact and fundamental science. Um, it it was developed by Galileo and Newton back in the dark ages and it's really what
046propelled us from the dark ages into the Renaissance and the age of enlightenment. Um, it teaches you how to calculate, predict, interpolate, estimate, calibrate, correlate, extrapolate, classify. It's it's the best course at teaching those skills. You know, I taught chemistry 32 years, and I tried to teach those skills, but it's a lot easier to see it in physics with a pendulum swinging or a ball rolling down the hill than it is watching a chemical reaction, maybe seeing a color change. So, physics is just fundamental for that. Um, it's a required course in obviously engineering. Everybody thinks physics, they think engineering. But keep in mind that computer science has to have it. Medical school requires it. Dentistry, veterinary, architecture, physical therapy, chinesiology, robotics, geology, material science, forensics, chemistry, electronics, astronomy, and oceanography all require physics. Now,
047can they take it in college? Yes. you know, if we don't offer it here, and I know we're in a fix here, we got to try to figure out a solution. Can they take it in college? Well, I have some quotes from some old students. Um, it is really difficult to get into competitive programs without high school physics. Um, uh, let's see here. A veriologist going in grad school getting for a doctorate in verology. Um, did not take physics. and could not get into pits engineering school. Applied and they would not they said without physics you're not getting into pit engineering. So he went into verology instead which is great because he's really good verologist. Um another uh student of mine is a chemist. Um they they said that physics was fundamental um to start
048engineering. So this was a chemical engineer at PET. um physics was essential to get into it and and they estimate they would have lost probably one to two semesters to take the remedial physics to get ready even to start the engineering program. So that would have cost $32,000 probably for this student. Um another career milit military quote was pretty much I'm paraphrasing I would not have gotten into West Point without physics. Uh, an RN told me, um, I would, this this particular RN did not take physics. I would have had a much easier time in biomechanics if I had taken physics in high school. Uh, another geocientist. I've had some pretty good students over the years. Um, I was a little spoiled. Um, I wished I had taken physics in high school. When I took
049it in college, I skated by with a C, barely. That was a quote. Mr. Sir, I hate to I don't want to cut you up. You have three You're past your three minutes. We have two more. Yeah, we got a room full of people. I got you. I didn't know how long this statement, but you also there was another section in the portion of this afterwards. If you want to come back up to the point, you're more than welcome to do. I just want to I'll just end with my own personal, you know, I took group. Some of you maybe had group or avoided group for physics. Um I was a young kid, had no clue what I what I wanted to do. took physics and that sort of clicked with me that logic that
050math and you know I wouldn't be here I I had no clue what I wanted to do I wouldn't be here without having had physics so we need to do something you know whatever we can do all right thank you thank you hi I'm me Alterno I'm the computer science and STEM teacher at McCall. Usually I'm here advocating for computer science, which I'm always happy to do, especially for engineering. Um I know two graduates of McCall of McCall mentors lawyer school district who went into engineering and their biggest um heartache was that they couldn't do the computer science. So I advocated for that as you know tremendously. My own son is interested in engineering uh career and he will be in a detriment if he is not capable of taking another physics course. Um I
051originally was an engineer major. Um but at that point there was I was a group I was a group person. I had group for for physics and I was admitted to an engineering program. However, as we know, that has escalated in the last years, and they need to have AP physics. They need to have honors physics. If my son applies for college next year without AP physics, he's going to be against students that have AP physics. Will he be a contender? No. Not in a competitive course work. So, I'm being here as a parent. I've advocated for computer science. I've advocated for additional education. I was a student here. I'm a teacher here. I've been a member of this community since I was four years old. I want to have the same opportunities for my
052son and for the all student and parents that are here that I was enabled. That was not an opportunity for me at that time. It's an opportunity for our students now. It's not competitive for them to go into a course that they are not prepared for. Um, as Brad spoke earlier, they're going to take coursework that they're not prepared for or they will have to make up coursework that they're not prepared for and they won't get into the programs, the competitive programs. And that's not what mature is all about. I w I enjoyed the music program last night. I was here for my granddaughters last night and we are distinguished in music. We are distinguished in theater from the Ray of Lights Awards this past weekend. We are a distinguished school district. I think we
053need to continue being a distinguished school district and that means being academically competitive. Please consider keeping the physics program. Thank you. Uh I'm gonna be quick. I'm Emily Dietrich. Um I agree with um everything. So I'm not going to revisit that. I know that many of you know that this is important. Um I urge you to be creative. Carrie gave you some options. One thing I want to make sure that we really think about is in that dual enrollment is not an online course. If you talk to physics teachers, those kids need to be dropping eggs from the second floor. They need to know. If you haven't seen that, if you don't know what that is, I urge you to come in and talk to the teacher, talk to these kids, talk to that one.
054Um, so I'm not eloquent with this. Um, I will say that the kids, um, with regards to getting into school into colleges, there are colleges that will not look at our kids if they do not have physics. Um, talk to local college admissions. If you need their names, I can get them to you. I worked for one of them, not in admissions, but for the university. Um so please just I many of you know that this is important but really think about the impact on your need to balance a budget but then also serve our kids. So thank you. Good evening. Uh Mark Davidson, 315 Mountain Brook Lane in Torresville. Uh I have some prepared remarks here, but listening to Mrs. uh Pauling here and everyone else. Um I'll just read through them. A lot
055of it will be reiterating what a lot would what has been said. Uh again, I'm Mark Davidson. I'm here to speak on behalf of my son Austin who's currently a sophomore. um is currently taking honors trigonometry, honors chemistry, and AP biology. He has signed up for honors physics next year, but after watching the uh April 8th board meeting, we understand that that uh honors physics will not be offered in house. Um the board is exploring alternatives for its entire physics curriculum and it appears that the recommendation is going to be to partner with Loyal sock high school and their physics program. Uh we have some concerns with that option as Loyal sock operates as you know on a fourb block semester schedule and Mourville of course is the nine period fullyear schedule. Uh we believe
056that these conflicting schedules would create many complications for the students. Uh for example, besides the honors physics, uh our son also signed up for three additional AP courses and another honors course for next year. A semester of physics at Loyalock would require up to four periods daily for half of the year. So, how is that going to affect his year-long schedule at Mourville? And his situation is not unique. Um, it's likely that every other student, many in this room probably, that were signed up for a physics class at Lois will face the same obstacles. Um, obviously there's the issues of cost for transportation and will there be tuition cost as well. Um, I believe Mrs. calling. She talked about the uh the potential for partnerships with the other school districts in the area, Muny, Southside,
057McGomery, Hughesville, those schools. Um there was also a a comment in April about the difficulty in finding a full-time or part-time instructor. Um, we are aware that following the April meeting, a certified candidate came forward to propose a temporary full-time or I'm apologize, a temporary in-house part-time option that would satisfy the commitments to the current Moursville students as well allow the administration and board more time to explore all viable permanent options. Um, a temporary in-house position should be at a reasonable cost as there would be no fringe benefits involved. It would be a a instructor for a couple courses, couple class periods a day. Um, I can't imagine that that's going to be up over and above what it would cost for transportation and tuition outside of the district. Um, we urge the board to
058consider all the available options uh for this issue and the impact each one has on both current and future students that choose advanced academic opportunities at Mursville. But please, the the loyal sock option just does not seem like a viable option and the scheduling conflicts just seem insurmountable to me. So with that, thank you. Hi, good evening. I'm Patty Davidson. Um 315 Mountain Brook Lane as well. Also here on behalf of Austin. I have to put my cheaters on because I also am a group uh student. So um we're all sitting here listening to every practical reason given for keeping physics. Uh and I know you're not saying that you're eliminating physics altogether. you're trying to find a viable option. We've all talked about all of those obstacles as well. Uh and I'm sure that
059uh you'll talk about them more. Uh but I want to talk to you about the emotional uh side of this to your emotions. Um I agree wholeheartedly with all of the practical reasons. Um but let's talk about the emotional perspective uh that may affect all of us. um highlights profound lasting impacts on the lives of our students, our community, even our health care system that we all rely on that every single one of us is going to need. I'm not in education. Obviously, I'm in healthcare. Uh so I'd like to point out that um I understand the difficulty in balancing and managing a budget but in my field when weighing those financial constraints against fundamental need to provide highquality patient care. So lives are at stake every decision at its core is not about numbers.
