001Good evening and welcome to the regular meeting of the Mount Lebanon Board of School Directors. Tonight is Monday, October 20th, 2025. It's 7:31 p.m. and we're present in room D205 of the Mount Lebanon High School with public participation also available via Zoom. Uh we are going to start uh by welcoming some friends from Hoover Elementary to introduce themselves and lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Good evening. My name is Nikki Gil and I'm the proud principal at Hoover Elementary School. Tonight I am joined by four of our Hawksome fourth graders and I will allow them to introduce themselves and kick off the meeting. >> Please rise and turn toward the flag for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for
002which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Good evening. My name is Yuvon and I'm a fourth grader at Hoover Elementary School. I'd like to thank the board of directors and Dr. Freeze for inviting us to speak with you this evening. My fourth grade classmates and I excited to share about some of the hawksome things happening at Hoover this week. Good evening. My name is Ara. We kicked off our annual readathon today. Throughout the week, Hoover students will be keeping track of how many minutes they read after school. For some added fun this year, we are trying in theme days like wearing something with your favorite cartoon character, Libo colors, and sports theme day. Also, home rooms from each grade level will be competing to see which class
003will end the week with the most minutes read for their grade. The winning class for each grade level will win an extra prize. Good evening. My name is Keegan. Since the main goal of the readathon is to get kids excited about reading this this year, Hoover has partnered with the Mount Lebanon Public Library. If students visit the library this week, they can earn an extra raffle ticket for the chance to win fun experiences with their teachers, including assistant principal for the day, PE teacher for a class period, a dance party with the music teacher, and plenty more. And thanks to the Hoover PTA, every student will receive a free book to celebrate their participation in the readathon. Good evening. My name is Quinn. And if that's not enough to get Hoover students excited about reading,
004we also have a spooky story night this week. This is a fun event that is long is a long-standing tradition at our school. Students get to stay after school to enjoy snacks, crafts, and of course, fun readalouds complete with spooky sound effects and musical instruments. And and as an added bonus to it, students who attend Spooky Story Night earn 60 minutes of reading time for their readathon total this week. And that's what's just going on this week. No wonder students say Hoover is Hawk. >> Thank you for having us tonight. And if I'm not mistaken, you all just got five minutes for reading your report to the board this evening. >> Uh, roll call, please. Mrs. Berdick, Mrs. Crrael here, Miss Flecher here, Mrs. Galman, Mrs. Gensel >> here, >> Miss Guth >> here, >>
005Mr. Hoffman >> here, >> Miss Johnson >> here, >> Mr. Wland >> here. >> We have seven members present and Mrs. CrarAel is attending via Zoom. >> Thank you. Uh, just as a quick announcement, um, Mrs. Berdick and Mrs. Gensel are attending the annual >> Galman. >> Gman, I just looked at the G's. You're right here. Mrs. Berdick and Mrs. Gellman are attending the annual PSBA uh conference in uh out east in the Poconos this week. I move that it be resolved that the board approves the minutes of the policy committee meeting held on September 8th, 2025, the discussion meeting held on September 8th, 2025, and the regular meeting held on September 15, 2025. Second. Uh, all in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Okay. All right. Moving on in the agenda, we have our
006board reports. The first up is the board president's report. Um, tonight, uh, we are celebrating, uh, PTA appreciation month. We're celebrating it all all month long, but this is the night we get to celebrate it here with you all. Um, and we would love to express our gratitude on behalf of the board to all of the members of our district's PTA council and the building presidents. Um, I'm going to call the names of all of the officers and if you're here and wouldn't mind standing up, then we have certificates and we'll take a photo. Uh, Stacy Carlson, council president. Lorraine May, council first vice president. Jen Bowl, Council Second Vice President and President of Jefferson Middle School PTA. Heather Geisler, Council Treasurer. Jean Thomas, Council Secretary. Marissa Hoop, council historian and president of the Mount
007Lebanon High School PTA. Sarah Murphy, president of the Melon Middle School PTA. Kevin Ferris, president of Foster Elementary School PTA. Ashley Hawk, president of Hoover Elementary School PTA. Emily Ballastra, president of How Elementary School PTA. Caitlyn Roth, president of the Jefferson Elementary School PTA. Annie Leotaa, president of Lincoln Elementary School PTA. Kate Brown, president of the Markham Elementary School PTA. And Stephanie Fedro Byron, president of the Washington Elementary School PTA. Thank you to all of our PT fans. I'm pleased to share some of the district highlights for the month. Mount Lebanon High School celebrated its homecoming uh football game on Friday, October 10th. Members of the 2025 homecoming court were Chase Doerty, Sam Iberhart, Edward Ersiggovic, Carmela Gillian, MJ Gil, Clark Jameson, Lena Lee, Hayden Mayor, Maisie Thompson, Ben Wolf, Kaylee Woodland, and Ronin Young.
008Hayden Mayor and Ben Wolf were crowned the 2026 homecoming royalty. On Saturday, October 18th, approximately 1,300 high school students attended the annual homecoming dance. The Great Alumni Award is a project of the Mount Lebanon High School student council that began in 2004. Administrators, faculty, students, and alumni serve on the selection committee. The recipients of the great alumni award are selected based on exceptional work in at least one of the following areas. Improvement in the life of others, service to one's community, volunteer work, and achievement in a professional field. The 2025 great alumni are Lieutenant Chris Seagurt aka firefighter Chris 1993, Rear Admiral Katie Sheldon, 1995, and Michael Tyrion 1997. The annual Mount Lebanon Bands and Review concert is on Tuesday, October 21st at 7:30 p.m. in the high school auditorium. This popular event features the
009wind ensemble, concert band, and the Blue Devil marching band. Tickets are $5 cash at the door, or you can bring a canned food donation. The Mount Lebanon High School's Technical and Evening Theater Companies presents Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, adapted by Dr. Dougl Douglas W. Large. Performances will take place October 22nd through the 25th at 7:30 p.m. in the High School Fine Arts Theater. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the district website. Finally, registration is now open for the spring 2026 Little Libro Little Libo preschool program. It's a tongue twister, which will run March 9th through May 26th. For more information, please visit the district website. I'd also like to highlight some items from the month this month's district inclusivity calendar. Um, October is global diversity awareness month, which is a month
010to celebrate and increase awareness about the diversity of cultures and ethnicities and the positive impact diversity can have on society. The observance of National Disability Employment Awareness Month was launched in 1945 when Congress declared the first week in October as National Employee the Physically Handicapped Week. In 1998, the week was extended to a month and renamed. The annual event draws attention to employment barriers that still need to be addressed. October 10th was World Mental Health Day, which was first celebrated in 1993 and is meant to increase public awareness about the importance of mental health, mental health services and mental health workers worldwide. And tonight, October 20th is Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights with lights with variations celebrated in other Indian religions such as Janism and Sikism. It symbolizes the spiritual victory of dharma over
