001[Music] here. Miss Diroff present. Mrs. Kratz, Ms. Nyman here. Mrs. Scott here. Mr. Brad Upgrove here. Mr. Roger Upgrove here. Mr. Zawada. Mr. Penello here. Stay for meeting, right? Yeah. If we could all rise for the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The board of school directors held an executive session following the April 22nd, 2025 board of school directors. meetings. The topic was legal andformational. Session lasted approximately 30 minutes. The board also met and held an executive session prior to the May 13th, 2025 committee of the whole meeting. Topic was personnel informational. This session also lasted minutes. Takes us down to our discussion and information section.
002And under item A this evening, we have two vendors uh that will be going through a brief presentation with regard to their to our RFP and they responded as one of the vendors for the analysis of demographics and community growth patterns and projection enrollments. We're going to begin with our first vendor and this is the PA Economy League and I believe Miss Patricia Morehead is here this evening. Patricia, welcome to the podium. Thanks for joining us this evening and I believe we have your presentation up and ready. Sorry about that. Hi, I'm Patty Morhead. I'm with the Pennsylvania Economy League. Um, let's see. We are um Pennsylvania's leading independent nonprofit p public policy research organization for over 85 years. Um, we provide technical assistance to local governments and school districts, independent research and civic education
003as part of our mission. As far as school district enrollments go, we've done more than 220 school district enrollments since 1986. Um, industry standard is uh plus or minus 5% after um five years. um we're within that 5%. But more importantly, we've done three school district enrollments for Boyertown. Um the first one, and you guys were one of our firsts, I believe, because uh you were number six in my old data file. So that was from 198586. Overall, we had a 1.7% um uh average error rate after 10 years. in 2011 2012 um our overall rate was 4.8 eight, but that was at a time when you guys went from increasing enrollments when you started to decline in enrollments. And then in 1516 was our latest update to your numbers. And we were within were
004within 1.1 in the five years, first five years and 2.1 in the second five years. And the data that I have from 2324 says we were off the enrollment by 66 students I believe. So we have a proven track record. So the project approach we develop a a public school enrollment program um that assists you in making your uh critical critical uh planning decisions. Uh we look at population trends, housing trends, birth patterns, uh migration of children, number of children enrolled in other programs such as prori schools, the historical enrollment trends and we also look at community development. We look at building an occupancy, new housing developments, turnover in existing housing and available vacant land uh suitable for housing. So we take all of that into um into consideration when we're coming up with our
005projections from that. We will um give you an provide an aggregate uh district-wide K to2 enrollment projections by grade currently grade level and current grade level alignment which I believe is K to 5 and or I'm sorry K to 5 6 to 8 9 to 12. So we will we will do that as well. Um then we uh we give you a 10-year outlook and we we um look at the uh grade progressions that's students moving from first to second grade, second to third grade etc. and look at birth rates in housing and see how that all affects those numbers. We will pro provide an aggregate one and we will also do um projections by school and by um municipality. We like to look at the municipalities as well. So maybe you can see trends
006that'll be happening in the future versus where your students are now. Um we'll give you a full full report as well as we will do a public presentation um PowerPoint for the uh school. The team the team is me. I'm the director of data and financial analytics at the Pennsylvania Economy League. I've been doing um I've been working with the the league for over 19 years and I've um been working on school district enrollments probably since 2020. So recently I've been doing a lot of these uh projections. Um Vinnie Canazario, he's our new executive director for the past year and a half. He comes from uh York College where he was um the founder of the let's see Gfelter Institute which was um a datadriven public policy institute through the college. He's also he also
007still um teaches some public policy classes at the school. And then Lynn Shedlock is our director of operations. She's also she's a former reporter. She um is very adept at research and she makes our reports readable. She makes sure that everything you can understand them. Some of our recent clients, Penridge, we just finished up. We're currently working in Hazelton and Wallingford uh Wallingford Swathmore. Um Chambersburg, Palmyra, and Harrisburg. Actually, Wallingford, Swathmore, and Harrisburg. uh we did their projections about three years ago and they're looking they're working with architects now so they h they're having us actually update their projections. Um so that's it. That's that's our presentation. Do you have any questions? Patricia, can you go back over your your cost structure for for a project of this size? Aha. Um, unfortunately I don't have
008the cost structure with me. I I'm sorry about that. Um, I I can get back to you. I I think we have that in the materials that you provided time range that you have for a project this size. What what sort of u rate of return? usually about 3 to six months um depending on how much data we have to collect and and how how soon we can get the data um you know especially if we're talking to um different uh municipalities for housing information and stuff like that. So it's a 3 to six months. Okay. Questions from the board. Yeah. When you when you said you said about going to the townships, are you talking about McGomery County and Burks County, the townships for this? Any municipality that's involved or in the school district
009will try and um touch base with their um elected officials to see what's going on. We'll also look at Burks and Montgomery County's planning documents to see um what's on the horizon. I was just wondering if you're looking to the uh actually going to the planning agency to see what's on the plans instead of the officials because it comes from the planning agency first. Yeah, we we would probably start with that, but we also ask the uh municipalities. We we email them and find out what's uh what they know what's going on if they know what's going on in Thank you. Patricia, in your documents that you provided, we have a breakout. You were a fivemonth timeline. Is that okay? That sounds about Yeah. about and your price range. You had a price of 40,000
010listed on there. Is is are our are cost structures negotiable at all? I you would have to discuss that with Vinnie is the main um is as the executive director, he has to make that decision. So you can ask him if the if we have any wiggle room in there. So in the RFP we had a scope of services. So uh let me just list them down and just confirm um that your your your documents and and what you suggest would meet that scope of services. So certainly a large summary um general characteristics of the district itself, community development activity, right? birth patterns, right? Migration patterns of child population. Yes, we look at ins and outs and Okay. Enrollment trends and projections. Yes. Obviously, um a breakout. I think you mentioned this. Um we're broken
011elementary, secondary, but we also are broken elementary, middle school, and high school. Would you be breaking out both elementary and secondary as well as all three different levels? Um, we can break it out whatever way you would like it broken out. Um, we were just working in Hazelton and they're primarily a K to8, but some of their schools were broken out K to 2 and 3 to 8. So that's how we gave them the um enrollment protections and and aggregate it back up to the K to8 if they wanted to see it that way. Another scope of of services was consideration of older or stable neighborhoods which have begun to turn over to newer owners if possible. Is there is there consideration for that in your We do. We um we just we look at
012um there's census data to show how many pe how many households have moved in the last uh so many years. And we look at that and we we we take a look at that. But we also look at your uh your grade to grade progression cuz if because if there are people coming in you would see that in the numbers. So we do look at that you know and and make you aware of what those numbers are and you can see that compared to what your enrollments are to to see that we also look at um number of students per housing unit. So, um I noticed that uh I was looking back over your last report and that was going down a little bit over the last uh couple of years are rental um rentals
013taken into consideration how are they derived and and when it comes to we can give we look at the census data and look at occupancy rate whether it's you know vacant uh occupied vacant or rental um we did look at Um, one of the recent ones we did, their vacancy rate decreased in absolute numbers and in in units like in in households and percentages of the total units. Their total units grew, but but also uh telling was that their vacancy numbers shrank and they're they're in a a district that's showing one of the few that's showing extreme growth right now. Okay. Um and then the last um service was you uh utilize industry standards and maybe you can speak to what those industry standards are and all other means necessary to produce a comprehensive study
014um for the years 25 through 35. We look um we follow the uh um the PTE, the Pennsylvania Department of Education uses um similar data to what uh we we use um similar trends and stuff like that. Um, but we take it and look at, like I said, we bring in the housing stuff and and look at the developments and give make you aware of what's coming up to so that you, you know, it's a comprehensive report so that you can see um what kind of changes may be on the horizon. And we not only we give you our preferred number that we we would say well well we think this is the number and that's what we were comparing the um past or the actual enrollments to um in our old studies but we've
015started to give um some ranges. What if the birth rate changed? What if you had the maximum number of births or the uh least minimum number of births? What if you had what if every grade progression was at the highest it could possibly be? what if every grade progression was at the lowest it could possibly be. So in the comprehensive report we show you that kind of um information. Okay, great. And then lastly, I guess um we would get an electronic share file. Absolutely. Of all the the information necessary along with a a presentation in a setting like this to the board. Yes. Okay. You also might um give an idea where the people are coming from like what areas um like are we drawing from the Philadelphia area? We drawing from out of state.
016Um we don't go down to that uh necessarily that level, but we could probably get some of that um in the anecdotal um information that we would gather from the uh elected official officials in the municipalities. Any other questions from the board? Well, I thank you for joining us this evening and sharing with you and with us with regard to that and we will be back in touch with you. Thank you. Thank you. And our next uh presentation is from steps to achieve and I believe we have Jim. Jim, can you pronounce your last name for me? Cook an hour. In an hour. Okay. Jim. Cook an hour. A soda in an hour. All right, we got that. So, welcome. Thank you. So, we respond to your RP. Turn your mic on. Perfect. That's on.