060It's about people. And that's what this decision needs to be about, about the people, the students, um, and and the people that they will serve. Physics is a cornerstone of medicine. Some of our students will choose to pursue medical school, and we would love to see them return home and provide this community uh, with the highest quality healthc care they can to you, to your loved ones, to all of us. But to do that, they need to have a strong foundation in physics and science. Equip equipping them with the critical skills needed to diagnose, to innovate, and to heal. Their understanding of math ensures that they prescribe the correct dosages of life-saving treatments. Every calculation they make, every decision they take could affect the lives of countless individuals. But even for those not entering the
061medical field, physics remains essential. Many of these students will pursue careers in engineering. What does engineering have to do with healthcare? Everything. These future engineers will design, install, and maintain the infrastructure and life-saving equipment that our hospitals depend on. They will develop groundbreaking technologies that allow us to diagnose disease, conduct surgeries, and deliver compassionate, effective care. Without physics, these innovations falter before they even begin. So, I urge you, this decision must not be made in haste. consider that block scheduling affecting every other honors course, AP course, and everything that these kids are trying to build their foundation on. Um, it it simply can be a reaction to budgetary constraints. Why not seize this opportunity of having a reduced cost from the retirement and take this opportunity to have this temporary part-time, full-time substitute, wherever we're
062calling him. Give this students and these students and this community the stability they deserve, the opportunity to continue this plan, take the time to not make this decision in haste. Haste, excuse me. That's three minutes. Okay. Thank you. Let's make this decision that puts the people first. Else in the room. All right. Seeing none, we'll go uh to online. If you are interested in making a comment, please raise your hand. All right, seeing no hands raised, that will conclude the first public comments portion of the agenda. And uh we will now move on to the business manager reports. Mrs. Smith, we've received copies of the treasures reports for the period ending April 30th, 2025 for the general fund, cafeteria fund, and for the activity fund accounts. We are submitting these to the board for your
063consideration of approval. We'll take a motion to approve. A motion to approve. Motion to approve. Thank you. A second. Second. I don't know who first or second. All right. We got Mr. McClo is the first. All right. Any questions, comments, concerns on those? All right. Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Okay. All right. You've received copies of the budgetary transfers for the general fund. We are submitting you to the board for your consideration of approval. Take a motion to approve. Make a motion to approve. Any questions? Right. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Okay. We've received copies of the listing of invoices for the general fund and cafeteria fund for the period ending May 13, 2025. We are submitting these to the board for your consideration of your approval
064for payments. I take a motion to approve the bills. Motion to approve. Okay. All right. Any questions, comments? My only question. Sorry, I know it's went along, but I had it. So, there were a lot in there that had wrong date. Um, was there was there like there was just a lot in there that was like a wrong date avoided. Yeah, a check ran was ran it was ran on the wrong with the wrong date put in. So, it voided out and reissued. Okay. was I just was curious was that like a computer glitch or was that just just it was just wrong date. And then then the other one I was just wondering because there was a large one then that went to um when the the one for 833,344 that was wrong remittance
065was a school district. Oh, because the first line that was the check um over to um LCTC. Okay. Or the bond. Oh, gotcha. It was East Lake home school district. Yeah. Yes. because it on and the second line of it, it had it um you can't see it here, but it said East Lake home and school district and then it was um attention someone else and they didn't want it or attention on there. Yes. So, we voided it in Okay, perfect. Thank you. That was it. The addresses are saved in the system. Okay. Yeah. But when they change it because we'll get invoices that say they want it to an extension of and then they'll put that in there. I mean, so I got you. Oh, I'm all good. All right, we roll call vote
066for this. Mr. Albert, yes. Mr. Badger, yes. Mr. Eisenhower, yes. Mr. Gardner, yes. Mr. Cosnik, yes. Miss McCoy, yes. Mrs. Yes. All right. We'll move on to the budget presentation. While that gets started, if I may, since so many people did we don't often get to talk education. Um since so many people did come with the the physics concerns, I just would like to address that if that's that's okay. Please do. Yeah. Um I I will I want to assure both parents in the room, any students in the room, we're we're going to have physics in some form or another. The idea here was never um to drop the physics program. I too had Mr. Mr. Grub and that's why I'm not a weatherman and I went into education, chemistry actually. Um, so I, you
067know, having that chemistry back background, I understand the the importance of the sciences and what we offer here at the high school and having served as the principal for so long. Um, I was a big part of uh working with the faculty here to build what we what we have and I don't mean building Ron, I mean the programs that that we have here. So um fully aware and and understand the concerns about not having having quizzes. We are exploring all options, all possible options from dual enrollment, partnering with school districts, um part-time people here. We also have another opening in the science department that we still need to fill where we're hoping to find somebody with a physics background to ultimately teach it here in in house. Um that is of course the ultimate
068ultimate goal. The bureaucracies u between piecers and teachers union and at the state level to be able to easily fill a physics position right now um at times seems uh in insurmountable um for us. We've had this advertised and attempted to fill it. We had one qualified applicant. Um I will just say qualified um not acceptable to to us. I'll leave it at that. Um the state had 14 physics certifications last year, 17 the previous. So there's 31 new teachers going into the field where in the past it's been hundreds. So they're just not out there. So it it is a struggle. We are working um working hard to come up with ideas and plans. Um Mr. Barber is is on the table. He's very difficult to bring back to retire and go in the
069same position that he retired from. Um there are ways you can you can do that, but you have to be actively searching for a physics teacher. Um the budget is a part of it. Um there are 35 students signed up for physics. The high school may possibly have less than 500 students in it next year. We are declining enrollment. So it is becoming more difficult to be everything to everyone and we have to get creative in in maintaining the opportunities for our kids. So I can assure you we are working. Um the ultimate goal is to be able to offer it in-house in our classrooms with one of our employees, but understand um that is a challenge and we may need to work together to be very creative in how we build this this position.