011adharma, light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. And that concludes my report. Next up, we have the uh superintendent's report for October. Thank you, Mrs. Glacier. Um this evening, I'm going to provide an update on our strategic plan and the progress that we've made since passing the strategic plan in um May of this school year. So, first, I'm sorry, June of this school, this past school year. Uh, so for our strategic plan, we had stated that once we got into the school year, we would give um monthly updates on the strategic plan and the progress that we've made. Just as a reminder, everyone, we have um 32 total tactics or goals for the 2526 school year. And as of today, there are four that are complete, 27 that are in progress, and
012one that has not been started yet. This presentation includes an update on the four completed and five of the inprogress tactics and goals. Um, one of the things that you will notice is there's now a dashboard online that's going to keep track of our progress on the strategic plan. And this particular dashboard is um will be updated monthly with our progress. It lists the tactic or goal. It lists the current status, the due date, um any notes that are related to the um tactic, and then the last time that this dashboard was updated. There's a link here, but if you go to the district website and search strategic plan, you will be able to see this there uh for for your use. So, the first one that we're going to talk a little bit about
013tonight is 2.1, which is to maintain K to2 consistency and communication with archives of newsletters and notices available online. And this one is complete. Um, this school year we implemented Libo ID and in Libo ID we have newsletter archives for both staff as well as our district newsletters. So if you miss a newsletter, if you're searching your email and you can't find it, this will be housed in the staff newsletters and district newsletters that are in libo ID to make it more easily um available to families. The next one is 2.2 to increase outreach to community members without children in schools through newsletters, town halls, and local media. This one's in progress. Um, some of the things that we're doing under this tactic are community articles in the Mount Lebanon magazine, uh, promoting the Mount
014Lebanon Gold Card Program for residents 62 and plus, steps with the superintendent, alumni tours, we recently did tours for the class of 65, 75, and 05. um outreach to our retirees and making sure that we reach out to them and keep them updated on the progress here within the school district. I am a very proud cadet of the Mount Lebanon Citizens Fire Academy. Um I learned how to use a chainsaw last week and how to break down a door and how to climb a ladder. And I don't think they're going to hire me. Um I wouldn't hire me to do those jobs. Um and that one's in progress. And the next one that's in progress is to host annual forums and quarterly superintendent coffees for open dialogue with family and residents. October 7th, we had
015a superintendent coffee. October the 16th, we hosted our crossing guards here for a coffee to thank them for their service to the school district. And just last week, we had Lebo University Tech Edition. There will be many more of these throughout the year, but these are the ones that we've completed so far. Um, the next one is 2.3. create a plan for summarizing board meetings to be shared with the school community. This one also is in progress. Some of the things that you may notice in the district newsletters is that we have reminders in the weekly district newsletters that uh meetings are occurring. Board meetings are recorded and available online and then a summary of board meetings shared in newsletters after approved at board meetings. Um our goal is that even if um people from
016the community don't necessarily look at board docs that we will point them in that direction. so that they can have access to all the information that's provided to the board in in these meetings. The next one is academic excellence excellence and innovation. This one is also in progress. Um implement a comprehensive curriculum review, development, training plan and evaluation cycle of ELA 6 to 12, social studies K to2 and math K to2. Um, as of so far this school year, K to2 social studies and health and PE, K to8 science, elementary MTSS, 6 to2 ELA, K to5 math are all participating in curriculum reviews. The new ELA and science resources were distributed and teachers are implementing them. Elementary science curriculum has completed stages 1 through three and ELA curriculum has completed stages one through two in
017Atlas, which is where we house all of our curriculum. All elementary schools have a full-time instructional support teacher. Grades six through 12 are completing an audit of Atlas in its nearing its completion and the updates and revisions should be complete within the next couple of months. And then finally, the high school is engaged in the Middle States Association essential learning experiences protocol. The next one is to establish an emotional support classroom at the elementary level and continue to evaluate the need to increase the number of autistic support and life skills support classrooms. Um, this is complete from a standpoint of we've implemented the emotional support classroom at Lincoln Elementary School. This classroom is designed to support students with social, emotional, and behavioral needs that have an adverse impact on their learning. and direct instruction in
018social emotional learning. Academic subjects or other needs are provided as per their IEP. And this is a picture of the classroom over at Lincoln. The next one is to implement single sign on and automated rostering for all district systems to streamline access for staff, students, and families. um for the families and the students that are in the room, you know that um Class Link was something new this year with Lebo ID to have like a one-stop shop for all of the applications that we have here in the district. You sign on once and you can access all of them. Um Amazon's AWS kind of created a little bit of uh chaos today because we lost access. Um, but this is a really nice way for us to host all of our um applications in one
019in one application for easier access. And then the next one is to improve system integrations between our student information system power school and learning management system schooly to reduce redundancies and increase usability. So, some of the things that our staff sees this year is new icons for 504s, IEPs, GIEPS, and gifted faculty and staff with approved access and P school can now access a variety of documents in IEP writer directly from P school. Previously, they'd have to log into P school, log into IEP Writer to see these. And now all of those items can be seen by clicking within P school to access them. And then the last thing we're going to give an update on is we've expanded centralized student registration using our student information system platform to streamline the experience for families and
020staff. Uh we rolled this out live on August the 11th and in one week we had 42 enrollments. So we got right to work. 42 is a pretty high number for a week, but we were excited to welcome new families. This allows families to enroll their students online 247. So, if a family, you know, is working during the day and can't start that paperwork in person, this gives them the opportunity to start it virtually. And then, of course, we do the same enrollment verification that we would if the person was in person. And then the last piece is just some upcoming events. Uh the next steps with the superintendent for our community members 55 and plus that do not have students in the school district will take place on October the 28th at 9:00 a.m.