017All right. So, thank you. Uh we're happy to be here. Thanks for uh including us in your study. Um we respond to your RFP. We're looking forward to uh serving you in the district providing the enrollment. So kind of at a high level, what we're going to do is we're going to use proven statistical methods that are very common for enrollment projections using the grade progression, the cohort survival method. We're also going to take a look at birth to kindergarten ratios and then we're going to bundle that using Monte Carlo simulation that will feed in thousands of parameters into it that'll actually give you a strong confidence interval in addition to a point estimate for your in for your numbers. Also, we're going to take a look at your neighborhood transition. So, that was one
018of the items you identified as part of your RFP. So, we'll take a look at the neighborhoods experiencing turnover. We'll use very similar methods that the prior vendor mentioned, but we'll also dig into using realtor data. So, we'll actually gain the hotspots of what the trends and what the movements are. Uh, up-to-date realtor information based upon those. Also looking at census, also looking at public health records, including those. Um, part of what we'll do is we'll also provide recommendations. um our experience, we'll talk about that in a little bit, but we come from uh we have strong educators. So, we have a former super uh former uh director of federal programs as part of our team. Uh was responsible for child accounting. That's one of the other things we'll use is we'll actually use your
019prior PIM's data. So, we can actually go and mine that data directly. We don't need so we'll be able to help move those methods along. So, a little bit about us. Um we've been in business for a little bit over 10 years. We serve over 70 schools centers across the state of Pennsylvania, also New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, and even in Florida, we have customers. Uh we primarily focus on program evaluations, community needs assessments. We also do grant uh writing, consulting work. We do federal programs, so title one, two, three, four consulting, ESSER funding, and we also do data management impact reports. One of the most things we're good at is making things very easy and understandable and kind of like very digestible. That's one of the things that we're very proven at doing. Um, so
020this was just information from your RFP, just kind of like your district profile, understanding, you know, that you cover a large square areas across two counties serving about 6,500 schools. We understand this information is coming off of the that you cod here is coming directly off of the um PA future ready index and then we'll also understand that you have a lot of housing and transition that you're interested in getting a better understanding of. So that's kind of what we're going to look at. We're going to collect historical data, past data, your zone data. We're going to gather information on birth rates from the Department of Health. We'll correlate those. We'll also get your market analysis. So, we'll get that information off of the Realtors Association to pull that information in. Age of homes, demographics,
021studies coming in. We'll pull in the um vacancy rates, your rental rates, those kinds of information as well. And then we'll reach out to each one of the districts and the planning boards to find out what kind of future plans are coming across both a municipality within the district and also within the counties overall. So, we'll gather those. The progression rates is pretty standard statistical method for doing those. We'll use the grade progression ratio which is kind of like the fundamental building blocks. You know what grades from second to third, third to fourth, etc. All of those get bundled into using the cohort survival method. So this gives us our overall percentages. We'll do this historically and then also use this to provide us progressions going forward. But then we'll also kind of weight it
022to make sure that we have appropriate average for doing those. We'll incorporate the birth to kindergarten correlation as well too. So how many people are entering kindergarten? We'll look at what the birth rate was five years ago to help us determine if what percentage are moving into this. And then we're actually going to use Monte Carlo simulation. This is one of the things that makes us a little bit unique where we can feed in hundreds of different inputs and variables into this that will actually give you a strong confidence interval saying you know not only a point estimate that your progression or your attendance will be enrollment will be this but we'll also give you that strong confidence interval as well doing that included um we'll look at your neighborhood so the turnover so identifying
023trends in enrollment the housing life cycle so what kind of impact what kind of family values what kind of values, but what kind of family ratios are moving in and out of the districts, and we'll determine the number of households for those. We'll correlate those property transfers to help us identify the impacts on the schools down to the individual school levels. Um, we'll look at the new housing developments. We'll look at housing stock turnover. We'll look at economic shifts within the district as well within each of the neighborhoods. And we'll reach out to all the municipal planning areas as well just to see what they have when they're planning for the number of houses, the ratio, those kinds of things that can impact your enrollment studies as well. Um mentioned we'll do the birth to
024trend ratios. We'll do the PA Department of Health that gives us more granular approach into the district. We'll look at migration studies as well too. People coming in and out of the districts where they're going to. We can correlate all that information out of PIMS. So we can your historical information so we can gather that information directly with access so that minimizes the data that the district actually has to provide for us directly. But what we'll do is we'll do the statistical modeling that we kind of talked about. We'll run multiple scenarios baseline low growth high growth rates to account for different areas. We'll build in forecasts. So we'll understand you know we'll build them out for each of your elementary schools or K to5 your middle high school kind of ratios and then using
025the Monte Carlo simulation that gives us our statistical confidence that gives us not only a point estimate you know you're going to have 6500 kids but within a range of a 95% confidence interval and 80% confidence interval. We'll provide those different scenarios to you to give you a higher confidence interval. So our timeline overall is about four months. First month or so we'll is primary data collection. We'll give an initial evaluation report on those. We'll go into more detailed analysis. We'll keep up onto date in those. We'll run our projections. We'll give the final uh report with the feedback. Um we'll make the presentation to the board, to the district. Um overall, we'll also provide all of the data as well too. So not only do we provide we'll provide all in raw data files
026and the formats that you can actually use and have for going forward as part of that timeline overall. So that includes the written report, all the supporting materials, the board presentation. So all of that will come with it. So you get the historical context, grade by grade enrollment projections, the methodology as part of that overall. Um qualifications, a little bit about myself. I'm the founder of steps to achieve. We've been doing this uh we started in business in 2014. Um we contract with over 70 different sites across the state doing program evaluations, grant evaluations, uh federal program support. So we're into a lot of different areas. Um my wife is a former federal director, federal programs director in a school district. She's has her superintendent papers. She managed PIM's child accounting and migration of a
027student information system has done this. She has her doctor degree from Dukane University as well. Um I have an MBA. I do a lot of analytical work. I also do a lot of teaching of analytics for the federal government as well. So we're into number crutching. Another one of our uh persons is statistician Dave Don. Um he's a former Army retired veteran. Um he does a lot of the Monte Carlo simulations. So we'll kind of partner between this. All of our work it will be done through a high quality uh assurance framework. So we'll go we'll use multiple sources. We'll gather historical patterns. We'll verify our historical informations on using historical information see if those projections actually panned out. We'll have those peer reviewed. So my work will be reviewed by Dave. Dave will review
028my work and we'll kind of do that whole process to make sure that you're getting good quality data and projections and we also provide that additional planning. So not only are we giving you projections but we can also help with you know school districts consulting how do we use this data how do we actually implement it? So that's where my partner my wife comes into the play with her educational background and working 28 years in public education. So we're um really strong in the analytical reporting. So again we'll start off with you know collecting the vast amounts of data. We'll do initial progress reporting. We'll understand that. We'll present that to the board with clear concise information so you can make informed decisions. We just don't stop at the report. We're here for follow-up consultation
029and we're available to help implement or help understand or help to interpret the data on a going forward basis. So that's a little bit about us. Um that was just part of the requirements there. But again our expertise is in the enrollment projection studies are pretty straightforward with statistical methods. We add in the Monte Carlo simulation that we can feed in hundreds of data points to give us that point confidence interval. We're really strongly committed to education, Pennsylvania and public schools. So we have a very strong experience in that nature. So that's kind of any questions. Yes. You mentioned a vast area. Is there anybody local that you have done? Um so we partner with um Allentown School District. We partner with the writing school is not writing I'm sorry antum school district you said
030Allentown Allentown school district yeah we do we work with all those schools we do their 21st century grand evaluation work and we've done some other studies for them as well thank you what uh local school have you done recently we're partnered with Allentown school district actively working with Allentown school district and we've been partners with them for the past six years. We've been with Antidum School District for the past four or five years. We currently work with them. And what would be your cost for doing this? Our total what we submitted as a proposal was right around 25,000. Jim, is that is that a negotiable price? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. And you said four months? About four months. Yeah, about four months. Yeah. Okay. And we think that's a little bit on the high side.
031Did you say your accuracy was in was it within a point? Did I understand you? Did you say your accuracy was within a point? No, I did not say okay anything about her accuracy. What is your accuracy? I think the other woman did specify they were within 5%. So, we have not done an enrollment study for a school district. We've partnered with school districts for other types of studies. We've not done enrollment projections. So I would not state that similar statistic, but we would feed you lots of data points into it to come up with a point with a range and a point estimate. Jim, you mentioned uh the Monte Carlo simulation multiple times. Unfamiliar with that. What can you give us the 30 second what what that is? So, it's a computer simulation that
032you build and you feed it a bunch of different scenarios into a bunch of different data points and it's going to just crank through thousands of iterations to come up with multiple scenarios for what it thinks is going to be the most likely and give you a confidence ratio for that confidence range like a 95% your range will be between I'm making these numbers up but between 6,300 and 6700 or between 6450 and 6550 something like that. We're obviously a school district and and with regard to the breakout would you I I didn't see anything in there about how um enrollments would be broken out both secondary elementary based on buildings based on levels based on how we would add a minimum break amount to replicate your your buildings. So we each one of your
033individual buildings you have nine I believe total. So each of those and then we can do an overall if you want elementary, middle, high school or any other breakout that you'd want. That would be breaking out would be really straightforward. Okay. And in Allentown, you've not done a just a straight demographic enrollment study with them. You've done other things with them. We've done demographic studies on them, but we've not done projections. So we've reported on what their current makeup, their composite is based on different programs, different buildings. Got it. and how they, you know, what types of students feed into different types of programs. Okay. And I did include references for Allentown as well and Pottstown and I think Wayne Pike or Lehigh Carbon County Community College I think are the references I included for
034you guys. Okay. Any other question? Mr. Group, you'd mentioned the uh the neighborhood transition data. Mhm. So, is that obviously just why residents are coming and why they're going? Is that you're getting like what are you getting from that? Basically, are you finding out why people are leaving the area and why people are coming to the area? Um, that data would be more uh quantitative data. It would just be telling us how many are transitioning in, how many are transitioning out. We're not going to be able to get true why. I was going to ask like I don't know where you would dig for that. Yeah, we would that I mean that data I mean we could do that would be a separate but we could do you know some sort of survey or something
035of that nature but I don't think that would yield a lot of results. Um we would pull a lot of that information from like the realtor's association. So we can get some I'm going to call it qualitative data just off to speaking to local realtors on their perceptions of what that might be. But I don't know that that's would be statistically sound, but might give some perspectives. Okay, Jim, I want to thank you. Thank you for coming out this evening, both you and you and Patricia. We will get back to you in in the coming uh day and weeks. All right. Thank you. All right. Okay, that takes us down to item B, our esports presentation. So, this evening we do have Mr. Sparks, Mr. Pennington and I believe we have some student representatives from