070So, thank you for coming out and voicing and advocating for your kids. Um I appreciate it. Um, I think I said to you, I don't like being in charge right now because we're seeing this shrinking of um of a quite proud district and uh it's everyone right now and it's everywhere. We're all declining enrollment. Locks up a little reasons for that, but um everyone's down in the county right now. Our kindergarten numbers are sitting at 78 kids. So, we continue to decline. The birth rates are down, but we're working to maintain those opportunities. We want to assure parents. Thank you for taking a moment to address this important. All right. So, uh proposed final budget this evening. Um the board had asked that I provide some more detail along with stuff and to um go
071back to a prior presentation that we used to use because no one wants to see my budget presentation. Oh, is that enough? You said the B word. So um so there this is a little bit of a different slideshow than you have seen in the last few years giving you some more detail along with some more information um on what is going in behind the scenes which I think is great as we're talking through this. So I am very excited but I see a lot of people weren't. So we will start with local revenue. Um, these are monies that are produced right here in our school district. These are money coming in from all of you working when you get your taxes taken out. This is where the money is going. Um, from our taxes,
072um, from the admissions that you pay when you come to sporting events, things like that. So, that makes up 53.16% of our budget. Um, so in here I'm going to show you the changes we've made, but I'll also talk a little bit about what this stuff is made up of. Current real estate taxes is always something that everyone, you know, as people were saying, they don't want our taxes to go up, but we want our taxes to go up to maintain this. Um, you know, it's very both ways. So, um, here you'll see our current real estate taxes on where they are standing. Um, you'll see that it's a decrease ofundred and $16,860. Um that is because the state has issued an additional homestead credit this year. Um to push that credit go it flows
073through to us and out to the tax taxpayers. We don't actually receive that money. Um so you do see that going back off the real estate taxes there. Um the interims taxes are those things that you know you put up a garage, you do um something add something onto your house, you get a extra little tax bill in the mail. That's a bit budgeted about 15,000. The public utility real estate taxes, those come in right around 15,400 every year. Um payments and low of taxes, those are for like state game lands, those kind of things. We have a lot of them in our school district. um that comes in around 55,000 earned income tax. Um that is coming in right around 4.5 million. I will comment on this. Uh we recently went from our earned
074income tax being collected right here in the county at the Laneport Area School District that is now being collected at Keystone. Tax revenue is flowing in much quicker. It's being processed quicker. Um, so we're going to see over the next two years a little bit of a little different eb and flow of how the money comes in and make adjustments to that. Um, but it should balance out after the first couple years. Um, so this year we had the first six months were collected at the school district um, collection office and then in January they switched over to Keystone. So um, we're seeing that just in the first quarter. Um, money is coming in very quickly compared to where it was coming in before. Um, real estate tax transfers around 260,000. Those are the sales
075of the homes. Um, we collect a transfer tax on that. Delinquent real estate taxes of around um 500,000. We did drop that a little bit this year as we're not turning over as much into a delinquent. So, it's harder to collect when we're not turning it over because we don't have it as much. Um, our earnings on investments right around 300,000. Um, athletic admissions right around 54,000. That pops up and down depending on whether um the year it's a rainy year. We had a little bit of rainy this year this year and it got cold quick this year. So, um, that moves around just a little bit, but it's usually between 50 and 60,000. Uh, activity participation fee, those are that $30 that athletes pay to participate in athletics. Um, device insurance. Uh, if you
076have a kid in school that has a Chromebook and you want to pay to protect their Chromebook in case any damage gets caused, that's that revenue. IDA funding is uh money that we get for the IU. Um and that comes in right around 380,000. That goes up and down just a little bit each year. Um that's this year's amount and we always budget the amount that we're collecting in the same year for that. Uh rentals around $3,000. We don't get much off our rentals. Most of our um rental stuff is uh for the kids right here in the district. So, we don't collect rental fees for a lot of that stuff that is just our kids. Um, and tuition payments from other schools and um that's also made up of the summer school and that
077that's around 50,000 and miscellaneous revenue. Um these are just things that come in. Tax certifications, um tobacco fines, little things, those come in around 50,000. So overall, uh a local revenue of $18,93,465. Any questions on local revenue on the board before I move on? No. Okay. So state money, this is money that is comes through the state and it is distributed directly to the district. Um this makes up 45.82% of our budget. And this is just a little bit small. Oh, um basic an ed subsidy. Um that is where when they put the subsidies out for education where it says in there that um we what we will be receiving. So that has been put in there at the 8,525,838. uh you will see that the share of social security has decreased. As you decrease
078in wages, your share that you get reimbursed for also decreases because you're not paying as much. So you'll see a little bit of a decrease there. Tuition payments, you'll see um that has maintained the same around $40,000 there. um special education those uh that is also put in at what the state proposed in their um initial budget which is 1,569,962. Um transportation is budgeted on what um the current uh the current um projection is for next year which is 656,967 and that's always based on your prior year's transportation. uh rental and syncing fund payments is our reimbursement for our current bonds that we have of 300,981. Medical and dental service um is $31,000. Our state property tax reduction allocation, you'll see there where that changed um so that changed to 893. 240. Um, so that's
079the homestead that gets passed directly on through to the taxpayers. That's why you saw the decrease out of the tax revenue and the increase coming in here. So, we'll receive the money and what we do is we just take it off the tax bills. So, it's a um decrease to the tax bills there. um the block grants which now include that extra money that we're getting from the state of 1,432,646 what they proposed in their budget when they came out with it with the governor's budget and other income from the state is the retirement reimbursement and as wages change that fluctuates as well and that came in um at $2,312,600. So for a total of the state revenue uh we had 16,295,695. questions on the state revenue. Federal monies, federal monies are um monies that
080come through to the district through grants um and other agencies. Um these are basically our title programs. They amount to 1.02% of our budget. And [Music] um those you see here, these we base off of what we're receiving for the current allocations. Uh title one $294,468. Title 2 is $44,787 and title 4 is $23,196 for a total of $362,451. Any questions or comments on federal revenue? Now, the fun part. Thanks, Senator. Um the expenditures first we're going to go through the instruction. So these are all activities dealing directly with the interaction between teachers and students including the related cost which can be directly attributed to the program of instruction. This equals 56.2% of the budget. And here you'll see um your regular program. These include K through one. So this is your teachers, their benefits,