021Um earlier in the month I did one and um the individual that walked with me, we walked three and a half miles in an hour and I was um not necessarily prepared for that rigorous of a walk. Totally capable of it, but you know starting the day with three and a half miles was a commitment. But please, if you're interested, um, or if you know anybody that's interested, have them come out for that. It is a lot of fun and we get a chance to talk a lot about the work here in the district. November 3rd and the 4th, there is no school for students. November 6th, we have our business roundt at noon. November 10th, we have a board meeting with a focus on special education and student services. November 13th and 14th, there's
022no school for K to 5. This is our conference days. November the 17th, we have a regular board meeting and our focus for the presentation will be student outcomes report. November 26 is a half day. Thanksgiving or break is November 27th through the 30th. And then the next superintendent's coffee is December the 4th from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. in central administration. And that is my update for this month. >> Thank you very much. Okay, moving on. We have middle school updates from Melon Middle School students, Andrew Latner, Andrew Gumbin, and Jake Bannon. >> Thank you so much for inviting us to speak tonight. My name is Andrew Latner and I'm an eighth grade member of our student council's executive board. >> My name is Jake. My name is Jake Bannon and I'm also an
023eighth grader of our student council. My name is Andrew Grumbine and I too am an eighth grade member of Melon Student Council. We would like to update you on the events of Melon Middle School student council. In midepptember, our council gathered for the first time and started to get to know one another. We have our 100 members. We have over a 100 members this school year, which is awesome. We click we quickly began planning activities to kick off our annual pinkout for the month of October. Each year we partner with the Slair Health Foundation to raise money and promote awareness for breast cancer research. Every Wednesday in October, students show their support by dressing in pink. Commonwealth Press helped us again with our on Wednesdays we wear pink t-shirt sale. Melon students were able to
024purchase a pink shirt through an online t-shirt sale. We sold 66 shirts and Commonwealth Press donated an amazing $591.50 to St. Clair's breast breast center on our behalf. As October approached, we decked the halls of the lobbies of Melon in pink decorations after school on Friday, September 26th. These decorations served as a fun reminder of our pinkouts each week. Any student who participates in our pink pinkouts receives a student council spirit slip, which acts as a raffle ticket for a chance to win prizes throughout the month. We have bins for students to deposit their spirit slips on each grade level floor. We plan to select 30 winners at month's end for a fun prize. Additionally, we are sending pink we are selling other pink merch such as tattoos, pink sunglasses, bracelets, lip balm, bandanas, and
025stress balls in the main lobby each Wednesday morning of the month. All proceeds will be donated to St. Clair's Breast Center. We cannot wait to see how much more money we add to our donation total and are very thankful for everyone's support. >> We plan to close out October by selling glow sticks on Friday, October 31st, both before and after school while supplies last. Each glow stick will be a dollar and will serve as our first student council fundraiser of the year. We are hoping this will be a fun way to celebrate Halloween at Milan. Looking ahead to November, we plan to host a food drive prior to Thanksgiving with all contributions benefiting Shim. We will host three food drive Fridays throughout the month where students will be able to drop off donated items in
026the main lobby. They will be greeted by student council members who will pack the donations and pass out spirit slips. We also plan to sponsor a fall spirit day on each of the three food drive Fridays. Any student who participates in the spirit days will receive a spirit slip and a chance to win to to win prizes before Thanksgiving break. Thank you for allowing us to speak this evening about the wonderful student council happenings at Melon. We look forward to seeing you again in December. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay, thank you guys. Next up, we have student representative reports from Henry Adams and Julia Ant. >> Good evening, everyone. It's been an exciting month for us, so we're eager to tell you guys what we've been up to. All right. To start, at
027the beginning of October, we officially launched our student representatives Instagram page. And over the past month, we've connected with students across the building, collaborated with our senior and junior student council officers, and followed many of the incredible clubs and studentled initiatives happening throughout our school. Looking ahead, we plan to post an introductory officer post, share meeting updates, including summaries from the school board meetings just like this one, and provide feedback forms so students can easily share both their thoughts and their ideas. We also plan to collaborate with the AO to further promote the account. As for activities day, we're thrilled to share that it was a major success. Nearly 92 clubs participated and hundreds of students stopped by to learn more, speak with club leaders, ask questions, and find new ways to get involved. Many
028students are now active members of these small Lebo communities. >> On October 10th, we celebrated the 2025 2026 great alumni at the great alumni lunchon and later at the homecoming football game that evening. As said before, this year's great alumni, our rear admiral Kate Sheldon, Lieutenant Christopher Seager, and Michael Tyrion. Throughout last week leading up to our homecoming dance, the senior student council also had our fall pinkout sale. We sold pink clothes and accessories with all proceeds going to breast cancer research. Because of how popular the sale was, this year, we're going to continue selling every Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of October. The homecoming dance itself last Saturday the 18th was a success and was extended by over 1300 students. As for the adoption of policy 223, use of bicycles and motorcycles, both
029Julie and I agree with the changes regarding bike transportation in the elementary schools, as well as use of electronic devices on school property. And then finally, as we move into the month of November, both Henry and I are currently developing a student-led mental health proposal in collaboration with Dr. Freeze, and we'll be presenting our ideas at next month's board meeting. Thank you so much for your time and thoughts. >> Thank you guys so much. >> Sorry to We'll We'll collaborate so we don't see each other. >> All right. And we now have a presentation um from Justin Ventry of Spec Mutilin Wood presenting the independent auditors report. Thank you. Uh so my name is Justin Venturi from Jose Spec and Wood. Uh we are the district's local auditors. Uh we're going to be going over
030a brief summary of the 630 2025 financial statement. Um I believe all the board members should have a summary sheet uh on your computers. Um so to start with obviously the independent auditors report it's the most important part of the audit. Uh we issued an unmodified opinion. What that means is the financial statements present fairly in all material respects uh with the basis of accounting. It's the highest opinion we can give. That is the opinion that you as a board as a district uh as residents are looking to receive uh when the audit is completed. Moving to the balance sheet the fund balance specifically for the general fund. three categories this year at year end. Uh non-spendable balance about just shy of $50,000. Uh that's prepaid expenses. Um you had assigned fund balance about $580,000.
031Uh those funds were assigned for things that were budgeted in the 2425 school year but were not purchased until the 2526. Just a timing issue there. That gets you to your unassigned fund balance about 7.5 million just shy of that number. Uh that 7.5 million gets you to about 5.99% of your next year's budgeted expenditures. I know last year we spoke of this, you're you're on your way to get to that recommended 8% by uh the state that they recommend for a district your size. Um but you know, as you're hitting that 8%, you also need to look ahead to long-term planning that you know, I know uh Dr. Freeze and Pat, you know, when we sit down and talk, that's a big item on their list. You know, as Dr. Freeze spoke about the
032strategic planning as well. um the long-term planning of savings and what the cost will be uh you know for the next you know number of years as well. So positive to where you know we were last year which is a good sign you're continuing to uh increase that on assigned fund balance. Moving to the statement of revenues expenditures and changes in fund balance in total total revenues were $122 million total expenditures about $108 million. Uh other financing uses about 11.2 2 million. Mainly that is the transfer to the debt service fund to pay for the principal and interest which we'll talk about uh in a couple minutes here. That gets you to a change in fund balance uh at year end about $2.8 million. Um so as I said you know looking back over the