036the esports organization and from from the club um coming this evening to make a presentation to share about what's been going on the past two years and leveraging a recommendation of moving forward. So folks the podium is yours. All right. I have a full team here. All right. So Miss Pennington if you could stand here. Students if you you're actually going to be in the line of the camera. So I'll tell you what. Why don't you guys stand over to the side door? Over by the door. And then when I get to the point in the slides, I'll step back. You guys can have your opportunity to speak. Okay. All right. Thank you. You stand aside, Mason. Thank you. All right. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to advocate for our students through our
037presentation for the recommendation of the esports club at the high school. I'm joined this evening not only by esports athletes, but also Mr. Pennington, who is one of our teched teachers, a leader of our TSA, has helped with our STEMmies and STEM competitions, and has truly built the the esports program from the ground up, including the esports curriculum, which is the courses that we offer, as well as the esports team, which you see before you today. A little bit of background about esports. Uh just to provide some information, esports, uh is two different kind of features. One, we have a course uh that we offer at our school. It's a semester-based course with our students who can enroll. Uh this serves as an elective course that any student who can uh can take them without
038any prerequisites. We also have our esports uh club which is what we're trying to propose here tonight where students would stay after school and participate and compete against other schools in a virtual platform or virtual arenas. Uh we have a specialized computer lab that we use for this program with some very advanced laptops that are performancedriven laptops for gaming specifically. And all this started really with uh Mr. Pennington working with our PA smart grant via Albright uh college a few years ago. So this is our third year, Mr. Pennington, of us offering uh esports at the high school as an elective as well as an area for students to compete. This sport is a little bit unique in the sense that it actually spans the entire school year. So there's a fall semester, there's a
039winter semester, and then there's a spring semester. So for our students and and those who are involved, there's no end to your esports. you keep going and you keep competing which is a great thing for them. Teams compete only uh individually as well as uh collectively and they stream live which can be viewed by others who are interested in watching their performances. Below are some photos of our esports lab and some students who are competing on there. As you can see these are really incredible machines that are high functioning and designed to allow the highest levels of participation for the esports program. Our enrollment from a uh a course perspective has continued to increase. You can look at our initial course that we offered in 2023 2024. We had 109 students enrolled in six sections
040last I'm sorry this year 2024 2025 due some to uh some scheduling and some areas of interest in other prospective electives. We had about 67 students enrolled in four semester courses. And even though we're still at the infancy stages of building our schedule for next year, we had a total of 162 requests to take esports, uh, and we have already started to factor in building six semester courses for this next year. Uh, working with Mr. Pennington here, our goal is to continue to promote and expand the offerings and to look at adapting uh, an esports level two course that would be an even more advanced level or continuation of this course. As I previously mentioned though, there is no prerequisite. So a student who maybe took the course and does not want to participate in
041esports could do that as well as a student who has not taken the course yet but does want to participate in esports. So there's a lot of flexibility that's involved in the offerings for our students. For the club position this year we have 42 students who are enrolled in the 2425 school year. Uh again it's 15 weeks in the fall, another 15 weeks in the spring. So it encompasses a large portion of the school year and they commit themselves to a lot of practice and a lot of time. And not only do they do this but so does Mr. Pennington who is there to supervise them and provide them guidance and encouragement as they uh compete in this new evolving field. Uh Mr. Pennington, can you talk a little bit about the uh the league
042that they can they compete in they participate in? Do you need me on mic or can I just teach your voice? On mic phone it is. Yeah. Yep. Okay. So we are competing in two different leagues that have just recently merged together. Uh, one is called PIEA. Um, that is a all-encompassing Pennsylvania League of Esports. So, it's a whole bunch of high schools. Uh, some are local, so like, uh, Upper Perk and Perk Valley and and schools from around here. Some go all the way out to Pittsburgh and Erie and different areas of Pennsylvania. So, uh, it covers the whole span of the state, which is cool because there's not a lot of sports where you can participate against everybody in the whole state all at the same time. Usually they're broken down into smaller
043divisions and then you kind of move on and move on. But our kids can compete against a school from Erie just as easily as they can compete against somebody from Pottstown. Uh we also are merged with a secondary group. Uh their name is TEC. TEC stands for the esports company. Uh the esports company offers really really neat features for the kids and that's why we wanted to get in on them early. Um as you can see we have really cool jerseys that the kids get. TEC provides the kids 30 jerseys a year. So, uh, as new kids come in, they get jerseys. Uh, we've actually, this is our second ideation of what our jerseys look like. Now, uh, last year we had one kind of design of how the jerseys looked and now this is
044kind of I think everybody settled on that we like this one better than the last year ones. So, I think we're going to stick with these ones from here on out. Um, but they actually as joining TEC provide us with 30 jerseys. Uh, guys, will you just give me a little spin? They also get to put their last names and their gamer tags on the back of them. So that's like their names on their like in the different sports that they play and stuff like that and then their actual names. You guys can spin back now. Thanks. Um but what's so great about these two groups is that they kind of work in conjunction. PIA is really good at organization. So they schedule the matches and make sure that the kids are there on time
045and all that sort of stuff to be able to to keep a schedule going. But TEC is really cool because in addition to the jerseys, they also do a really big thing right now that is becoming actually a paid profession, which is called shoutout casting. Um, I don't know if anybody knows what shout casting is. It's a it's a fairly new term. Basically, if you've ever watched an Eagles game, right, there's two guys on the Eagles game. There's a color commentator and then there's the the play-by-play guy that kind of goes through and tells you what's going on. A shout cer does that online for something like an esports match, right? So, there's a color commentator, somebody that plays like that plays the game and knows the ins and outs of it, and then there's
046like a playby-play guy that goes through and says what's going on so that somebody could watch it and understand. Uh, they can shift from the different views of every kid. So, if one of the kids is doing something really spectacular at this one time, they can pull up Jacob's screen if Jacob's going in to score a point or something like that and they can watch from Jacob's view what they're doing and talk about it. So the kids get to be featured by how good they're playing and the the good things that they're doing. And then obviously that goes out so parents can see it. Uh other kids in the school district can see it. We've even played it live during the club while the kids are playing. We put it on the big TV and
047the kids can watch in real time like the rest of the kids in the club and things can watch their matches. Um we've had some really exciting matches because we had some undefeated teams and things like that. So we've actually had some big crowds and stuff that have come in and like gathered into room to be able to see the kids play. So, we also picked up another uh like a freebie kind of one that we were working with this year called PlayVS. PlayVS is actually the whole United States. So, we played people from the Carolinas and all over the place basically that they can play against. Um it's it is basically broken into time zones because you have to be able to get the kids in the room at the same time and and
048all that. Um but that's allowed us to have a really really big offering of different esports that the kids can join. I actually think that Boyertown has the biggest offering of esports sports available for kids to join of anybody that I've spoken to in the state of Pennsylvania. Um we right now offer six. That's why we have so many days of um practices and things like that. But right now we offer six different esports that kids can join. So that's whole different teams. They come in on whole different days and have practices and games and all that stuff. So most schools are offering something in the neighborhood of two. So, we're offering about three times more than what the average is of other other high schools. Would you mind explaining some more success? So, uh
049not that I expect anybody's going to know what all the names of the games are and all that stuff, but I want to kind of go through and just tell you, uh what the guys have done and the girls have done that has been so cool. Um, one of the games that we play is called Rocket League. Uh, Rocket League is a fun game. It is about, it's sort of like playing soccer with cars. So, you drive a you drive a car around and you you're shooting goals like you're playing soccer. Um, it's very very tough. It is like a it's a physics lesson in a video game. It's it's very difficult. Um, our Rocket League team for the spring semester of this year was actually undefeated across the state of Pennsylvania. So, they played
050for 12 13 weeks and never lost a game. Uh, one of our students was actually the leading scoreer for the entire league for the whole state of Pennsylvania. Um, they also have been going and participating in off-site tournaments. So, they've been going to colleges and things like that and going out into the community and they've been going to we went to Hilltop Prep, we went to Wesburg University and we went to Alveria University in the last two years. Um, we took first place at Alveria University which was our actual playoff for the league that we're in. So, we took first place overall for the spring semester at Alveria University. Uh the Hilltop Prep tournament they went to in March and they took second place. And then last year we went to Wesburg in what'd you
051get Isaiah? Was it fourth? They got fourth. That and that was in their very first year of ever participating. They got fourth place at a university tournament. Now what's so cool about that? The universities have people there looking. I probably get somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 to 12 emails every season of colleges asking when are these kids going to graduate and do they want to come to our school. So they're talking about giving them scholarships. They're talking about sending them money to come to their schools already. Our Rocket League team is in ninth and tth grade when they started and they were already getting people asking them if they could come and talk to them about going to college at their school. Um we also had some big success in some of our other
052sports that we did. Uh Overwatch 2 has been one of our sports from the very beginning. This is our second full year of participation. Um they made it to almost the end of the playoffs in the fall semester. Uh they had a really good run where they were almost undefeated. We had to miss we had to forfeit a game at the very beginning of the year or they would have been the number one seed. Um but once we got in and we were actually able to start playing, they virtually went undefeated until the very end of the playoffs. Um a very brand new uh sport that we have is called Marvel Rivals and along uh it's very popular right now. It's all the characters from Marvel that you can play video games against other people.
053Um, for the very first year that it was ever offered, we were undefeated through the season and we lost one game in the playoffs at the very end. Um, which was partially my fault because I had to leave. Um, and they uh they're not allowed to reschedu. They have to get it all done in one day. So, we kind of ran out of time and we just had to kind of forfeit just because we had to leave at the end of the day basically. Um, but we have had some really, really exciting successes with the kids and joining all these different clubs, uh, joining these practices and doing these different sports that they've been all participating in. And that's where you see that 42 number that Mr. Sparks put up earlier. That's because we're playing
054across so many different sports all at the same time. Uh, some of the kids can only participate in the fall, but they can in the spring because they play lacrosse or something. So, kids come in, kids come out, and that's the beautiful part of the club. You don't have to always be there. uh you can you know you can play in the fall and not in the spring. We have tryyous all the time to bring new people in. And if you don't want to participate as like a competition member, we even offer just a club membership that the kids can just come and try it and see if they like it. So they don't have to be competitors. They can just come in and they can learn. They can be like a a training session
055basically instead of being an actual competition. Uh we did want to show you what it looks like and kind of what it sounds like to see an esports match. So, this YouTube link is this is our uh our Alveria first place finish undefeated match. So, it's a YouTube link here. If we can click it, um it has audio and video so you can see what the kids actually see and what the like what you would see if you were viewing. We might have to control click it. Click it. Perhaps we're Thank you, Mr. Zimmer. Thank you. So, so these are our own students and you'll hear the audio talking about Bordertown student and they use their their esports name that's on the back of their jersey. So, you won't hear their actual name their jersey.