081um any purchase services, um this is your charter school in here, um your supplies, your K through 12, and your titles also. Um, so just a quick rundown here of some of the changes that we've made since the final budget presentation was the decrease in wages. Some of that is due to um the physics position. Some of it's due to um a teacher um resigning which should result in a lower wage coming in for a teacher. Um some of that is due to a change in hours for some people. Um that fluctuates and that varies with um differences as we make decisions um during every board meeting. So uh there you saw a decrease of $86,756. Employee benefits you see a decrease of $20,480. Um I did a budget I did a benefits update and
082just updated um you know selections of medical preferences and um also with the pasers and that also so that made a little bit of change there. So overall in this area we have seen a decrease of $17,236. Any questions about those ones? So special programs, this is expenditures for students with special needs. This includes gifted special education. Um the IU contract falls into a lot of this. Um it falls into a few other areas that I'll point out coming up. Um and we also have um charter schools also in here as well. So um again, you'll see here we have a little bit of change in wages and that's just due to an hour fluctuation um with one employee. I believe that would. And so you'll see a decrease of $1,464. Employee benefits of a
083change of $600. Um the 300s is where you see the large increase. Um and that was due to the IU contract that we received. Um, the IU contract came in $195,49522 cents higher than last year. Um, when originally putting this together, we budgeted an overall budget increase of about 7%. Um, that p that percentage increase on the IU contract was 29.3%. Um, and these are unpredictable costs. We could put this in here and um one student or two students move and it completely changes. It changes daily just by changes in placements, changes in student needs. Um so that's why you see the big change in the budget is we're getting um you know the needs and the services for the students. Um and everything else in this category pretty much stayed the same. The 500s
084I'll point out are the charter schools. Um so that's another large number. But overall in this category, we see an increase of $139,19 over um what was previously presented. Any questions there? Um B techn education LCTV um that was budgeted based on projections for next year. So that has saved in the system there. Any questions on that one? Um other instructional programs. So this is summer school homebound alternative education placements. Um Nitney learnings in here. Um partial um lead rock. That's not right. Red River Rock, I'm sorry. Um in here. Uh so you see here, um our wages are low because that's just basically our summer school and our homebound. Um benefits that go with that. Um the NITNY learning contract, they had budgeted a little bit more of an increase. So that offsets some
085of the um increase that we did see in the IU contract. Um, so overall here we see a decrease of $14,360. Any questions here? Not in public school. We have no cost currently. Sometimes we can get um cost in here. So I just wanted to make everyone aware that, you know, those costs we don't currently have, but we could end up with those kinds of costs. [Music] um expenditures for support services. So these are services that provide administrative technical such as guidance and help and logistical support to facilitate and enhance instruction. This is made up of 31.5% of our budget. Moving on. Um, this is pupil personnel services. This is our guidance, our psychological services, our speech pathology, our algeiology services. Um, in here we do not see much of a change from what was
086originally projected at the beginning of April. I will note the IU contract in this area did come in lower um than what we are projecting. So you do see the decrease in there. Um that's a decrease of about $10,788 overall. I'm just going to keep going while someone stops me with a question. No. Okay. um instructional staff services. This is our computer technology staff, our school library, um our curriculum, our instructional staff development are all put into this category here. Um the 300s, you see an increase of $10,000. Our website design, our website um needs to be upgraded within the next not the next two years. Correct. So, we put that in there. Um, and we also found um some some computer that we needed for the tech building um that were missing from our
087budget and so we added those in. So, overall you see an increase of $14,800 there. Administrative services. Um these are made up of the board services, the tax assessment and collection services, the superintendants office, the offices of the principles, um their secretaries, all of that um in there. So you'll see an increase of 17,376 um that was a personnel matter that has been discussed. Um so you'll see that increase there and everything else has remained about the same and as per that discussion um pupil health services. This includes your school nursing services. [Music] Um, and in here you see the only increase to the projection that was provided in April is of $17,298 and that was the IU contract. Um, and I said, you know, most of that you see um in the educational piece
088in the beginning, but part of that is for additional services um that we do see here. So you do have a slight increase there. Also, business services, we've had no changes from the original projection um in the beginning of April. Operation maintenance of plant services. Um there there's one big one here. Um, and right after we had the, uh, budget projection on the beginning of April, uh, I got to meet with our, um, the guy that I do the hedging with for our gas and our electric. We have been very, very fortunate. I've been able to hedge really low rates. Um, I had this hedged out for the last three and a half years. that contract for both gas and electric expires midyear. Um and we've started working on hatching that out and developing a
089plan and working on a budget with them. So for the portion of um January to June we are projecting about a $60,000 increase. So I just to be forthcoming moving on we do not see any drop and as we all know we just saw an increase in our electric um we are projecting another 52,000 needed for the July to December portion to be added into not the um 2526 budget but the 262 27 budget just to make up those differences. We were hedged at um just over 5 cents. So, as we all know, that's about half the cost of what it is now. So, it it is a significant increase for us. We've been very fortunate to get good rates. um we're going to probably um either hedge short periods or only hedge part of
090it um to try to get the best outcome. We're working on a few strategies right now. Um and those are worst case scenarios, but I think you need to be aware of it because that's just the reality of um electric and gas right now. So, student transportation services, you'll see there um this is the transportation needs. Um this is our regular transportation plus our transportation um that goes outside the district. We have transportation that goes to Felins Grove. Um we have students that are going to State College. We have sometimes we have students that go out to the Burwick area. Um we send kids all over and uh that changes very frequently and all of that is included here. So you'll see that there has been no changes uh since we put this proposal together
091in April. Um that came in about 1,628,770. Um and then expenditures for noninstructional. No, you're good. Okay. Expenditures for non-instructional. These are activities on that sort of with providing non-instructional services to students or staff in the community. So, this is primarily your student um activities, your student clubs, your athletics. Um here we've made no proposed changes into the budget. Um we did bids that came in pretty close to where they were projected. Um, so after we do our own bids here, um, we then go and look look at the, um, municip or the, um, the other bidding companies and look to see where they came in at. And we actually did very, very well. We found one item that we were able to get cheaper. So, um, our bins were very pleasing this year. Um
092and we sat down uh and went through those and you know took stuff out and you know changed and said is this a want or is it a need? Um we did go through a lot of that and we were able to cut um a lot of that cost out. So we were able to maintain it because the costs of things are really high right now. So, um, the prices have gone up significantly for him. So, that came in at 831,399. And then on to um our other expenditures. This is our debt expenditures, any transfers to any other fund, um, refunds to prior year revenues, etc. Um this is a 10% of our budget and um this here is made up of our bond payment our bond payment of 3,587,851. Uh so that has not