033past number of years you guys are on the right track and adding to that unassigned fun unassigned fund balance trying to get to that 8% uh and also the long-term planning there. Uh the budget had changed in fund balance. Uh the budget was a break even budget. Uh so when we look at the overall general fund budget to actual you can see revenues were overbudget about $320,000. So 3% uh and revenues or excuse me expenditures were underbudgeted about 2.5 that's about 2%. Um all the districts we do we always tell the districts anything under 5% in those variances uh is you know significantly well-managed budget. you can see your uh revenues uh lower than 0.5% and your expenditures uh you know 2%. You know that tells us a couple of things when we come in
034to complete our audit. Number one, it was a realistic budget. Uh number two, that the administration was properly managing that budget. When you look at that 2%, you know, 2% it might seem like a large number, but your overall budget uh you know is $125 million. Uh so that 2% obviously does throw a large number. Uh and that's a very good number that we see and most of the time in all the districts we do the expenditures being under budget is the most common that we see. You know as a lot of monies do come in over the summer it's unknown you know during the school year what that you know either delinquent tax how might might be collected and you know various factors. So usually we do see that expenditures under budget. Um and
035also that's a way you know to help you know kind of uh restore your your fund balance overall as well. uh as I mentioned uh with the transfer to the debt service fund uh we do show that separately in a completely separate fund. Uh so during the year uh the general fund transferred 11.2 million uh of that money about 7.9 was paid to pay down principal on the bonds outstanding and about 3.3 was for interest on those bonds as well. Uh that fund has a zero balance. We just transfer money there to show those separately to not you know skew kind of your general fund as well. Uh the district also has a food service fund. If we look at the change in net position for the food service fund for the year excluding any
036change uh for the net pension liability uh your net pension at at the year end for that fund is about $1.1 million. Uh so that's a very well-managed fund. It's a profitable fund, you know, as a food service fund should be. Um and you know, I know, you know, speaking with Dr. and and and Pat uh you know those funds are already have a plan to be what they're going to be used for uh in regards solely to uh you know the management and the running of the food service program here. Uh when we look at footnotes uh there's just a few items that I always like to point out. Uh the largest obviously being the net pension liability related with the Heaser's pension plan. Uh so your net pension liability at year end is
037$142.6 million. Um always like to point this out for two factors. your overall proportionate share of the total peaser's liability is 34%. Um so the over overall peaser's liability is a very large number. I think it's about $44 billion if I'm not mistaken uh for this report. Uh the biggest item here is this isn't debt that you can pay down. The school is making all the required contractually contributions per the plan document. You know you're doing everything that the the plan is requiring you to do. um paying about 34% of every dollar for uh individuals that are enrolled in that plan. Um and that's really all you can do. You know, hopefully over the next couple years, we'll see that balance continue to decline uh as it did. You can see last year your percent
038your your balance was about 153 million. Um so hopefully we see that number continue uh to decrease as well. Uh the other footnote I want to touch upon is the long-term debt footnote. Uh the school has three general obligation bonds outstanding. Uh the total balance for those bonds at year end is $98.8 million. Uh as I mentioned about 7.9 was retired during the 2425 school year. Uh and that debt will be completely uh retired over the next 10 years if I'm not mistaken. 20 2035 should be the last year payments for those bonds. The school did expend over $750,000 in federal funds this year. So there was a single audit required. Uh we tested two major programs. the child nutrition cluster, which is basically your food service program, uh, and your special education cluster, uh,
039specifically the IDA funds that you receive from the IU. Uh, during our single audit, uh, we had no findings, no compliance issues in relation to those pro programs, uh, and no internal control issues as well in relation to those programs. Uh, total federal uh, funds expended, it's about $2.1 million. Uh it's a little skewed because a lot of that money is about $800,000 is from the food service fund. So that leaves about 1.2 of other federal funds, you know, the school receives that have certain requirements of what it can be spent upon. Uh you know, big thank you to Dr. Freeze and Pat and all the staff here. Uh they always make it everything very easy for us when we come out to do the audit. um you know have great discussions on you know
040any questions we might ask and give us great detail uh on on any things that we're maybe looking into uh or you know just want some clarification on they do a really good job of providing you know everything uh to us you know very readily uh and very quickly as well. Uh so obviously that was a very brief uh you know summary but be happy to take any questions and go into more detail in any of the areas if anybody has anything. >> All right, questions for Mr. I I don't have any questions in particular, but just generally thank you to Mrs. Connelly and Dr. Freeze for the hard work that you guys have been doing to get us to this place and to get us here so fast. Thank you. >> Um yeah, I
041do have uh one question just about the um the federal awards. Um so we tested the child nut nutrition cluster and the special education cluster. um is are we not required to audit the title funds that we receive or >> so usually the way it works is uh any any amounts any programs that are over 750,000 uh you have to assess them as low risk since this is our only second year of audit you know we decided that those two programs you know were deemed high risk again so that's why we're testing both those looking ahead to the the next year you know now that we've tested those programs for a little bit we might be able to assess them as flow, then at that point you assess anything that's over $870, excuse me, $187,000.
042Uh so at that point, then we could probably assess title one if we were to go that route. Um but it's just based on a numbers in the risk assessment. >> So because our title funds are so minimal, >> correct? Yes, exactly. Um, and anything that you're seeing in general, um, that you are talking to, um, districts about regarding um, sort of long-term debt, regarding, you know, OPED or um, Pasers. >> Yeah. You with with Pasers, you know, uh, you know, hopefully, you know, I think they have the next five years that your rate will continue to decline. And so hopefully that will be some savings to the schools instead of the drastic increase over the past 15 years that it was. Um OPED's a different story. Each district is kind of uh applying different
043um targets of of how they want to maybe reduce that or what they're actually offering uh you know the teachers with that and that varies you know across everything. Um probably probably the biggest thing now which comes into play especially this year um with the state budget obviously you know you're not getting any state funding is you know having districts kind of have a plan of if it does go six months or longer where are the funds going to come to kind of sustain you know you guys you know your your tax revenue is a large number but you know that also comes in periodically as well. Uh so you know that state money you receive is also a very large uh chunk you know as well. So what it needs to happen as far
044as you know savings to get through that um you know in the short term and in the long term. Uh and then the other thing with debt you know I think we talked Dr. Freeze and Pat and I you know your interest rates look pretty good on your bonds. You only have three outstanding um and most likely bond council is you know periodically reviewing that you know if it is beneficial for you to um you know recall and refinance those. But, you know, you guys have pretty good rates. Um, and with three outstanding, you know, and your payment plans look realistic with what you guys can sustain currently. Um, so that's another option. But, you know, you guys have seem to have a pretty good handle at least, you know, on the outlook, um, you
045know, with what's necessary as well. But, so those are kind of some of the things that we always kind of talk about. But really with the the, you know, the state budget not passing this year. Um, and it has, you know, periodically done that as well. It's kind of more of savings, you know, to sustain, you know, if that continues to go on. That way, the school can still run the programs, uh, you know, that were planned for and and that are needed as well. >> All right. Any additional questions or >> can I just add a couple of comments? Um, first, thank you very much for your willingness to work with us. We really appreciate it and your your feedback is always welcome and appreciated. Um we have this is the first time that
046we are adding to our fund balance in six years and so we anticipated it would take us another two years to add to fund balance and the only reason we were able to do that is because the board trusted us to do our job um that our staff both administration and teachers bought in and when we said no spend in January they did not spend in J from January on. Um that was a huge win for us. Uh, the other thing that I want to mention is that we um closed out a like I guess a legal situation with Concordia that was going on for about 15 years when we added our new solicitor. And with that, we were able to take $3 million that we had set aside to pay for their costs because