056So, this is Rocket League. Backboard work here. A really nice layin pass. Maguskill is actually faking for another touch there. Rainbow finds the value coming on. Forget the bottom will take the goal at the end of the rainbow here for this one as they sign uptown walk able to collect the 100 here at mid regulation is over. Looking for a little rando to a second overtime of the day. Hoster town USA. That's where so you can see at the top there's a scoreboard very similar to like what they would have in a football game. The little uh the little light up lights underneath it are how many matches that they've won. So you can see right now Boyertown's up one match to none. They actually go straight straight sets and they win all four right
057in a row here. Gives you a little bit of a preview of of what this looks like. So, thank you for uh for making that work for us. All right. One of the Oops. Thank you. As Mr. Pennington mentioned, there's a lot of uh opportunity for our students, not just in the high school, but the secondary level, colleges, universities, start to look out and promote this military applications. Look at the value that these uh esports can pro provide to military service and different components. Uh but you also look at the the true core what this can provide for our students. the idea of teamwork and communication and collaboration, planning and problem solving. But to me, the one of the most important is the involvement in the school. The fact that these students now have a
058tie to our school. They're being supervised by our own staff. They're spending a tremendous amount of time and hours after school and really building that connection which ultimately helps our community and our culture of our building. Uh so really to me, this is more than just a an investment in a club. It's really an investment of our students and their futures as well. Uh there's career clusters that are opening for this. I mean, coding and gaming is is truly going to be the the future with a lot of the various applications. And then, you know, college scholarships. I I'll be honest, I never even heard of this years ago. This is a very new thing, but this is kind of the way things are starting to trend. This is the new kind of future of
059what sporting can look like and gaming can look like, uh, since it is a, you know, a very, you know, billion dollar industry. All right. So, at this time, we're going to ask some of our students to come up here and just give a little bit of a an overview. And I know some of you might be a little nervous, but you're going to do great. So, Alexis, if you want to come up, uh, just give us a little bit of your thoughts as far as, uh, how esports has helped you. And I know specifically you were talking about, you know, postsecary and and how this has fed into, uh, some of your decision-m as you go through the, uh, the graduation and college application process. Right. All right. Hello. Like he said, my name
060is Alexis Rich. I'm currently a junior in our school and I've been a part of the esports teams for around two years. I originally joined as part of Overwatch 2 and I am now also part of the Marvel Rivals team. I'm currently the captain for Overwatch 2 as well. So, I help running a lot of that sort of stuff. I also help people practice outside of school. We do everything pretty much. Um, overall playing with the esports and the Overwatch, it's been really good for building a community of friends. It's a lot of people that I'm able to talk sorry to talk to outside of school literally whenever I want. And it's not even about the game anymore at that point. It's people that you're actually friends with. Like you're building connections because so much
061of it involves getting to know each other, getting to know how you play the games and then therefore getting to know the person in general. Um it's welcoming to all types of people. I've met so many different types of people. There's people that play sports after school. There's people that are involved in a lot of musical things. There's a lot of TSA students. It follows around almost everything. Overall, as a leader as well, I have a lot of leadership and strategy that I've been learning. I um tend to be the one that does a lot of call outs and stuff in our games. So, that means that I have to constantly be paying attention to the entire situation all the time and try to keep everyone together. We have to try to coordinate. It's a
062lot of just strategic short like you have to do things on the spot. You have to think of it and just do it and it works. Um it's a really cool after school activity. I probably would play from home regardless. So to be able to come into school and do it instead of just sitting in my room upstairs is awesome. I don't participate in clubs otherwise. I wouldn't be in any clubs without this. Um, and like he said, we did have plenty of success. We've done really well given that we've only been running this for two years. Um, and I know that we can continue to get better as long as we're able to continue practicing. Um, I also plan on possibly continuing to pursue this in college. I've been looking at this in a
063lot of different applications for scholarships and things like that for assistance because they do offer it not only to play the game but also to help plan things and to help actually commentate on it. So like how you heard in the videos where they were commentating on the action. That's something that I could get assistance to go to a college for just to simply participate in. Um, it also I ended up submitting it on my National Honors Society application for leadership. It's been helpful in so many different places, um, both inside and outside of school. Um, hold on, give me a second. It's just really good overall. I'm very glad that we've been running this and I think if we were to be able to get support for it, it would be awesome. Especially given
064the sort of middle ground that we were in before actually ended up throwing us off a little bit. We had to forfeit multiple matches and we had a late start. We weren't able to get our tryyous done on time. So to be able to have that knowledge that we're able to run it the way that we need it run would be amazing and it would help a lot with planning. I think that's everything that I had to say. Thanks, Alexis. Great job. Great job. All right, gentlemen. Uh, Chase, Isaiah Jordan, do you want to come up briefly and uh kind of give your experience? So, Isaiah's gonna have to speak on behalf. Oh, gotcha. But, uh, okay. Isaiah is actually our oldest member of the of the crew and he's actually been here for the
065entire duration. So, he has a lot of a lot of perspective on how it looked when it started and whenever all the way till now. So, Isaiah from our Rocket League team. Hello everyone. My name is Isaiah. I am a junior here at Boytown and I am the captain of the Rocket League team. It is a really fun experience to not only sit up in the esports lab with people that you've never met, you get very strong connections to these people over time. And the tryyouts that we had for this were a little shaky at first. We did not have as much planning as I'd like back when I joined in my sophomore year. Uh with future planning, I'd rather that we have the more ability to get more students into this program because as
066it started, most students I would hear in the hallways, they weren't too keen on this whole esports program. They thought it was a joke, which was warranted. It's a very new thing. I've been to other schools and I've seen other schools esports programs which are much larger. They have full teams who really do enjoy playing the games. Early on, we did not have as many players as I'd like on the Rocket League team. We had Chase and Jordan and I, which were a pretty strong force, but you know, there's always room for more people. We did have a few people come in and learn on behalf of the club and that was great. These people on the club, they did enjoy um playing the game with us, playing other games that the other teams provided
067like Overwatch, League of Legends, games that are more known in the gaming industry, excuse me. Other than esports, the class I have been enrolled in for two years as a half credit. It has been very good to me where you can learn about things that for the college industry I would like to pursue into college about some of like the meal prep items and things that you would not think of that go into this industry like you know exercise. You'd think for someone who's sitting around all day, they wouldn't do much of that, but a lot of planning and this sort of thing goes into the college league esports. And I have been touring a few colleges. This the off-site items that we spoke of earlier was really essential to me because that let me
068see what other places actually think of esports. things like Alveria and Wesburg University really opened my eyes to see that this is actually a real industry. People do go to college for this and learning about the grants that could be given to me going into excuse me going into college really amped me up for the college process. I would like to pursue that further. And with everyone's help here, I would also like the high school to dive a little more into the planning and processing for team lineups and tryyouts and all of this because the more people that join and actually figure out that this is a real industry that people can actually get into, the stronger it'll be and the less of a quote unquote joke it might be in the schools. Thank you.
069Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. All right. So, I'd like to thank our students as well as their families for supporting us tonight. Uh here's our proposed budget for our esports club. Uh the esports yearly competition registration, as Mr. Pennington pointed out, is $3,500. Uh that does include the jerseys. Uh students, I don't know if you know this or not, but I actually am a a member of your esports team, too. I have my own jersey here. I've uh I'm pretty sure this is honorary. You don't want me playing on your team. I'm more of a Mario Kart kind of guy, but um I do I do hang it in my office to show my support for you. Um the idea would be to support the salary based on the level four co-curricular for the
070first semester as well as the second semester. Transportation, we budgeted that as well as they travel to uh local colleges and some other schools uh for competition. And then one of the bigger pieces here is the maintenance of our equipment. The computers are expensive. They are really good computers right now, but in several years from now, they will continue to deteriorate through age. So, the goal is to build in a maintenance program so we can update graphics cards and things along the way so that we don't have a massive bill at one time. So, really trying to maintain the uh the infrastructure that we have to support our students so things are up and running and that all the students can participate on all the machines. So, our total would be about $16,336 for our
071esports club. At this time, we'd like to offer the opportunity for the school board members to ask Mr. Pennington and I some questions if you have them. Yes, sir. Mr. Swan, this originally started with Albbright, right? And they donated your our initial setups and stuff. Yeah, they donated a significant amount of money. I remember Scott and I went up with your previous mentor and uh visited it and it was exciting, but um so the initial expense we didn't have any correct. We saved probably six figures on what it would have cost to set this up. What other games are available? So, it's actually very very big. Um, we're we're participating in Yeah, sorry. We're participating in six right now. So, it's uh League of Legends, Overwatch 2, Marvel Rivals. Uh we're doing a a variation
072of Fortnite um where it's like a 2v2 in a in a big open zone. Um that's a very popular game for the kids and uh what am I missing? Rocket League. Rocket League. Yeah. Valerant. Yeah. So we're playing all those different games. Um there's a lot of sports offerings that we haven't even tapped into yet. Uh things like games like Madden and things like that that they do. Those are more of a one versus one situation where you play against one other student. Um there's also a huge opening for what Nintendo offers which right now we don't even have the ability to get into. Uh, you have to have the it's called the Nintendo Switch, which is a whole different thing. Um, you have to get those on the on the network, but then you
073could Mr. Sparks could plug come in and uh play uh Mario Kart and there's a there's a whole bunch of different ones in there. I would say there's a possibility uh with what all the different groups are that we're in right now that they offer that you could probably get up into I would say probably 18 to 20 different sports that we could add based on interest. Um, so it has a pretty big exponential growth. And the thing is, Marvel Rivals didn't even exist at this time last year. So, we have a whole a whole team participating in it, and that's how quick it changes. So, an esport that doesn't exist today, by the time we get back at the end of summer and the these guys come back, there could be a whole new
074sport that comes out that's super popular that we never heard of. So, it just continues to grow. I I think League of Legends is probably the oldest one that anybody's playing right now, and that's from all the way back when I was in high school. So, I mean, some of them last a really long time. Um, but uh, you know, there's new stuff popping up all the time. How many students do you need for a team or how little do you need for a team? So, it's totally based on what the game requires. Uh, on Isaiah's team for Rocket League, it requires three. So, they they play in a group of three against another group of three. Um, when Jacobe runs Marvel Rivals, there's six people on those teams. said, "We run a six versus