093changed because we're able to project that out each year. Um we'll show in here there is no budgetary reserve. Um as previously discussed, we were putting this together to get as close to zero as possible and we didn't want a budgetary reserve creating a tax increase. So anything that we need outside of our budget will have to come from uh the fund balance. I just want to make sure that it's very clear here. There is no extra wiggle room for anything in this budget. Everything will be coming directly out of fun balance. Um so summary, our total revenue is 35,561,611. our total which is a decrease of $18,411 but that's because of a decrease in expenditures in social security and retirement. Our expenditures are $35,837,14 which is an increase of $116,199. That is due to
094the um IU contract that we have on that we have included into this budget that we do now have. um even though we have that contract at the end of the year it's balanced out and it may change a little bit there as well. Um, so that creates a deficit of $275,43 with no budgetary reserve fee. And that electric also contributes to that in the increase. So, um the board had asked, you know, to see a no tax increase, what we could do there. Um we can do a no tax increase with a deficit of $275,43. Um what that looks like here is when you put that on um the median property for the homestead. Homestead um is um is the credit that you see on your tax bill and when we put that on
095there um you'll see and your tax bill will actually go down this year. It'll go down $35. So, um, that's for the average household median. Um, and you'll see that still creates that deficit there. And, uh, I just threw out the extra rates in there because we owe it to um, you can see we did a 0.18 increase. um that we'd show a $13 credit, you know, change on the tax bill and $132,43 deficit. And then I did the 35 um.35 mil increase just to show that would do uh increase on the tax bill of $11 and that would create a surplus of $2,597. They just threw those out there so that you guys see them and you had them. Um, so fund balance, fund balance where we were on June 30th, 2024, just over
0963.9 million. Um, looking over the budget, um, trying to project where we're going to come in next year. Uh, for June 30th, 2025, um, we're looking at 3.6 six million using just under um 300,000 of our fund balance there to cover some costs. Um originally that had the budgetary reserve in it um and was around a million dollar deficit. So that is coming in right where it's looking. Um the budget projection use for 2526 is the 275,43 which should take our fund balance down to 3.3 million. Um but again we have no budgetary reserve so that could be impacted just a little bit. um if you decide to change something up in what is already in this budget. So moving forward, the final budget will be adopted on June 10th, 2025. Any questions, comments? Was
097there anything bigger and further out the valley in the meantime as far as we have not received the insurance quote back yet for this year? That was I'm glad you said that. Um what did we build in for that because I know originally it was what six you did a 6% but did you I know we talked about it. Did we um I did not change anything because they thought it's going to between 10 and 30% increase, right? What they're saying, which is so that's there's going to this is now going to go to probably closer to like we're in a deficit of 4 500,000 because we budget in what 6%. You budget usually and it's probably going to be between 10 and 30% because of the valley. What does that fault is that would
098be under buildings? Well, right here under your 500s in building. I budget the 7% increase and it's probably between 10 and 30, right? Is what she said at the office is what they're saying, but we don't know because we're still waiting for the underwriter to come back, right? So, we're minimum we're going to be like 3% overwhelmed with budgeting already probably. I was in the worst case scenario. $5,000 if it's at 10%. Okay. I'm going to do 30% for you, too. 30% you're looking at 30,000. So between five means let's call it let's call it even 300,000 over 30. Yeah. Well, if you know Okay. No, I'm adding it into the end. So if you go 30,000, we're coming in at 275 over, right? Oh, okay. That fall my brain at 8:30 at night. So
099I just say figured now for 275 or 300 over and those will be additional things that will have to come out of the format. Randy, I have a question. Um, I know last year or maybe early in the summer, um, it was talked about possibly looking at the option of doing the budget for this year starting on a zero a zero zero base. Was any was that taken into consideration at all with this budget? Everything we've went through. I've went through um and looked at everything. The buildings were sent out their stuff and started um a lot of the stuff is really like we're cutting stuff to maintain costs of supplies. Um, and the the biggest drivers in our budget increases our wages and benefits. Um, you look at supplies and you're just we're we're
100telling them, hey, you can't spend no more on this. You have to cut some of this stuff out. We can't provide you all of this stuff. Um, so yes, everything admin team went through all their stuff. um that they gave to me and you know going through the athletic bids and stuff there was a lot of things that we were just like we can't do it this year. We can't if we put that in it's going to make us increase our budget like we can't do these things. Um so there was a lot of that though and it's hard when you're adding a new program too. I mean when you're out of the program and you're saying hey we can't you know so it is very difficult not to mention a $22 million project right
101that's part of the box they're not they're not part of this budget that's a different budget and still no tax increase there's going to be. We have said that we will not increase taxes for the project. I may not know a lot about the budget, but I do know enough to think that uh you guys are doing your job and and trying to be as fair as you can to the taxpayer. I sat on this board for eight years and I've watched it every year. Every year, same people come to the podium, talk their talk, and at the end of the day, they want more. There's only so much you can give, and this district's given it. We got a brand new facility, the upper right now. Over 19 positions were cut from this program
102in the last what, 10, 12 years. 19 to 21. That's not trying to stay base. I'm sick to death of listening to it. I understand that you want, you know, more, more, more, which is fine. Everybody's entitled that. But don't think for a minute that these people sitting on this board and our superintendent is not doing what they can do for this district. You saw all these people standing out here about the physics program. What did they want? A physics teacher. Every student that comes to this school ought to be entitled to it. And you want to know the main reason why we're going down and enrollment? It's because you're not offering everything a kid needs and they're finding it someplace else. And you continue to do that, they're going to continue to find someplace
103else to go. That's why your numbers are going down. Not to mention the fact that we're just not having kids like we used to. It isn't anybody's problem. False. It's just straight across the board. That's the way it is. And I mean no disrespect at all, but I've sat here for eight years and I have taken it and I've listened to it and I've watched I've watched the increases that we endure every year. you know, for the first four years of me being here, watching those increases on on on the um on the cyber charter schools, I watched it go from $275,000 a year to over a million, but yet you guys sit out there and tell us that you got to do something. You got to do something. Well, we have done something. Everyone
104on this board and previous boards have tried to do what they can do. But you cannot continue to think for one minute with a little bit of common sense that something has to give somewhere along the lines. What do you want to do? You want to cut more programs? You want to cut more teachers? I think teacher contracts are coming up, right? Why don't we just cut them in half? See how many people we get back. See how many good teachers we get. I apologize for getting a little loud, but I've held a lot in for a lot of years, and it put me over the boiling point today, and I hope a few you of you out there are happy for that. But this district has cared nothing more about these kids. my kids