047we had to set aside the taxes they paid to us. That also went back to the fund balance this year. So, for us to get to 5.99% that is a huge accomplishment. And if you run into a teacher, you run into an administrator, say thank you to them for their willingness to do that. Um, our goal, it's a very hefty goal, is to get as close to 8% by the end of this year. So, our staff knows that we'll be doing a hold on spending again this school year so that we can build our fund balance back up and then have the ability to do assigned so that if we have projects and things like that that we have an assigned that is for projects. So, I just wanted to make sure you know we
048have a couple more people in the audience than we typically do and I just wanted to take a minute to just say like we've come a long way and how appreciative we are of the support that we're receiving from multiple ends. >> Yeah. And I just want to say on behalf of the board, um we're just so thrilled to see like problem identified, come with solutions, come with um internal controls and processes, uh build a plan and build the buyin for that plan across the whole district and to get us where we are. Um our reserve policy for the board is a 5% policy. So this is the first time in a while we are in compliance with our own financial reserve policy which is exciting. Um but we do share the same goal as
049the administration to be um as close as possible to that recommended 8% that will put us in good position if and when we need to go out to borrow for some of the capital projects we've uh been deferring frankly um for a while. And um it will also allow us to start building up the assigned uh capital fund um as well to start saving towards those projects and lower the amount that we might eventually need to borrow. Um so just appreciation all around and thank you for your diligence and work with the team on this and speedy delivery. >> No problem. any any if there's any questions that pop up, you know, Dr. Freeze has my email and so does Pat, you know, >> and we'll see the full report and the along with the
050>> the the yeah the acter we the plan this year is to have that released in December. >> So, we're already working towards that and then get that to you guys in December to hopefully approve at the December meeting. So, >> all right. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Thanks everybody. >> Okay. And then finally, we have board member reports. Um, first up, policy committee, Miss Guth. >> Sure, of course. Thank you. Uh, this month we discussed numerous policies. One was confidential, excuse me, confidentiality of special education, student information, career and technical education, use of bicycles and motor vehicles on campus. And then we also are retiring KFAA, which is use of school property, bicycles, skateboards, etc., hoverboards, all of those. Right. Um, PSBA and board development, Mrs. Skeleman, as we discussed, is
051at the PSBA um conference, but I'm sure she and the PSBA would love us to remind the public that we're coming up on four months without a state budget uh which is due by June 30th every year and has not been passed. Uh so if um folks would reach out to their state senators and their state representatives and let them know that um districts need those funds to pay for essential services for our students. Um that would be great. Uh we can I I just recently read an article in the um Post Gazette which is an unintended consequence of well they're all hopefully at this point. Um which is also that districts might take a hit to their budgeted interest income for the year because they're not receiving state funds as expected and so those
052funds are not able to acrue interest income. So >> the state is acuring interest. >> Yes. I went to Harrisburg on Monday having a day with Dana Miller. So I have a laundry list of activities. >> Oh dear. >> Talk with them about it. >> Um MLF Mrs. Gensel. >> Yep. Uh the MLF it will meet next Wednesday for the first time this year. Um the grant uh applications are due o uh sorry November 21st and then we will meet on December 4th to decide on those. >> Excellent. and PTA council. >> I was not there this month. >> Oh, I was there this month. >> Oh dear. Um, let me take a quick look. And it was a great meeting uh over at Jefferson Elementary School uh who hosted us and it was my
053uh first and I apparently did a very terrible job filling in for Mrs. Gensel. But we do hear from uh all of the um PTA council officers. We hear from the administration, including pretty much most of the folks you see around the table here, uh and from our community partners, uh in police and fire, um and the municipality. and uh pertinent to our discussion today. There was some discussion at length about um just the use of micromobility devices in the community and safety for students. Uh Parkway West, Miss Johnson. Oh, sorry. Municipal liaison parks and wreck, Mrs. CrarAel. >> Sure. Um, so I don't have anything for parks and wreck tonight. Uh, however, for the municipality, they did, uh, have their public hearing to talk about their improvement plan. In that plan, it actually outlines
054a lot of the larger capital improvements they plan on doing, such as municip municipal buildings and equipment upgrades, firet trucks, police cars, etc. Um, if you would like to view that plan, it is available online. And if anyone has um any recommended changes, you can do so until the end of the month and they are requesting um for you to do so via email or before the next commission meeting. And we also heard from our junior commissioner who has some ideas related to our traffic flow at the high school. So very excited to have a little meeting with our junior commissioner as well. >> Excellent. >> That's it. >> Thank you very much. Um Parkway West, Miss Johnson. >> Hello. Um Parkway West. So, we met at the beginning of the month and Parkway also
055hosted us last week um for our board meeting and we reiterated what we had discussed at our previous um Parkway meeting discussing the spacing needs um due to increased enrollment and programs at Parkway. So, we are looking into those issues and what can be done. Um currently, Mount Lebanon has 79 students attending Parkway with um 100% nocti pass rate. 83% of those are advanced and 17% are competent. 72% or 72 students out of the 79 have achieved their portable industry credentials which is really significant for those students to be able to leave school and graduate and go out into their respective industries with those credentials. And again, I'd like to thank them for hosting us as well last week for our meeting and dinner. Okay. Um, Pathfinder School, um, Mrs. Berdick is not in attendance.
056Uh, Shazda, I just wanted to, uh, report that, um, Dr. Freeze sent us all a professional learning opportunity being offered in November, uh, through Shazda. And this is a chance um to hear a presentation from Weissberg and Kramer um covering the um social media AI images and the boundaries of free expression. So, it'll cover legal and constitutional questions surrounding student and employee speech, uh, first amendment principles, the distinction between protected and regulated speech, and the implications of new technologies, as well as some sort of up tothem minute legal updates on how the courts are treating these issues. So, um, all of the, uh, board members should have received that invitation, um, to attend at Upper St. player next month and should um I guess RSVP if they are interested in attending. All right. And civic
057engagement, Mr. Hoffman. >> Yeah. Thanks. No uh no update this month for the civic engagement committee. Uh but they do meet uh next on Wednesday, November 5th, and that's at the municipal building on Washington Road. Okay. Um, next we have comments and from res I apologize. Uh, we deferred one of the presentations in the superintendent report to allow um our auditor uh to to make his presentation. So twice a year we have a human resources update from our operations director Mrs. Connelly and you can follow the along with this in board docs. Got you. >> Thank you Mrs. Fleer. Just going to give a brief human resources update and our agenda is going to look at the HR mission which is following the strategic plan. review HR key functions that we perform each and every
058day. We're going going to review staffing data, changes in practices over the last year and current open positions. So, um this next slide just shows you that this is our focus point in our department. Uh we follow the vision, mission, and values of the school district. It's very important to us and we keep this in mind with every decision that we make. Key functions This was hard to capture. Um, so I have a big title there called hiring and recruitment. We hire and recruit for all permanent staff through the HR department. We have 750 employees. We are also recruiting for permanent substitutes because out of those 750 employees, things happen and they can't come to work and they're taking leaves and we need substitutes. We also focus on summer. We provide a summer learning experience
059and summer enrichment and we hire all the staff for that too. So some people think summer might be our downtime but it's not. It's very very busy because we constantly have programs running. We track uh act 48. This is a required continuing ed practice for professionals that all teachers must follow. We have um to track certification clearances. We help teachers move from level one to level two when they're eligible. And we provide all the tuition reimbursement and all the collective bargaining agreements. We recommend tenure to the board when we have um those teachers who are eligible for tenure each year. We budget for 95% of the staff. And this is a really big category because we have a lot of employees. And I would say 80% of the budget is contributed contributed to salary and