075six." Uh, some of them, like I said, with the the Madden football, it's just one versus one. So, it it allows for a pretty broad range. And all the kids have the ability to join as many of those or as few of those as they want. So, some of the some of the people back here come in two or three times a week and participate in different sports. Some of them only participate in one. So, it just it leaves it open to interpretation for how how much or how little you want to you want to participate. A lot of flexibility. there's no Call of Duty. So, what we decided to do uh was to limit the rating on our games to teen. So, that means that we're not putting up violent games or things like
076that for the kids. Uh they're playing uh games that a middle school kid would be allowed to play. Okay. So, we're we're keeping all that kind of stuff as not offered. Most of the high school we're the the the groups that we're in, PIA and TEC are high school based groups. So, we're we're playing generally the same things that every other high school and every other school board deems to be appropriate for this age level and for what they're doing. Got it. Got it. So, the budget that you're presenting, just just to know, is this part of the athletic budget, is it being added? Is it separate a standalone? It's not under like high school or Yeah. So, this would be a a new club offering. It would not be considered a sport. Um, PIAAA
077has not recognized esports as a sport yet. Although many people believe in the next few years, it could be one of the newest additions to PIAAA sports. Uh, in that case, it would then shift over to athletics. Uh, and would then serve as any other sport under athletics. And do you have a Star Wars type game? One of those that you mentioned. Is it like a Star Wars? Because you're you kind of brought the military in there and I just want to see where that kind of I I know it's a silly question, but we don't right now, do we? There's Yeah. Um, what what is so interesting about the military and why Mr. Sparks mentioned it and why it's in here is that all the skills that the kids are developing have a lot
078to do with being able to do offsite remote military operations and that's why they're bringing in these kids into the military. uh things like drone pilots, okay? Like all the skills that these that these people are building right now are exactly what you're bringing in for somebody that can fly a remote mission. From the relative safety of being in the United States, you can fly in a whole another continent, a drone mission or something like that that they could do. Uh, so the United States military actually started funding esports programs in their in their military colleges and things like that and going out and giving military scholarships to esports participants to come in and fill those roles, hoping that they're going to be the next group of people that's able to bring that technology to
079the military and make it, you know, make it a useful and a viable way to to do warfare in the future. I guess. Um, I just want you to know my grandson's limited to a half hour. Now, what do I do with this now? Now, [Music] but at least I can see where it can go. You You're the boss, so you can just tell them what to do. But, um, the best thing about this is, um, it's not just that locked in your room playing a video game thing, though. This is they they have communication. They have headsets where they're talking to each other and they're they're real time communicating with each other. um they're playing against somebody that's a live opponent, so they have to solve problems on the fly, and that's what they
080do. That's what they practice every single day. So, um this is taking what your grandson's doing and now involving him in a group of people that are all like-minded and all interested in the same thing. Yeah, I like the quick decision- making because that's a skill that we just don't get that everywhere, but in something like this, you can. this budget that the budget you presented, how much will that go up each year? I think the uh the budget that we presented, the only thing that could change would be the uh co-curricular salary as opposed on the uh CBA. Um but as well but that would be as part of the collective bargaining agreement. I don't have that data specifically. I picked the one for the upcoming school year and provided it for you, but
081it would be presented in the collective bargaining agreement. Uh but otherwise the esports maintenment equipment I think would be pretty consistent as it would provide us a a bank to be able to continue to invest in the infrastructure we have. But how many more how much what's a total amount of students you can take in the course? That's a good question. Pretty much whatever. So the the esports lab that we call it is like an arena of uh it now will have 15 computers in it because we just finished buying the rest of the stuff from the grant this year. So now it has a total capacity in the arena of 15 seats. Um but we also it is connected to a classroom and the classroom has the capacity to hold 24 more students. So
082for the club itself uh a lot of times what we do for instance when we did Overwatch uh when we did tryyouts for that we had way more than 12 or 15 kids show up for tryyouts. So, we used the the classroom, you know, a proper sized classroom to hold the kids and to let them go on and register and do all the things that they needed to do on the school computers. And then we just held a rotation. So, when one group was finished, they would rotate out and another group would rotate in. And we can do the same thing uh for practices and things like that. If there's more kids than the room will physically hold, we just have to share. So, I'm they'll come in and come out. And I mean, it
083would be awesome if at some point we could add more machines and and actually and make it a bigger thing. But for right now, we just have to be able to adapt with what we have and just try to make it work the best we can. So that would that answer be 24 then? Well, that's on one day at one time, right? So I mean, if if we're running four nights a week, so I'm four nights a week means I mean I could I could legitimately have 100 kids in the club. There's some would have to come Monday, some would have to come Tuesday. Um, and that's how we break it up. We break it up by esports. So, I mean, legitimately, it could be one of the bigger clubs in the entire school. We
084have we have the capacity and the the days basically in a week to be able to do that. Thank you. Just for the board's knowledge, in in consideration of this, we did um budget into Mr. Spark's budget the $17,000 at the high school for next year. in your consideration if not used obviously that would go back into the into the general fund. Uh Mr. Han if you would just get what maybe three years out on that co-curricular salary would be for the board just so they can get an idea of what what that contract is. Yeah, that that'd be helpful then just to give them an indication. I'm sorry. Um, as far as the kids in this program, what what's there as far as grade level? I mean, are you just letting anybody come in
085there if they have failing grades? Is this something that is going to be regulated or you looked at? Yeah. So, so that's a good question. So, we offer it to any student who's interested. Obviously, they would have to be in good academic standing, attendance, the other rules that would apply to make them eligible to participate in other uh events, even something as simple as prom, they would have to be eligible to participate in. So, um it would be part of regulating who can participate. And what what we typically see at the high schools is students when it becomes their season, whether it's football or field hockey or wrestling, the kids are invested. They know they have more to lose. They are at their absolute best because they don't want to lose the opportunity to participate
086in those sports. And with this board running throughout the year, there's a lot of investment in the school and their own participation and ability to continue to participate uh through their action. So, uh I'm fairly confident the kids who are involved are going to continue to do very well academically. Sure. Can I add something by Sorry. It was actually we we sent out an email when the kids won the for the state championship for Rocket League. We sent it out to the whole district and just said, "Hey, look what the kids did." Um, it was actually brought to my attention by one of the high school like counselors, like the the in-house counselors, that between athletics and esports, those were the two biggest mentions that they've had for kids trying to come back to school
087this year. So, we actually had some kids that were out for they they decided to be virtual students or that were out of like displaced from the school district for one reason or another. She said it was the second highest thing that when she asked the kids why are you trying to come back to Bertown school district after athletics esports was the second highest or most mentioned thing to come back. So Mr. Sparks you have some closing remarks. I just want to say thank you to our students and our families who joined us tonight. Um I do appreciate it. Now you have keystones tomorrow for biology. So, make sure you get home and get some rest and be prepared to do your best. Okay. But thank you. And school board members, thank you for uh
088considering our request and recommendation. We appreciate it. And just for for the board's acknowledgement, one of the things that would need to be uh under consideration for recommendation would be anou to the CB collective bargaining agreement. Uh that would include this um as a as a as an activity and that the salaried stipen would be inside of that. the other budgetary components uh obviously um through Mr. Spark's budget inside his high school budget as well. So those would be things that you'd be considering um when um with regard to this this activity. And again, thank you students for sharing and explaining and giving us a deeper dive. Congratulations. You're always welcome. And Mr. Pennington, why don't you just hang for about 30 seconds. We have uh the next item is the overnight trip for um
089for the board for TSA and if there's anything else that you wanted to share with regard to this. We This is a uh recommendation for the overnight trip for the bash TSA and we do have Mr. Pennington and six students that will be traveling um to the national competition. Why don't you fill in the rest of the details for the board? Okay. I didn't bring any students for this one. Um okay. So I I I would hope most of you are pretty familiar with TSA at this point. We have uh been a a hugely successful organization at the high school level. Uh we focus on technology and engineering uh as far as about 40 or 50 different competitions that the kids enter in throughout the year. Uh TSA is broken into three levels of competition,
090a regional, a state, and a national competition. Um our in-house rule for Boyertown is that you have to win one level to move to the next. So technically by TSA standards, you don't have to win at regionals to move to states or win at states to move to nationals. But the Boyertown standard is that you have to win first, second, or third place at the competition to be able to move on. So when I started being in charge of TSA in about 2010, we had never even been to nationals before. Um, up until last year, I believe we took we had 20 kids from the state competition that qualified to be national champions. And we actually had two girls finish first place last year, national champions of the entire world. Uh we don't just compete
091against the United States. We compete against other countries like South Korea, Japan, Germany, all kinds of different people come over to the United States for this uh competition. It's about a week long and it goes from June 26th to July 2nd this year. Uh it's going to be hosted in Nashville, Tennessee. So we are requesting the ability to send the students who won first, second, or third place and are available to come to the competition. Uh we're just requesting that those students be allowed to uh attend that conference in Nashville this year. Questions? Yeah. On here it says Nashville, PA. So I think we need to change that. It says I'm sorry. It says what? It says Nashville, PA. And he said Nashville, Tennessee. Yep. That's where Nashville is. We need to change that. Apologies.
092Y that's okay. Um, and it's six of us students. Have any of these gone before? Yeah. Um, actually, McKenna Smith, this was this is her senior year, so she's actually going after she graduates. Uh, she is a multiple multiple year champion already. She won first place in the world last year for architectural CAD and she won third place in the world in her 10th grade year for architectural design and modeling. Um, last year also we had a senior her name or this year she's a senior her name is Millie Leang. Millie Leang is the first place winner for promotional design and marketing in the entire world. Um, she's graduating this year as well. Um, so all of the upper classmen that are coming along with us are coming back for their last time. Uh, last
093year we also had a ninth grader with us whose name was Isabella Zettoer. Isabella won a top 10 finish in her ninth grade year in the whole world and she's repeating coming back again this year um in multiple events, not just one, uh for being up to be a national champion again. So, out of the group that we have right now, I believe four have been there before and two are brand new. This is also a much smaller group than we usually take. Uh typically, we're somewhere in the 16 to 20 range. Um, we're I think our parents are getting a little bit of whiplash from the amount of trips that the kids have gone on this year with Costa Rica and and all that kind of stuff. So, our numbers are a little bit
094down this year. Just there's been a lot of trips that that have been, you know, the seniors had Disney, they had Costa Rica, they had states for for TSA. Um, so I just think our downfall is just that, you know, they've they've been out a lot this year and they've been spending a lot of money. TSA the TSA trips are are fully out of pocket. So, um, they they've had to spend a lot of money to go on the TSA trips. You're going right. Absolutely. I don't understand. What can I help you with? Well, it says you're not charging us for the room. And it says you're not charging us for meals. We always have to pay that stuff. So, I don't know. To my understanding, the board is does not pay for those things.