105have gone through here and I and and and they and they have opportunities and that's what I hang my hat on as far as me advocating for the programs and doing the things that you know that fulfill these kids' young lives. There's too many out there that don't have this opportunity to do the things that they do. I'll bring in my tax stubs from 20 years ago. We'll compare notes. We'll see how much of a difference it's been in 20 years with all the projects that have been going on and things that we've had to do and endure. I guarantee it it's pretty fair in this district. Any other thoughts? I do have to say this is excuse me probably the most detailed breakdown that I've seen. This is my fourth my fourth budget and
106uh a lot more information is been given to us and that's fantastic. So thank you very much for that. I know Sharon I thank Brandy I'm just the pain that I don't mind doing it. I like I love going through it all. I wanted I wanted it all too, but um I just I ran into Sharon at Lowe's and I just took the leash off just go massively. No, I and that's so to the point is sat up there for many years and sitting on this side and I I think we need to be as transparent as possible. I don't to your point Dan you don't want to cut programs and I think trying to run programs as many as possible I think we need AP physics I really do and I also doing AP
107physics online is it's physics right so we're trying as hard as we can um but you also have to balance and you know Mr. I'm I'm sitting up here for the kids and trying to budget the balance as well as we can, but I I think the most important thing is our children's education and making sure that we have strong foundational leaders for our future because that's what they are. And so I get slightly insensed as we're pinching every dime and every nickel that we possibly can. Thank you very much. Saying that we're raising taxes because we like to spend like crazy. No, we don't. I like to offer opportunities for our children. Yes. That's why we didn't do volleyball right away. That's why that those girls are out there fundraising for everything possible that
108they can so we can offer that opportunity because it is the fastest growing woman in the sport. Um we are trying to create this district for our children to have the education they need. And unfortunately because the valley was not taken care of and for that matter later over the last 40 plus years we're now having to make a decision while trying to not make a financial impact on the community. of you know having to close a school, having to redo this school in a time where it cost more than it did 5 years ago when a board was offered, you know, a quite lower loan in order to make a and did make a decision. And you know, it's frustrating to sit up here and try not to do a tax increase and try
109not to lose programs and have a declining rate and um we're trying as hard as we can and and honest to God, I want to see this district thrive and I don't want to lose programs and I want to make sure our kids go on to be the biggest and the brightest. So, if you think that, you know, I'm not pinching every dime, I am. If you think I'm not on the horn talking to her, I am. Um, we're all trying. So, you know, I just think that that's why this is transparent. That's why they want it all out there so you all see where the money's going and what we're spending it on and what we're trying to do. Um, I'll get off my soap box, too, because I I I just want you
110all to know that we don't take anything lightly and making decisions on all that and trying to do what's best for the kids with what we have without impacting the community. It's fun. So, anyway, sorry. Good. Uh, before we go any before we go any further, we started at 7:05 tonight and we still have a fair amount of things to get through including administrator reports and voting on topics. So, uh, at this point in a while starting today, Mr. Blaz, um, we need to I need a a motion to extend the meeting by 30 minutes. That would take us to 9:35. Any questions or concerns about that? All right. All in favor extending to 9:35 say I. I. All opposed. Right. Very well done. Any other uh last minute discussions on budget? All right. Just
111to confirm, I'm bringing a budget um a final budget back with no tax increase the um amount that's in the agenda um for approval in June. Thoughts? there's an opportunity to make adjustments prior to that vote because tonight after you make a motion to approve that then um I will I have I gave you all the draft of what goes out um we'll run the advertisements in the paper we will post it for um the public to see um prior to it prior to the June 10th adoption so I just have to make sure it is exactly what you're looking for. See that you miss Mr. Elbert I figure we probably want to start this conversation. So my one part of the [Music] conversation, so with the homestead, if I'm reading this correctly, no increase
112in millage still gets the reduction in taxes of $35. Correct. A 1.8 increase in millage gets a reduction in taxes to the taxpayer of $13. Yes. But then at that point you switch to um No, that would be correct. No, I'm so good at that one. It's the 35 increase that would then cause a tax technical tax increase. Correct. And those are based on the median household which is what is used for the homestead. And what's the median household right now? So that is based off of assessed values. So, I'm going to say this number. You're going to see it's low, but that's because our assessments are low. Um, of 121,000 is um our median for the district. So, it means all of our houses together um that qualify for the homestead. Those are houses
113that qualify for the homestead and apply for it. So there could be houses out there that don't increase it up. We did increase last year. Oh, trust me. I remember was what was our military? It was like I can't remember. We did do because it was like we balanced it was a long conversation. We were at 1653. It was 54. Yeah, we went up 53. No, 54. You're 54. Ah, see, it was right. I said4. Oh my gosh. So, we did 54. 56. All right. I can't do math on. We're both on 56 that cost on 121,000. I need a calculator. I can't do that in my head. But it was sitting here with calculators to do it. $67.76. Okay. $67.76. 671. Yes. Um so um and homestead increased so it offset it by a
114certain I want to say it offset it around $30. So, I think it came out to right around $37. $37, I think. So, something like that because Homestead also increased last year. And then this year, you're looking at year of the refund. What? It's not a refund. It just the taxes go down $35,000. So, we met neutral from last year. So, then you're equaling yourself out. that you didn't do it last year. Yes. That's fuzzy math. Yeah. Fuzzy math. So we did even if we did a8 not understand the budget. Even if we did a still if we did a If we did a 18 we still wouldn't increase tax burden. Look at it that way. If we did a 18, we still wouldn't increase tax burden. What if we would have kept the valley
115open? How much would that cost taxpayers? The valley still is open. Well, you know, so don't we'll have that conversation. Yeah, that's for next meeting. Still open in this budget, hence the tax increase or hence the insurance increase. So suggestions for Brandy to take back. We either we're either doing no or 0.1 and eight. So but we have to figure that out. Why don't you go out with the bag? Yeah. Come on. It has to be a board's decision. It takes six though. Exactly. What we do um thoughts on zero.18? Which one's going? So both of those two matter decrease in our taxes this year for homestead. Right. So for the properties that have properties the properties that have approximately um 3,700 properties that have out of our like 6,000ish. And if we go with
116a 0.18, it's $21.60. [Music] Um, if it does that, if you didn't opt in to Homestead on the median, yeah, on the median, $216 on the median, which is 121. Um, no increase were in the whole 300,000 which we'll have to take from uh general for not general funds from the fund fund balance at 0.13 we're looking at taking right around 150. Well, yeah, because it's probably high. Oh, yeah. Gonna add the the insurance. Yeah. So you're let's go 150. So it's difference between 300 or yeah 300,000 or 150 from fund balance. So taking into consideration insurance for the valley potentially even if we did do the.35 increase we'd still be in the whole adding another potential. So instead of being 2,900 ahead, we can be 26,000 behind, right? We'll be in all the way.