060benefits. So we are budgeting very early for the following school year and we're tracking all of our expenses currently while we're spending the money to make sure we're on budget. We provide uh reports to the board and we provide a lot of data to the state through the Pennsylvania information management system known as pimps. I mentioned benefits. That's another key function. Uh we provide all the fringe benefits to our employees. The big big ones are health, dental, vision, and life insurance. We have a lot of employees picking up voluntary insuranceances and that's a great benefit within our school district. It's all out of pocket for them, but we offer it through payroll deduction and um our employees really like that. We keep track of all the retirements um and we report everything to peasers. We
061track all of resignations, leave of absences. We also administer the workers comp program across the district, unemployment compensation, and affordable care act reporting um to the IRS in the beginning of the year. And other key functions are absence management for permanent employees. That is an online software that our teachers used for calloffs and how substitutes pick up jobs. We hire all the day-to-day substitutes and the long-term substitutes. We process payroll for hourly employees and athletic stipens. We are involved with recommending to the board coaching positions, seasonal employees, extra duty responsibilities, and stipens that our staff receive above and beyond their salary. We process time cards and make adjustments. We are very involved with collective bargaining and making sure all of our labor contracts are followed by both labor, our employees and management, all of our
062administrators. Occasionally, we have to do an HR investigation if we have a complaint or if there's some kind of concern um regarding an employee. We do that all out of our office with the administration and we make sure that we're in compliance with all the state and federal laws. I also want to review with you 12 years of staffing data. During April of 2024, we had the budget forum and uh Dr. Fes introduced 10 years of instructional data to establish trends in our staffing numbers and we are keeping up that data file. It's very interesting. We continue to collect, compare, and analyze all of our staff and staffing data throughout the year and during the budget process. It's not a file that we look at once per year. We are constantly looking at it. Tonight,
063I'm going to be be comparing the 20145 data. That's where our data points begin. And I'll compare it to the current school year. and we'll also compare staffing data from 2425 last school year to the current year. Um, this is the data slide that I said has a lot of numbers, uh, lots of columns. I'm going to be comparing the last column on the right hand side to the, uh, first column that says 2526. And these are our um employee categories over there in the first column on the left side goes from admin, professional employees, long-term subs um through to our support staff. So as you can see in 2526, we have 750 752 employees. And these are the highlights comparing 2526 to 24 20145. Currently, we have 19 more total staff than in 24
0642014 2015 school year. That breaks down to the following. We have three more professional employees, seven less secretaries, clerks, aids, support nurses. We have 30 more personal care aids than in 20145. We have seven more food service staff than in 2014-15, three more custodial maintenance facilities in 2014-15, three less long-term subs, and administration has had no change. So, there's a lot of eb and flow over that decade, but that's the breakdown. Um, I want to also point out what our studenttoteer ratio was in 2014 2015 school year compared to this school year. In 20145 the student teacher ratio was 12.3. That's um for every one teacher they have 12.3 students and in 2526 it's 12.6. So each teacher average is 12.6 students. Now I want to take it some time to compare last school year
0652425 to 2526. Comparing these two years, we do have two additional staff. Um there's a lot of eb and flow as I mentioned. So I can't pinpoint that it was just one single thing. But um this these are the highlights. No change in admin, two less professional employees, four more long-term subs. That's all based on the eb and flow of our teacher staff and their leaves of absences. We really don't have a lot of control over that. We have four less secretaries, clerks, aids, and support nurses. We have four more personal care assistants, one less admin assistant and specialists, two more food service workers, and one less custodial maintenance facility staff. So what does this all mean? In the last two years, uh we resulted in 28 less total staff. This was not a result
066of furlows but rather the following. We looked at attrition. We attrition of staff due to retirement or resignation. We reassign teachers based upon staff case loads and course enrollment analysis. We assign teachers on special assignment to open positions due to retirements and congruent certification areas. We analyze the personal care aids based upon student needs and IEPs. We combine administrative roles in finance, HR and the facilities departments. We ensure that there is high quality and specialized staff equitably distributed across the schools within the district. Not one school has more than the other. It's all we try to be equitable. Staffing and outcomes are then analyzed to ensure the desired outcomes are delivered in a very cost-effective manner. I want to bring to your attention some changes and practices that we implemented over the last year. We
067have done self audits and reconciliations with all of those big ticket expenditures that we have and a lot of it has to do with benefit coverage. We ensure that employee benefits matches our invoice from our providers. Um, we have to make sure that we update all current marital statuses, family members coming on and off, and we absolutely require evidence of a dependence on all of our insuranceances. We also analyze position control. What that means is that we ensure positions are budgeted and necessary before posting. There's no automatic postings. We we review and update job descriptions to reflect the current needs of our district. Also, there are four layers of approval for every single posting to ensure there is a need and accuracy and questions are asked and answered if necessary. We also have done a
068ton of policy updates and we're communicating them to make sure employees are aware and we are consistently fairly applying them. And um we've improved on our recordeping. We've done a lot of purging and reorganization and that took some time and we blitzed that last year. So our file storage is reorganized for efficiency. Uh just a few more things I want to mention. Uh with a lot of help from the administration, we looked at the way we have recruited. We go beyond traditional job job postings by using social media, targeted job fairs, and university partnerships. Uh we've moved up the new year hiring timeline in order to compete for the very best candidates. So, we're often recruiting in May when we know retirements are coming. The LEObo Summit provides four opportunities per year for staff development
069across all positions in our school district. It's not just for teachers, it's for everybody. We do re real-time staffing records are updated and maintained across the district and staffing for grades K12 is completed by March for the following school year. So we we know where we are budgetarily going into the budget forum. And these are just two pictures of our HR community recruitment. Um this started this summer. The picture on your left is the Mount Lebanon School District summer recruitment table at the pool and that was a lot of fun. It was hot but it was fun. We met a lot of people. >> Um >> you didn't get to swim though, Pat. >> Pardon? >> You didn't get to swim though. >> No, I didn't swim. Um, but it really looked inviting. It was
070hot. Mount Lebanon School District also went outside of our school district. Sometimes we do that. We've been to Green Tree. We've been to um recently the Bethl Park job fair. It was done. It was held on a Saturday. Um, we got a lot of traffic. Sometimes people don't apply, but they might know somebody who who wants to apply. And we advertise um what jobs we're we're in need of. Which brings us to this slide. As of last Thursday, this is a list of all of our current vacancies. Um, rest assured that some of these are being filled by either um people on temporary assignment or substitutes. We have all of our responsibilities covered, but we're constantly hiring. We like to see this list get shorter. There's a lot of eb and flow. Um, but you
071will see on here it's mostly support staff. So, if you know of anybody, give them my name and number. Tell them to visit our website, come to our recruitment table. We would love to meet them and share what we have to offer here in Mount Lebanon. Are there any questions? >> I just want to say uh thank you for this update. Again, to reiterate, this is probably how we spend 80% of our our district budget. So really important to keep tabs on um staffing data, how it's changing, and I love the addition of um changes in practice. I know that this represents a ton of work and being kicked out of the building on occasion um in the evening. So uh just thank you so much. Any other questions or comments on the staffing data?