095The kids are paying for those things out of pocket. No, no. I'm talking about you. I said you. You're going. Oh, for me? Yeah. Where are you sleeping? The kids, we have to factor in our hotels and that stuff into the what the kids are paying. That's that's how we do it for states and for everything else. It's divided over the amount of kids that are going. So, the school doesn't pay for teachers to go on these trips that as far as I know, unless unless you're willing to pay, then I'm I'm happy to listen. Sure, I'll write you a check. I didn't say you could cash it, but I'll write you one. Um, so are they staying at the hotel? Yes. That's awful cheap. I've been Well, it's it's divided over the amount of
096kids that are staying in the room. So, if there's four kids staying in the room, it's the amount of the hotel divided by four. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Pennington. I appreciate you coming this evening and sharing on both. Happy to help. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Thank you. All right. That takes us down to item D. um at the 2526 targeted school improvement plan and this is a plan that was shared uh with you last year in regards the state has qualified us again for some goal setting with regard to that. We have Miss Landis here, director of OTL to explain and share what that planning is. Thank you. And I will just say when I was growing up, Pong was the only computer game I knew how to play. So
097things have come a long way. Um so yes, last year I did present to you our high school had been noted for um targeted improvement based on some assessment data for particularly for our students with IEPs. Um and the high school has been designated for that same student group again for the 2526 school year. Um it should be important to note that that designation is not based on how we've done in the plan that we're currently implementing. um they they look at each school year's data individually and so we were designated for the upcoming year before we had even had an opportunity to fully implement the plan that we've been working through this year. Um we had gone a team of us had gone to the IU a few months ago to meet with some
098staff from the IU as well as some other schools in Burks County that had also been designated TSI. um just to go over the expectations for the plan and how that works when when you're doing it um you know two years in a row. So it was explained to us that there could be some goals that we had in the current plan that could be continued into the next year if there's things we're still working on and then we could also um add new goals, take things out, revise. So what we worked on this year is is a a compilation of those different pieces. On the next slide, you'll see that we have um Do are you clicking? Sorry, I do. Sorry. Oh, sorry. I didn't know I had a clicker. Um on this slide,
099we have the the steering committee. So, we have a committee that meets. there is a a document that we fill out for the state that gets submitted to the state once it's been shared with the school board um and signed off on, but we have certain representation that we're required to include in our steering committee. And so we had met a few times as a team throughout the spring. The members of the committee are listed there. We have central administration as well as administration from the high school and our special education department. We had both regular education and special education teachers who served on the committee. Um we had several parents as well as students from the high school who participated. Uh and then we also had some community members who were represented on the
100committee. So we had two meetings this past spring. In the first meeting, we really looked at the current year's plan that we've been working through. Uh reviewed some of the pieces that we have currently had in place and and are working on. And then we also looked at the more recent student assessment data that had come in from the Keystones since the last time that we had done this. Uh Mr. Zada was there also as our schoolboard member rep representation for this. Um and so we looked at the data, we looked at our current plan. Um we heard from some of the different uh representatives in the group and worked on making some revisions and additions to the work that we were doing. The process follows what they call a ready setgo procedure. So when
101we do the ready part, that's establishing our committee. It's uh looking at some of the the data and so on. Uh the set is uh kind of brainstorming a lot of different pieces. So there's a lot more to what we're doing to support students and particularly support our students with IEPs at the high school. Um the plan kind of starts with have having you put all of those ideas out there and making a big list. Uh but then you gradually narrow it down um to just a couple specific goals that you are working on through this actual TSI plan. So I'm just going to share with you some of the highlights of a couple of those pieces um and what we settled on in the go section which is where we establish the actual goals
102as well as the action plan steps for implementation. So, as we looked at this, um, you know, again, we established priorities. There's a couple key areas that we looked at. Um, one of them was personalized goal setting and really making sure that our students are a part of the goal setting process, that we're looking at data with our students and working with them to set and track goals for their growth. um the algebra keystone and the literature keystone were really two of the key data pieces that we needed to look at um from from a student progress and proficiency standpoint. And then also looking at some things when it comes to graduation rates in particular for students with IEPs and making sure that we're setting our students up for success for the future. So as
103we did this, one of the things that we looked at that is building upon something that we started this year was you may recall when we when we talked about the program of studies and we talked about the schedule at the high school. We had talked about that extended home room advisory period that we built into the schedule at the high school this year um where the kids start their day there and there are a number of things that happen in there related to their graduation projects. Um there's tutoring available for students during that time. Some of those home room advisory times are by specific uh student groups or clubs or based on different academic needs. Those home rooms are being expanded for this coming year and even more offerings and opportunities available for students.
104One of the things that we built in this year to that home room advisory time is time for the the home room teachers to check in with students individually to look at where they are on their their graduation pathways. Excuse me. and making sure that um they're keeping up with all the things that they need to do to make sure they're on track to graduate. And there's different checkpoints throughout the year to look into that. And there's pieces of that that really start in 9th grade um at the high school. And there's things that even happen in elementary and middle school with that college and career exploration that leads up to that, of course. But in all grades 9 through 12, there are pieces that students are working on, whether it's building a resume or
105going out and doing visits to to business and industry that are incorporated in their um graduation projects, but then also they have their pathways to graduation depending on how they do on the Keystone exams and if they're in those trigger courses or if they're on another pathway to graduation with different industry credentials and things like that. Um, one of the things that we wanted to work on improving as we head into this for next year is really um, having some tracking checklists to make sure that all of the home room teachers are consistently doing those check-ins with students and that all students are having that equal opportunity to make sure that they are on track for graduation and understand what it is that they need to do to get there. Um, so we have different
106checkpoints each quarter of what the teachers are going to check in with students on their community service, their graduation projects. Um, and celebrating that completion with the seniors once they do those October presentations that many of you have had the opportunity to observe. Um, also having our high school admin team do some walkthroughs to again make sure that we have consistency with implementation of those supports with student goal setting and future planning. Um, in preparation for that and to help make sure that our teachers understand the expectations, there are certain things that the high school admin team will be doing with faculty meeting check-ins with the teachers to make sure they're clear on expectations. again, those walkthroughs that are happening um and those follow-up check-ins to ensure that we're consistently uh providing students with the
107information they need to understand the graduation pathways and make sure that they are on the trajectory to graduate from high school on time. Parent engagement was another piece that came up in our meetings and it was really great having the parents there to provide some input and give us some feedback. Um, we already have some some great tools that our high school counseling department and our instructional coach and our curriculum supervisor have worked on to explain the different graduation pathways. Um, and and that's part of the presentations that they do for parents at the high school during scheduling process and everything like that. But we heard from parents that some of them still didn't fully understand the pathways and some of the students didn't have a full understanding either. So, we talked about some things
108that we could do to make that um more clear if we need to revise some of the resources that we have. If we need to brainstorm and think about other ways to make sure that parents have access to the information that they need rather than relying on the kids to go home and explain to their parents what what they've been taught at school in terms of what those requirements are. So, um just again working on some of those pieces. That's something you'll hear about in some of our strategic planning meetings as well out of our curriculum and instruction department just about that parent involvement piece and the parent communication to make sure that that information is clear. Um early on in the process so that parents understand it and students understand it as well. Um
109the action plan for this piece we had some timelines that we established and some anticipated outcomes for the the graduation pathways. again ensuring that our students are graduating on time and that they are engaged in those pro projects. They're getting those graduation projects completed. They're doing their community service. Um you know, if they're interested in some of those different credentials that they can get from industry that they know how to access that and know how their school counselors can help them with some of these pieces as well. Um, another piece of this is uh building a multi-tered system of support. Again, this is something that we're talking about in strategic planning as well in terms of making sure from an academic standpoint as well as that social, emotional, behavioral uh lens for our students that
110they have the supports that they need. So, a multi-tered system of support is basically that all students get tier one instruction where um they're all exposed to and given that that um core instruction when it comes to learning the standards. And then tier two and tier three are where things become more differentiated based on student need and making sure that we are meeting the academic needs of our students as well as providing scaffolded supports for any um social emotional or behavioral needs that that students may have. And so this is a piece as well and again really focusing on the literature and the algebra when it comes to that academic portion. And we did have teacher representation from both of those departments who were on the committee with us and really talking about what we
111can do to help professionally develop our teachers um and make sure that we have the supports that we need for our students in the classroom. Um building in more time, as I said before, for tutoring during home room. Um we're also looking at expanding some co-eing opportunities with our regular ed and special education teachers at the high school next year, which we believe will be very beneficial for our students with IEPs as well. Um, we we've utilized the CDT in the past, which is a state provided assessment that we have that helps us kind of see the the full range of where our students uh understanding is when it comes to the state standards. It lets us know not only what students are on target, but if they're above or below grade level on different
112things. The state has also implemented a new Firefly assessment, which I believe we've mentioned to you in the past. We piloted that in some classrooms this year across elementary through high school and we're looking to expand that more for next year. Um the Firefly assessment is available at no cost to us. It's something that's provided from the state. It's on the same platform that students go to when they take the PSSA or the Keystones as well as the CDT. Um but it really hones in on the grade level standards and it is aligned to the state assessments. So, um, it can give us some helpful data to make sure that our students are on track for performing well on the Keystone exams. And so we really want to work with our teachers in those trigger