117And you have no budgetary reserve. Yep. That's worked out real well for us. Thank you. rather see our balance be a little lower. Look at 18. So 0.18 is a majority Mr. Gardner. If there aren't any objections, then I'm going to suggest we take the the8 move forward for that. Okay. So, when we get to that motion, we'll just have to confirm the amount and a.18 tax increase on that. That's when we get to the budget vote here. Yes. Okay. All right. So, in lie of time tonight, we're going to uh we're going to for the moment, we're going to skip the superintendent report uh so we can get to the items that require voting. Got to take care of business first and then if we have time, we'll go back. Right? We're gonna vote.
118Tyler's like Tyler's like, "Are you kidding me?" It's because he's going he's going first. All right. So the general if you general agenda items uh I looking through these I think we could combine all of them 7.1 through 7.8 take a quick moment to refresh your memory on those and then I'll take a motion to approve them. All right, we good. Take a motion to approve. Motion approved. Second. Right. Any questions on any of those? All right, hearing none. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. All right. 7.1 through 7.8 are good. Move on to personnel. Again, I think we can combine 8.1 and 8.4 through 8.4. form. If there are no objections, I'll take a motion to approve that. I make a motion. Second. Any questions? All right. All in favor say I.
119I. All oppose. Very well. Academics 9.1. approval for graduation of those members of the senior class of 2025 who will have met all state and district requirements as of June 1st, 2025. That is 150 potential graduates as of today. That's a good number. Make a motion to approve those. Motion to approve. Any comments? This is the fun one to approve. Yeah, I like this one. All right. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. I don't see them in G. Uh transportation. Again, we could combine 10.1 through 10.3. We'll take a motion to approve those. Motion to approve. Any questions? All right. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. All right. Budget and finance. We'll go through these one by one here. 11.1. Acknowledgement of the following high school student activities advisors and officers
120for the 2024 2025 school year. Take motion. Motion to approve. Any questions on those? What is the way? That's um the teched wood shop. Oh, okay. Oh, cool. All right. I think Good question. I thought All right. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. 11.2 Two, approval to award bids for the 2025 2026 school year. Those were all attached for us to review. Motion to approve. I do that quickly because I do have question. So on the paper bids, we had white paper last year, right? that's came in at 16,000 and then there's now it's 51 price color copy paper for like $8,000. I mean the white paper went down which was fantastic. So why are we spending $8,000 more paper? Okay. So that is because um last year we didn't purchase any colored
121lever because what we were finding was they had a million different colors in every building and every building wanted different colors. So a few years back we were like no we need to use up all this colored paper first and then you get six options for colored paper. They're uniform building wide now. Um, but we haven't purchased colored paper in I want to say probably three, four years. You guys can tell me how long you guys have been yelling at because you we're out of this color. We're not getting it anymore. Find another color. So, we eliminated it. So, now colored paper's coming back in the continuity into the budget because we've used all random house. Okay, I got colored paper and colored lettering. So, um, but now we have limited it to the same
122six colors that they're allowed and it's every building is only allowed those colors. All right. So, we won't end up in that kind of mess again. Excellent. All right. That was my only question. Sorry, I didn't mean to. No, it's all good. That's a good question. All right. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. 11.3 approval of the proposed final general fund budget in the amount of 35,837,014 fiscal year 2025 2026 including salary and work schedules. And this would include a 18 mil increases. I'll take a motion to approve. Can I just comment here? Of course. Or I'll comment after you take the motion in the second. All right. Motion to approve. Okay. Now, Mrs. Smith, you may. Okay. Um, this is just the proposed final. So, you can come back at the final
123and say we don't want to do a full one 8 mil. You can change it at that, but you can't go up. You can't go over half point. go up. I just wanted to clarify that like you can go down but you cannot go back up. We went in at 76 last year and went down to.56. Yeah. Any other questions on that? All right. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. All right. Moving on to the committee reports. Yes. Yeah. I would rather hear the administrative reports than the committee report. Same. Because I don't have anything to I only have one little thing and it's and it has to Why don't we go ahead? No. No. It's really Mr. Blaze. Do we need a vote on that? He's angry again. Stop it. It's on
124the agenda. Okay. All right. So, we're going to we're going to forego the committee reports this evening so we could get the administrative reports. And since Mr. Blaze was so excited, like we will start with him. Tyler, I swear I don't mean to do this, but I just one thing for my committee report is no, just listen, you're going to feel really bad when you hear what it is. forever. Um, just I would I know we all heard about the bus that um crash that happened up in the northern tier that was members of the IU blast community. So, just wanted you all to keep them all in your prayers um that there were the students on on that in that van being transported as well as best driver were members of the Ivy Blast
12517 community. So, sorry I didn't go to that. Just want you keep them all your prayers. So that was it. Now Tyler is sort of back. You can actually talk now. I was at the concert. You have something. Um so for the fifth year in a row um the valley has um met all the requirements for PBIS tier one initiative. So we sit down 50 and we have to meet certain indicators in a row. um we've done that. So I think that's something to talk about about um all the hard work that staff puts in the volume. And then the only other thing that I wanted to really share tonight is we had a second grader that is operating. She uh put in a art a piece of artwork for the VA association um contest
126for county and she was one of the winning which will be honored at the county courthouse Friday at 4:00. That's fantastical celebration from the high school. Andrew wear who played skull in the little mermaid was recognized at the rail of lights award matter of fact the only award to my understanding that awards will receive for our outstanding production um and may or may not be aware of it but even though Mr. Johnson is not here tonight at the correct Dr. Jonathan because he is receiving his um and will be graduating from his program on Sunday. Wow, that's great. And then glad that he's up for graduation because we've been gearing up hard to get ready for that and some of the stuff. Uh currently doing testing here in the high school and keystone. Thank you,
127Mr. as you mentioned Monday night uh you know last night combined fourth grade concert it's we've done that kind of necessity a few years ago but it's really worked out bringing them together both and music instructor they really enjoy it honestly the sound so we did a great job last night their shared with them running the lightboard level so how helpful our high school students help out as well with percussionists get involved in this event there. Um, again, thanks for those who came out last Friday for spring fling and brave the rain for the second year in a row, but vendors it was packed as always and it's it's a big thanks to you for supporting that. We got some good food play some great activities. So, we're just gearing up and celebrating, you know,
128this year working together. Get ready for Right. Thank you, Mrs. Elbert. Uhhuh. Yeah, I'm changing up. Make sure you're paying attention. All right. Um, so we want to celebrate. Our students are great. Our staff is great. We did celebrate our secretaries on April 23rd. So, thank you for all their hard work. Special things for them to um we have Chorus concert tomorrow night at Nepal band concert Thursday. Nepal jazz will be at period 7 at 7 o'clock Friday night and again on June 21st at Indian Park at 7. I direct myself to period 7 to 5. So time to come out and see what our young musicians are doing. Um we wrapped up PSSA testing. We test every single student in grades five through eight for math. And then we also had fifth and eighth