072>> No, thank you. Thank you for all your hard work. >> Thank you. >> Great work. Thank you. >> Yeah. and thank you for the creativity of thinking outside of the box and not just staying in the normal light of recruitment. So hopefully some of us can see the pool next year. Okay. Um now we have comments and residents comments from residents and taxpayers concerning action items for this meeting. Um, we have no one who has previously requested to speak. Um, but if there's anyone who wants to speak on the items that are up for a a board vote this evening, um, this would be the time to address it. Uh, and then we'll have time at the end of the meeting for open comments. Um, is there anyone who would like to make a
073comment on action items for this meeting? Okay. And just as a reminder, we are working on a way to verify um residency for online commenting, but our online comments are current are temporarily on hiatus um until we can work that out. Uh there is no unfinished business for board consideration or action. So, we're going to move into new business. Um, all of these items have been discussed at the discussion meeting except for noted by an asterisk. The first agenda item is policy. Mr. Hoffman, can you read the resolution? >> Sure. I move that it be resolved the board adopts policies 113.4 Four, confidential confidentiality of special education student information 115 career and technical education and 223 the use of bicycles and motor vehicles and retires policy KFAA use on school property of bicycles, skateboards, rollerblades
074and other devices. >> Second. >> Okay. Do we have any uh questions, comments, or discussion on the policies? >> I just had a just a couple I guess comments slashquests maybe just like points to make that just came up uh last minute. I know we had time to review this before. So, um I realize that there are signs at at least at JMS. I don't know if there are other schools that say no rollerblading, skateboarding, or bic cycling on the athletic field or inside the track area. Um, they're obviously old signs given that they say rollerblades. So, I guess one question was, do we feel like it's okay to admit rollerblades and hover and actually hoverboards as well from the policy? Um, we call out some things in in the third paragraph. Um, I'm talking
075about policy 223. um and not others. Um for instance, we don't call out rollerblades, but we call out scooters, etc. Um and then these signs sort of imply that it's it doesn't say whether it's during school hours or after school hours. So again, not a huge deal, but just wondering, you know, if we care if our policies aligned with those old signs or not. Um, you know, I I just wanted to say out loud, you know, it was brought to the board's attention that um the elementary administrators are um generally not in support of us adding fourth and fifth graders to uh the policy for being able to ride their bikes to school. Um, and I think that they were pretty emphatic about that. So, um I tend to support the teachers and administrators. I
076think they're the ones that whether we intend on them in this case um having to enforce anything at all or not, um they're the ones that end up having to deal with it. And of course they will have there will be administrative regulations where the principles can make up rules and things like that. But just knowing that they they were um had strong feelings regarding adding fourth and fifth graders, I may I may vote no just just in support of them. Um, I think that that's all. >> All right. Um, any anything to add about signage updates after the >> Um, we can update our policy. >> Yeah. And it's it would be any time on school property. So, we can look at those because I think there's a variety of them. I don't think
077they're all the same. They're not all consistent because they were probably hung over different periods of time, right? Um, but we can review all of those and make a determination if we need to take them down or repost. >> Um, and just as a I guess point of of how this would go logistically, um, we do vote yes or no on the suite of policies. But if you wanted to vote um if anyone wanted to vote yes or no on anything in particular, and correct me if I'm wrong, but typically you would vote I um as to the policies you're voting in support of and nay as to the policy that you are not supporting. Um or you can vote nay on all the policies. Uh other questions or comment? So, Dr. Freeze, this the
078bicycle policy. Um, there there's an interplay between the policy and then regulations, correct? >> Yes. >> And then because we discussed this a bit last last week uh about um narrowing the field a little bit. You know, we had discussed the age range which is reflected within the policy, but then we also potentially discussed times of year u which isn't reflected in the policy. I don't unless I missed it. >> Yeah. No, they would go into the administrative regulations and we were talking about those. Um Dr. Schulo met with the elementary school principles last week after our meeting on Monday to discuss it with them. They have a um proposal for administrative regulations if the policy were to pass. Okay. >> And um basically it takes into consideration everything that was shared by the board
079last week. >> Now I don't know Mrs. Gensel mentioned um certainly the the administrators and and you had shared that with us last week. Um I I think there was some discussion after our discussion that perhaps you would go back to the administrators and seek further clarification of that has has their position changed at all from what you shared with us originally or >> I'll have Dr. Scholo. He was um present with them to give you an overview of what they shared. >> Sure. Their their position has not changed. Um the general overarching theme is we acknowledge that we are a walking district and many streets are equipped with sidewalks for walking but we are not designed to be a bicycling district without bike lanes. So there's concern not only for students who are on
080bicycles but also for pedestrians who are also on the sidewalk walking at the same time. um those those were the overarching safety concerns um that that they represented or that they shared with me. Other concerns are surrounding if a student is injured on the way to school, how we know things like that, how we respond, just new layers for us that we'd have to work through. Um they also shared the concerns about students arriving and leaving on bicycles with go zones and walkers. We discussed the possibility of having to set up a bike zone where they could gather to dismiss that we could coordinate it. We have a slight initial concern about staffing to be able to do that at first. Again, regulations that we would have to work through. Uh but the main overarching
081concern is um the safety of kids on bikes for roads that don't have sidewalks for the use of sidewalks for mixed use of walkers and bicyclists and that congestion of coming and leaving school navigating go zones walkers and bikes at the same time. In terms of the um daylight factor, the conversation that we have started is to have bikes be able to be ride during daylight savings times. So roughly March through November, early November, as opposed to trying to reset that date every year. >> Okay. >> Can I ask a question on that? Would that would that daylight savings time administrative regulation apply through to g grades 4 through 12 or just the elementary grade? just the elementary grades. >> And one one other thing I forgot to point out was that um and it's
082really like clarification for all of us because it took me a while to think about it is the you know the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends um a child be 10 years old to do this. um, however they recommend these things. And I would I would guess that the maj I could say the majority of our fourth graders are not 10 before November of of um, fourth grade. I would think that it's safe to say the majority are still nine. um could be a little off with that, but just something else to consider. But I understand why you initially I said, you know, let's put 10 in the in the policy, but I understand that would be um or I'm assuming why it's not there is because that would be a lot harder to enforce
083than than fourth graders. So, I understand that. >> I really appreciate this information, Dr. Shulu and Dr. Freeze. you I think it's brought a good deal of um of light to the situation having the experts opinion which are the the educators and the administrators. So thank you. Um it is it's really tricky. There's like Bower Hill and 19 and there's people biking on sidewalks on 19 and it's during rush hour where cars are going 45 miles an hour to 60 m hour in some areas. It's it's terrifying and if a kid got hurt it would be unconscionable. So thank you for this information. I think I'll be voting no for this today. >> Dr. specific. >> I'm sorry, M Miss G. I'm sorry. I did mean to cut you off. I apologize. >> Um, in
084addition to um um seeking counsel from the administrators in the elementary buildings, I can't recall was there an effort to seek counsel from the public safety agencies and did what if anything did you learn? our safe our school safety partnership meeting was actually today and so we met with um Mertza, the police and the fire department and they were not in favor just for the same reasons that we shared. They said they're really concerned about the ability to um navigate sidewalks with people and bicycles and dogs and all these other things and not not being a specific place for those kids to ride bikes. Um, and I think the other thing that they noted was the increase in kids not using these devices to begin with in a proper way. Um, in seeing accidents across