113courses for the algebra and the literature keystones to help um not only give those assessments, understand how the assessments work, how to review the data, but then also how to set goals with their students and help tailor their instruction to the needs of their students and provide th that tiered support to make sure that they um can achieve proficiency on those assessments. And then the action plan that goes along with that has kind of three parts to it. The development of that that framework of the tiered supports. Um we already have some academic tiered supports in our schools, but how can we do that better? How can we appro improve the work that we're doing and and really have a more solid framework for those supports? Um and a lot of things that are being
114worked on in that regard. expanding that formative assessment which is is where the Firefly can help us get our students on that trajectory for growth academically and then strengthening our literacy instruction is that third piece. We already started some of that this spring. We had the BCIU come in um in our spring professional learning time to work with our high school English teachers and really build up their knowledge of structured literacy and provide some support for them and and some tools and some opportunities for them to continue to grow their learning as they seek to support their students learning in the classroom. So those are some of the key elements of um the TSI plan and really the the key areas of the goals that we had focused on in our work. Um so we'll
115be looking at the the next meeting at the end of May for the board to agree to move that TSI plan forward. Um we then just have to have um the board sign off on that plan and then we upload that to the state and submit that. It's due in September. Um, but really wanted to get that completed early on so that you have that completed and ready to go before before my time here is done. So, any questions? That's nice of you to do that for us. Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Landis, for that explanation. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. Under item E, we're going to be moving this item to our June uh committee of the whole meeting. We had a scheduling conflict with this. Um this is a wonderful thing. There's
116a donation of of nearly $40,000 and we want to make sure that uh you understand the magnitude of that and what we're what uh Gilbert'sville is intending to do with that money. Um so we we're planning to move that into the schedule in June. So that takes us down to item F. U Mr. Stout, if you could just give a a very very brief uh overview to the board with regards to the pre-ount K counts and theou. Absolutely. Um thank you for the time to uh speak to this topic. Uh it's a topic that I'm very passionate about. Um it started when I was still the principal at Corporale. So the prek counts program, believe it or not, is in its seventh year. And um one of the things that we were you know not
117sure about when we started this endeavor seven years ago was the uh longevity and the ability for the program to sustain over time. Um as a reminder to the board, it is 100% grantfunded. Um there is no money that comes out of the general budget for uh the funding of this program. Uh it currently supports 54 students. Um that is really exciting because we've expanded it over the years and we landed on 54 because it's a it's a good number. Um we have three programs. Uh two at Washington Elementary, one each program has 18 students in it and then one at the high school. The high school provides the opportunity for our students to uh be in the high school uh building, but it also has the um the family and consumer science uh preschool
118program. students come down and have the opportunity that want to be potentially future educators to come down and work with students. So, um what we bring to you tonight is just an overview of what we will be putting on the May 27th legislative meeting for approval. And that is looking for our prek counts teachers to move on to step and column as to where they would be if they were uh classroom teachers within our our uh current program um in the current CBA. Uh right now the prek teachers are um have compensation in the current CBA that is up to uh bachelor step three. Uh theou would provide for the pre-k teachers to transition to the step and column from the collective bargaining agreement that's based upon where they are with years of service as
119well as credits. Um, one of the key components to thisou is it outlines the district's right to revert to the original CBA should there be some sort of conflict in our uh grant where the state uh pulls funds uh from the program itself and we would revert back to um the original language uh that's in the current CBA. If in fact the prek program was discontinued by the state, uh the teachers would reserve the right to be able to actually go and um and bid for a position should that that happen. Uh in the early days of the prek counts program, we weren't sure of the longevity of what was going to happen because it was new. The state was building the program, but each and every year in the seven years it's been in
120existence, the state continues to add programs and there's new applications for other districts throughout the state. So on the May 27th legislative meeting, you will be seeing the uh the memoranduming memorandum of understanding for the prek counts teachers to move to what their column and step would be based upon their years of service and credits. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. St. Thank you. Under items G, H, and I, they are all special education related. Uh, item G, there is a settlement agreement. The board was updated in a legal memo with regards to that settlement agreement. We will be seeking your consideration of approval of that agreement at the legislative meeting later this month. Item H is a annual service agreement with the BCIU uh specifically related to services that we uh are involved with them
121in conjunction to various needs of our students that have special needs um u that we do rely on them for those services and inside that contract and agreement you can see the variety and menu of what those service charges are. This is an annual um agreement that does come to to you. Um and under item I again we have a number of special education annual service agreements. We do have Miss Bartman here to answer any questions that you may have in regards to those. Most of them again are recurring annual service agreements that we have with entities or with service agencies that offer support services for special education students throughout our district. Any questions from the board on any of those three items? Okay, that takes us down to item J, which is the Homestead
122Farmstead pro property tax relief. And there is an update um and Mr. Dan Cole is going to provide that to the board. So for the year 202526, the Pennsylvania Department of Education has certified that pursuant to special session act one of 2006 that it will distribute funds during the 2025-26 school year to the Bertown Area School District for property tax relief. The department's certification indicates that the district will receive $3,23,674.58. Um they will split these payments that we received them in August and October of 2025. The Burks and Montgomery County Assessor's offices have certified as required by act one that the specific properties within the district that have been approved as homesteads and farmsteads within the district. Within these certifications, there are 12,159 approved homesteads and 127 approved farmsteads. The district is required to design
123designate the homestead exclusion and the farmstead exclusion no later than the last day prior to the beginning of the year for which the exclusions will apply. And for budget year 202526, that date is June 30th, 2025. The homestead exclusion and the farmstead exclusion set by the district are each fixed dollar amounts that may not exceed one half the median assessment on approved homestead prop properties within the district as of the date of the county certification and shall only apply to calculation of district property taxes. The farmstead exclusion may be equal to or less than the homestead exclusion but may not be greater than the homestead exclusion. The homestead and farmstead assessment exclusion for 202526 is $7,537 which equates to tax tax relief on eligible properties of $246.38. So we did see an increase um from
124the prior year of last year the um property tax relief was $210.65. This year it will be $246.38. Um last year we received from the state 2,580,4412 and again the for 2526 we are slated to receive 3,23,674.58. This item um will be placed on the um May legislative agenda for approval. Any questions for Miss Denola? All right. Item K, Middle School East Auditorium South System Project. And I'm going to ask Mr. Principal Mayori to just come to the podium to kind of give just an over overview of um what this request is um and that um you know, we're dealing with some equipment in there right now that is not working to the necessary ability of what we need when in a more remote environment that we are. So turn it over to you, Andrew.
125Absolutely. Thank you for this opportunity for considering this request with Miss Binkley along with Mr. Fight IT uh specialist. We've been looking at this for the past couple of years. Our sound system at East is basically over 20 years old. We need to make a change from the analog system to a digital system. We have been upgrading a few of the mics and other things over the years as needed and we're at the point now we have to do an overhaul of basically of the hub of it. So, this bid um or this request, this job will entail upgrading the soundboard um amp the amplification system, connections to our wireless mics, uh replace the hanging microphones, the coral microphones, which we've never had and has really been limiting when we've had um the the coral
126types of experiences, and also um purchasing a monitoring system, which is important when we do our musicals. So every other year the two middle schools switch the hosting of the musical. Um West has it one year, we have it one year, the uh the other year. So it's our turn this coming year. We we're we're afraid that we're going to walk in the night of the performance and it's uh it's kaput. So working with the system over 20 plus years, we've put together the funds um necessary to make this happen both with combination of activities uh music league support as well as uh some of our building budgeted funds. um bid it out to three different companies, consulted with Mr. Fight. We think this is a really good direction to head and and it is
127needed at this time. So hoping it can be approved by you all and we can get this job done over the summer. Is there a dollar amount we're talking about at this point? Yes, there is. Any questions? Yeah. um that new sound. Are you getting a warranty with that or is it just I I can't answer that off the top of my head. I would hope and assume because I know that was discussed about the supports that we would receive, but I don't know those details uh without having the um the agreement in front of me. Thank you. We will get Mr. Feights again. He's been working with us along the way to oversee that. Miss Scott, just to mention to the board, so Middle School West also, I believe, has a little bit of
128a problem with their sound system as well. Maybe not to this degree. Is that they've received an upgrade? I I I don't know the exact year, but within the past three or four years is is what I want to say. We have looked into and consulted with them. Um, but as far as the the quality of it, I I'm not aware. Yeah, I I'm only saying that because I had mentioned it when I was at a musical and it seemed like it was off and the kids work so hard at it and sometimes it was hard to understand. So, I'm just wondering if that's something that maybe was just off for the day and you wouldn't know because you're not there at that building, but I just wondered. All right. Thank you. I had mentioned
129that to um Mrs. is um Tora when she was here that there was an issue over at West. So, we really need to look at that as well cuz I was there for a chorus thing for my grandchildren and it was horrible and people were complaining. So, it's not just you. It's something we need to look in there too. There's apparently an issue. We'll make sure we speak to Mrs. Don Barowski and have her go through a similar evaluation as East went through. I think we're dealing with two different systems, so it's not looking at a two for one kind of thing here. I did notice in the um contract agreement here about the warranty. Um looks like it has a 90day. It would have to be explored if you want extended. So that might
130be something you'd want to contact the agency just so we have that information for the board when you when we come back in two weeks. um if that's something they'd want to consider what a cost of that may may be on top of what the bid cost came back certainly on this item. We will we will have that. Okay. Do any of our elementary schools do the required performances at East? No, they don't. Is it because of this reason? So would New Hampshire start doing it there then or? No. East isn't the most desirable place for those events because of our parking situation. Is that the main reason for it? Okay. And so we haven't had conversations beyond that. It's it's not the most advantageous to getting folks in and out in the number of
131cars that we can have on our lot. Okay. Thank you. Okay, that takes us down to item L, uh, the Richard Karen Foundation Agreement. And I'm going to invite Dr. Kristen Horton, our director of people's services to the podium just to give uh a brief overview of what this foundation agreement has supported for the district and what it's what we are required to do um in school code as it relates to our student assistance program. Good evening. Uh thank you for um taking time to listen to what our student assistance program offers students here in the district. So the student assistance program is supported by the state of Pennsylvania and is focus is having a team in each of our buildings that is dedicated to removing what we call non-academic barriers to success for students.