129grade students in science. We did our first round of online. Um we also started out for the road. They did that sixth grade last week in the rain and mud and lots of papers were ruined despite the plan accordingly. But sixth grade book that also a shout out to Jen Hannah. She had 46 of her fifth grade students get selected to have their creative writing published in what's called the young writers fail writers publication last year. So that's a testament to our educators and what they provide to our students. Lots of things. Mr. All right, Mr. H wrap it up. Yeah, early intervention update. So, as the school year is winding down, we are actually starting next school year. So, we're in the process of evaluating our students that are transitioning from school age and
130scheduling meetings for them so we can discuss um programming and placement options for the upcoming school. Uh we have 10 students that will be transitioning from earlier intervention services to school age kindergarten. Um four of those students will be attending the valley and six of those students will be at lighter. And I just wanted to thank um Wendy Baker, our school psychologist, Jessica Donnelly, and Joyce Snider, our speech therapists, because they've been going around to a lot of the um preschool programming to evaluate and observe these students to um ensure that we have everything in place for them for the upcoming school year. Um also, our special education teachers have been working closely with one another and scheduling tours of buildings for those students that are transitioning on to new buildings for the upcoming school
131year. So, our fourth grade students have been making visits to McFall and our eighth grade students have been making visits to the high school. Um, we want to make sure that they are um familiar with the buildings, that they have a chance to meet teachers, um to talk to students that are currently in those buildings as well as meet the school counselor to make sure that that transition goes as smooth as possible for those students. And also wanted to offer up to parents that our administrators including myself will be working this summer. So if anyone wants to notify us for any kind of individual tours for those students um they're certainly welcome to do so and we will schedule an individual tour with them as well. Um talking about the extended fiery programming uh we
132do have that um estimated cost included in the agenda tonight and we're looking at having 40 of our students um receiving school year services. We'll have students going to sport middle school for that. um for the to the south academy up on reach road. We'll also have students going to New Zealand road um scoring eight heights and state college and then we have um couple students that will be receiving individualized speech services um because of their extended school year program. So um we have that going on as well. And then the last thing I just wanted to say is um we have a pair professional at the high school Miss Puffer that is going to be resigning at the end of the school year and have done an outstanding job working with our high school
133students and I just wanted to make sure that um to let you know how much we appreciate having her with us and she's actually leaving to um become a full-time student herself and looking at becoming a special education teacher. My son was crushed. He loves her. It was really a he was bummed when he came home last night. So, all right. Thank you for that. Uh since we're forwarding the committee reports, we've got time for uh the final public comment portion of the evening. Again, this is for residents and taxpayers. Come on up, state your name and your address for three unpaused minutes. Ron Snell, I find it simply ludicrous that a board member would sit at this table and say the reason why the enrollment is down going down in Mentosville Area School District
134is because a lack of opportunity for students. Our students have the most opportunity in our district than any other district. So it is absolutely ludicrous for a for a board member. Mr. Albert ludicrous Mr. Albert respect Ron I didn't interrupt you when you was going off on your tangent. Interrupted buddy. Not when you was going off on your tangent. I didn't. And the other thing I have is I didn't hear anybody on this board bring up that most years the final budget when it's all said and done and the accountants take over and do the accounting that there's always money that is is over and above what um in other words the the the expenditures don't meet what they earned are less than what is projected. So there's money left over and that's why the
135fund balance is like it is now because year after year after year um the expenditures weren't what it was either the expend it was either the expenditures weren't as much as was in the budget or the revenue was more than what was in the budget. It's going to be first toilet paper thing. I like that we got before we go get more. So probably um secondly we see no increased tax increase that works except for one thing. Where did that money come from our taxes? But it looks good to people who don't think about it. And lastly, I did want to stand up for the people who love the physics. Um, I'm not going to say we should increase the budget, but we do need to find some way to fit that in. I spent
13640 years in engineering and physics is very important and the way the world is now engineering is very important and we need more of them and we need more in this country because we're falling behind. So I know it's tough because we've been falling behind so there's not many teachers. But I think that's a good thing to concentrate on getting. Thank you. We need it. Appreciate it. [Music] opportunities no tax increase here don't come along very often and this is a year we're sitting one $3.9 million of general fund money that's in a checkbook out here 30 and 60,000 other educated offset teasers who haven't used that money in at least 15 years. So it's sitting out there still leaves $3.6 million of revenue that exceeded expenditure and sold into a general fund. This year
137you started out with need [Music] $375,000. You know, in the year before most of the got on the board, the 2425 234 budget year. Um there was for discussion about whether we need a tax increase or not. Many ended up no no tax increase. We had a shortfall of almost $800,000 on paper. You know, when that audit came through and we looked at it this past January, lo and behold, there was a surplus of $300,000. Now, there was no tax increase in our free year because a board had argued enough to say, you know, we can possibly do some of that money we already have. And it turned out didn't need it. Now, you as a board decided in our current year, we needed to have a tax increase. So,.56 million. Okay, folks. It's not
138a lot. $56 on a $100,000 assessment, but it's still it's this concept of having a price increase, no matter whether it's big or small, a tax increase year after year after year. Now the four years previous um two out of four years Paul you know Paul and never got a thank you from you never got a thank you from anybody about no tax increase but boy were they in here telling me how they were going to lose their home if I raise their taxes. So, I always did due diligence. I will admit I took it personally if I had to raise taxes. I always figured like the money has taken out of my own pocket and that's the last thing I want to do. But folks, you still have a chance. You haven't adopted that
139final budget yet. That's going to come in another month and maybe you can look at you could take here's going folks. Well, I don't know. Did you decide on the one? We did. That was the highest. Okay. And Mr. Romer, I've given you an extra 40 seconds so far. Pardon? I've given you an extra 40 seconds so far. You're You're coming up on four minutes. Okay. How about then? Um anyway, you do have an opportunity yet to roll that back to zero. And honestly, this this coming year is the death shot that I've seen of a long time. have no taxes. Chances are you having to take a little bit of money very soon out of the general fund that you already have 3.9 million and I have a feeling that is not going to
140go down too much even after the audit of our current. [Music] All right, I got to cut you off now. You're a minute and a half over. You're welcome. Only because you served on this board for a quarter of a century. Did I lay out 90 minutes? 90 seconds. All right, that will take us to enjoy. [Music] Motion to take a second. Second. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. That meeting is journ. [Music] We demand and press.