085the district, >> you know, I I shared um at the last meeting that you know, generally I give deference to to Dr. freeze and her team regarding this stuff. Um, but I would be open to having a discussion about um, you know, considering it because, you know, I ideologically or idealistically. I would love to, um, support, you know, kids doing anything that's more active, right? and and certainly bicycling bicycling is a a great opportunity for that. Um, one of the things, and it was mentioned a couple times tonight that was mentioned towards the end of the last meeting that caused me the greatest pause was that not all of our elementary facilities are um located in similar locations and those that are closest to 19 and Bower Hill Road and some of these larger thorough
086thoroughares um does cause concern to me. Yeah, I'll just add it's it's it's helpful to hear all these perspectives from different groups of people and uh you know hearing what we heard tonight. I would have a hard time supporting this going forward based on, you know, the safety recommendations of a number of different groups of people from different constituencies. So, um I don't know what the move is here if we look to hold this and revise it for another month or >> can we revise it on the floor? >> So, what's this on? um because it is something that there's information that arose within the last 24 hours is dimminimous. It does not involve the expenditure of funds um or entering into a contract under the sunshine law. You could take a vote to amend
087and then a secondary vote to adopt or I mean this is a policy that doesn't need to be immediately changed. The easier thing to do would probably be to just table it um and refer it back to the policy committee for additional discussion and revision. Um you could table it to a time certain. So if you want to keep it moving, you could say we would like to postpone consideration until the next month's board meeting and that would just have to be by motion second and I vote. >> Okay. Um, I am going to make the executive decision to call for a motion to postpone consideration of the adoption of policy 223 and the retirement of policy KF AAA um because we would need an existing policy to be standing um until the November um
088board meeting. We do want to keep this moving because there have been changes to PA law regarding the age of some of the micromobility um and and you know electronic devices. So we want to make sure that we pass that as soon as possible. Uh do I have a motion to table 223 um and retiring KFAA until November? >> So moved. >> So second. >> Okay. Roll call. Mrs. Crrabel >> I >> Miss Fleer >> I >> Mrs. Gensel >> I >> Miss Goof >> I >> Mr. Hoffman >> I >> Miss Johnson >> I >> Mr. Wland >> I >> Okay, do we need to restate the resolution? Not so long as the board secretary has properly recorded it. >> Yes. Delightful. >> Okay. Any other questions or comments on the policy resolution which
089now includes um adopting 113.4 and 115. >> So the motion in the second that was stated originally stands. Now we vote on that but that has extracted out the perfect. >> Yeah. Okay. Well, then roll call, please. >> Mrs. Greyel, >> I >> Miss Fleer >> I >> Mrs. Gensel >> I >> Miss Guth >> I >> Mr. Hoffman >> I >> Miss Johnson >> I >> Mr. Wland >> I >> All right. Thank you for the discussion on that and we will look forward to seeing those policies come back around next month. Um, next up is the vote on our finance items which include um the treasurer's report, monthly list of bills, a list of tax refunds for September year-end budgetary transfers, October budgetary transfers, the list of unusable equipment, and a field naming
090rights agreement. Mrs. Gensel, can you read the resolution? >> Sure. Can I move that be resolved that the board approves the finance agenda items? Second. >> Any questions, comments, or discussion on these items. >> Included in this is the naming rights. Correct. Yeah. And and I had mentioned uh last week, I didn't even know you were behind me when I said it last week because we were offsite, but uh you know, last month we heard from a number of you um about Coach Walker and uh not having having been a member of the community for too many years, it was it was fantastic to hear the contributions uh that Coach Walker has made to the community for for decades. Um, so I'm very excited to vote yes for this um, in respect to his contributions
091to not just athletics but to the community as a whole. >> Thank you. Any other comments? >> Okay, roll call, please. >> Mrs. Crabel >> I >> Miss Fleer >> I >> Mrs. Gensel >> I >> Miss Guth >> I >> Mr. Hoffman >> I >> Miss Johnson >> I >> Mr. Wland. >> Hi. >> Uh, next up is our human resources items which include the uh Yeah, congratulations. >> You don't want to stay for the whole meeting. >> Oh, yeah. Before before the Zoom goes live, >> um, >> we can all keep a secret for a few more minutes, right? uh >> the personnel report um which has just been updated to be current as of October 20th. Um Mr. Wing, can you read the human resources resolution? >> Sure. Um I move that
092it be resolved that that we approve the human resources uh items. Second. >> I didn't see it on there >> on the fly. You did it. Um, any questions or comments on this item? >> Okay. Roll call, please. Mrs. Crrael, >> I. >> Miss Flecher, >> I. >> Mrs. Gensel, >> I. >> Miss Guth, >> I. >> Mr. Hoffman, >> I. >> Miss Johnson, >> I. >> Mr. Wland, >> I. >> Okay. Uh and then next up we have the facilities items that include the purchase of real estate and the finance of real estate. Um on behalf of Parkway West Career and Technology Center um Miss Guth, can you read the resolution? >> Honored. I move it be resolved that the board approves the facilities agenda items. >> Okay. And just as a reminder and
093uh we did meet at Parkway and hear from Dr. Darby Copelan and his team um about this uh the work that they and the joint operating committee for Parkway have been doing to locate um a parcel that would and negotiate a deal um for purchasing that parcel that would allow them to expand their uh campus and to accommodate their growing um enrollment. uh as well as to approve the financing of that property. So all 12 districts in the jointer for Parkway have been asked to consider these motions. Um the purchase needs to pass by a majority of all of the board directors voting and the finance needs to pass with a simple majority of each of the districts voting. Um Dr. Copeland did note to us um that although a vote hadn't been taken, at
094least one of the districts in the jointure had indicated strongly that their board was not going to vote to pass this resolution. Um and we had a a great discussion with him and his team and the board about these items. Um any questions or comments about these items? I just think this is another area that um I hope that our community members also take to your state legislators uh in order to help CTE programs throughout the state of Pennsylvania because they do need us. Um and right now it's just really tough on all the districts. Um and it is sad. So I hope that in the upcoming years we see some changes in that. All right. Roll call, please. Mrs. Crabel, >> nay. >> Miss Flecher, >> uh, no. >> Mrs. Gensel, >> no. >>
095Miss Guth? >> No. >> Mr. Hoffman? >> No. >> Miss Johnson? >> No. >> Mr. Wland? >> No. >> Okay. Uh finally we have the curriculum and instruction items. Um, these include anou with uh a the AIU and Head Start, the approval of student assistant team for the school year, an agreement for multilingual psychoeducational evaluations, uh, field trip for the girls varsity wrestling, crowdfunding approval requests for Jefferson, How and Markham Elementary School, and two, uh, confidential settlement agreements. Miss Johnson, can you read the resolution? >> I move that it be resolved that the board approves the facilities agenda items. >> Second, curriculum and instruction. >> So, it's okay. >> I don't know why my Sorry, I clicked the right button. I move that it be resolved that the board approves the curriculum and instruction agenda
096items. >> Second. Okay. Questions or comments on these items? Okay. Roll call, please. Mrs. Crrael, >> I. >> Miss Flecher, >> I. >> Mrs. Gensel, >> I. >> Miss Guth, >> I. >> Mr. Hoffman, >> I. >> Miss Johnson, >> I. >> Mr. Wland, >> I. >> Excellent. Okay. And now we have questions or comments from residents. uh presentations or comments are to be limited to three minutes. Do we have anyone wishing to make comment? Okay. I'd like to announce that the board met in executive session this evening to talk about student discipline. Uh and upcoming public meetings will be on November 10th at 2025 at 6 p.m. The policy committee meeting will meet uh in D205 of the high school and on Zoom. On November 10th at 7:30 p.m. the board discussion meeting will
097take place in room D205 and on Zoom. And on November 17th at 7:30 p.m. the board's regular meeting will take place in room D205 and on Zoom. Do I have a motion to adjurnn?