132So these teams are looking at um things like mental health possibly um substance abuse, attendance concerns uh or any other factor could be academic as well that is preventing a student from meeting with success within the school environment. And so we partner with Karen Foundation for a SAP liaison who works within our buildings. She does a lot of work in our secondary buildings doing um behavioral health assessments, drug and alcohol assessments and helping us to ensure that um the students are getting the support and services that they need to help them overcome challenges and barriers. So, she's in our district 5 days a week. Um, and she supports um our students at the high school, uh, middle school west, middle school east, and three of our elementary schools. Because our district is split in two
133counties, she supports um, three of our schools on the Burke side, and then we also partner with creative health for some of our Montgomery County elementary schools. So within the scope and sequence of supports that are offered, our SAP leaison um provides psychoeducational groups where we're looking at prevention groups or skills-based groups for students to um intervene when we recognize that there may be some struggles with um anxiety or we're seeing students struggle to um make meaningful friendships where we can provide some skills at an early level before we see students having larger struggles. So, she runs groups at all of our secondary buildings um to help support students. Um right now we're running some coping skills groups uh anxiety group. We also have a group um for our students who are struggling with substance
134abuse or misuse um just to name a few a few. We've had some um family dynamics or changing family groups as well that we run. Um, so within the scope and sequence of that, she's also working with our SAP teams in the buildings. And all of our buildings do have SAP teams that are working to support students to make sure that they have the supports necessary um that they need. But she does SAP maintenance for our team. So it's required that our teams have a SAP maintenance. And really that's just looking at how are we operating as a team? What are best practices? What are different resources in the community or out there that we can connect families to? So when our liaison is doing an assessment for a student, she would spend um well
135usually an hour with a student going through a behavioral health screening or just a screening to get to know the student and through the course of that time together she can really focus in on what are the needs of this individual student and what are the most appropriate community resources that we can help to connect the family to. So, just as an example, at the high school, we had our endofear meeting today, and at the high school alone, we've had 300 students who have been referred to our SAP program who we've been able to um not all of those students have been connected to services, but a large number of them have participated in groups or we've worked with the family or that student to get them connected to school-based counseling or outpatient counseling or
136other resources within the community to help them. um whether it be something with within school or without school to um help them meet their needs. Questions regarding SAP? Great. Thank you, Dr. Horton. We'll bring that agreement forward at our legislative meeting for your consideration. Um under item M U listed there is the 20 2526 schoolboard meeting calendar draft. Um just a couple of highlights with regard to that calendar itself. Um most recently the board took a uh took motions approving a committee structure that would host committee meetings prior to both the committee of the whole meetings and the legislative meetings. You can see those four committees listed in the right-hand margins there. And when those uh what they correlate to, they would be an every other month structure for one hour um ahead of each
137of those um committee of the whole and legislative meetings. Another couple of things to bring to your attention. We did we did schedule um a meeting for July of this uh this coming summer, July 22nd um to function as a legislative meeting. With the number of continued personnel changes and hires that are traditional traditionally uh completed throughout the summer, we thought it best in making sure that we bring those mostly going to be a meeting of approvals of those and consideration of those for your approval over the summer from a personnel standpoint. And in addition to one other adjustment that might be somewhat new is for consideration on this calendar is on December 2nd which is the reorganization meeting. I know which has been traditionally just a reorganization meeting. Um we are suggesting that and
138recommending that a uh a committee meeting also fall on that date as well as we'll have some personnel items that we want to get through and and and for your consideration as well as some otherformational update meetings. Um it's a large span if we were to go from November all the way through until January. and rather than having people out two nights in December, we have that or reorganization evening and compound it with an additional meeting um for some needs at that time. So outside of that, the structure of the board meeting calendar is is very similar to what you see in in this year and and no doubt years past. Um, so this would be something that uh we'd ask for your consideration and which would need approval at our our next legislative meeting
139so that it could be posted publicly and advertised. Okay. All right. Sorry, I don't mean to sound petty, but is there a way to make the boxes line up? Like if if a student submitted this to me, the first thing I would say would be to line up your boxes. Okay. So where exactly are you are you talking within the calendar itself, the boxes? Okay. Yep. Got it. Yes, we will work on making sure that's Thank you. better aligned. Thank you. Thank you. All right. All right, that takes us down to item N, the appointment of the Pennsylvania School Board Association delegate assembly voting delegate. So, um, this is a year in which the delegate assembly and every year offers out three delegates here to Bertown. I know last year, I believe this was a
140virtual sess session for three delegates here on the board. Uh this is an inperson um delegation and voting body that would be at Kalahari I believe it is resorts and conventions in the Poconos. Um it is not a requirement that Boyer Town send any delegates. An opportunity for all school boards to send some representative delegates. So if there is anybody interested um on the board, please forward those names to Mrs. Kramer and myself and copy myself and and Mr. Panerella on that and we could add this um to and and uh recommend appointment to that. If there are no names or no volunteers for that, we will not put this on as an agenda item at our next legislative meeting. Okay. Item O, the cyber charter tuition rate resolution. We've been asked and working with
141our all of our neighboring school districts in Burks County. This is something um that's that's grown steam in um making sure that we're cognizant and and really trying to reform a bit of the system of the current cyber charter school tuition rates that exists. Um, as we know, they are a driving force to a lot of expenditures here in the in our own district. And, um, we would like to make sure that we are presenting to our um, and hosting a resolution here and and advertising to our elected officials um, a rate that does not exceed $10,000 per student. So you'll see both the resolution and also a um template letter that we would send to all our representative legislature legislators here in Pennsylvania as needed um with regard to uh this reform and what
142we're suggesting. This has caught momentum in in a number of counties across the state and this is really a statewide initiative that that has caught and certainly during election season and uh we would ask for your support in this as most other Burks County school districts have committed to this same resolution. Under item P, I'm going to turn this over to uh Mrs. Danakola for the sports and student accident insurance just to give an update. Okay. Um the administration is recommending that we again appoint AG administrators to be the athletic football insurance carrier as well as the carrier for the voluntary student accident insurance that's offered to parents. The following insurance benefits are to remain in effect for the 202526 school year at the stated pricing would be our recommendation. Um class one benefits would
143be intercolastic sports football only. It's primary excess coverage of $100. Accidental med medical benefits has a limit of 25,000. Um and there's some other accidental death and dismemberment coverage. The catastrophic accident benefit is um full ex excess medical maximum of $5 million. The premium for this policy would be 10,545 which is the same cost as our current year 202425. The class two benefits would be the voluntary student accident insurance. This is the um insurance coverage that parents can buy. Um the accident medical benefits coverage would be 250,000. Um and the premium would be during school time $22.50 per student or 24hour coverage would be $90 per student. The families um if they elect the voluntary student accident insurance, they sign up directly with the company and pay uh the premiums directly to AG administrators. Um
144Boyertown area school district doesn't get involved in handling the payments. [Music] Thank you, Miss Dennico. Uh you'll see under item Q, um we do have five donations um for this month and you know with a very very giving and caring community. Um we're fortunate to have so many donations each month and you can see those listed there under um our schoolboard policy. Those have to be accepted by you as a board, we will bring forward those. Um, most anything with any real estate or or or value um becoming your own asset. For all of these, as we've looked at these, there really isn't any extenduating circumstances that we see that would bring on any needs for really much repair with regard to that. Most of these fall in the curricular area items and are a
145wonderful donation system from from our community. Lastly in um item R is as we had as you had approved at our last legislative meeting and the flying of the PMIA flag a draft policy that updates our displays and opening exercises. You'll see um on this item, if we can bring that up, that policy draft policy up, you'll see the bolded um areas of this draft. We did send this policy back through through PSBA. And one of the other things that we are updating within the policy is the more recent moment of silence on the anniversary of September the 11th. That was not part of our policy. We had been practicing that since it was put into um school code. Uh this this policy now updates it and and places it inside of our own schoolboard
146policies and should be noted um the PMIA flag display. that you can see then bolded in the uh the third paragraph down um and so forth. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory. That flag also is called never forgotten. We might want to put that word wording in there possibly. Um yes, it didn't come back from legal or from PSBA as such. I don't know if I we can we can contact them to see if that's something they would suggest in there and we'll we'll we'll we'll make sure that we uh get some feedback back to you on that. Again, we'd be uh looking for your consideration of this at our next legislative meeting for um a first read. This needs to go through two reads um for it to be adopted as schoolboard policy. Mr. Brophy,
147sir, BCIU report. Uh, BCI you meeting this month is Thursday, so no report this week. Okay. Mr. Upgrow, BCTC. Uh, yes. Um, this month, earlier this month, we had a a U graduation for a bunch of our students um up at Rack and Reading that are moving on. And uh they have um some in the military and uh some at the local uh businesses around this area where they are starting to u their future. Uh DECA was a big one. There was a couple other small places but uh it was pretty good to see all the students and there was like uh out of all the uh attending schools there was probably about 60some kids there altogether that are already placed and they're already going out to work. So it was really a good thing
148and uh that's all. We have a meeting at the uh end of the month. Okay. I'll have more information. Thank you. Public period number one. Donnie Savage advocacy for budget and charter school resolution. Good evening. I was glad to see um the the proposal to add the committees back into the board discussions and I assume since there was no comments you're all in agreement with that. Uh similarly uh glad to see um the proposal for a cyber charter funding reform um resolution for you and again uh no comments. So I assume you are all in favor of that. Um, my question on that is why uh $10,000 per student was picked instead of $8,000. From everything I've seen from the governor and from all the advoc advocacy groups that I follow, uh, they're proposing $8,000.
149Uh, which would save Bertown another half a million dollars, I think, if that was what you were advocating for. So, let's talk more about advocacy. Um, have you considered a resolution in support of the $1.5 million of adequacy funding you're counting on? Um, last meeting I introduced you to Casey Deck from PA school's work and he provided you with tools and templates to create that resolution. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about why a resolution is so important coming from you. Of course, you can and you should be contacting our legislators individually just as any of us can, but a resolution from you is so much more powerful. As you know, the Senate will be the hardest place to get this funding approved. And we know that Senator Penny Cook speaks against the
150proposed budget and last year she did not vote for the budget. I believe she abstained. So, when I'm looking at the map that Senator Tracy Pentacook um represents, Boyertown is smack dab in the center of that. It covers about a third of her geographic area and it represents 20% of her constituents, the 50,000 people in Boyertown Area School District. So when you pass a resolution, you're speaking for the 50,000 people in our school district and that's powerful. So I also wanted to just um if I have time left to um propose some other ways that you can be advocating our um some of our neighboring school districts, specifically Potts Grove and Pottstown, went together to host a town hall and invited legislators and experts and all the community. It was well advertised. There were community
151people from Boyertown there. Um I didn't see any board members there, but it's something that you can do to educate your community and put that pressure on our legislators as well. Um you could attend advocacy events like today's um education uh advocacy day in Harrisburg. I was in Harrisburg today. It was very uplifting. Um, when I was at the Pottstown event, I learned that um, the way that we pay cyber charter schools, back to a cyber charter school one, the way we pay cyber charter schools for special education students is um, disproportionate to the way that we get funding from the state for special education students. So, it's this big funnel going out that is more money. So even if we get more money from the state, a disproportionate amount of that will go to
152the special ed students going to cyber charters. I can explain that more but not in the minutes that I have. So I just wanted to make that point as well and what I've been learning about that. So thank you for listening. Next we have the approval of the March 11, 2025 committee of the whole meeting minutes as presented. That's a lot of moves. That's not that's not what's listed here. I'm sorry. Approval of the April 22nd, 2025 board of school directors meeting minutes. I'll second discussion. Uh, Mr. Brophy, yes. Miss Diroff, yes. Mrs. Katz, yes. Miss Nyman, yes. Mrs. Scott, yes. Mr. Mr. Brad Upgrove. Yes. Mr. Roger Upgrove. Yes. Mr. Zawada. Yes. Mr. Panerello. Yes. Motion carries. That takes us down to item eight, the superintendent's itemized agenda. We have one item there. That's
153our personnel. So, we are recommending to the board consideration to approve the following personnel actions, including all employment appointments, changes in status, leaves, supplemental contracts, as well as resignations. Move. I'll second. Mr. Brophy, yes. Miss Diroff, yes. Mrs. Katz, yes. Miss Nyman, yes. Mrs. Scott, yes. Mr. Brad Upgrove. Yes. Mr. Roger Upgrove. Yes. Mr. Zawada. Yes. Mr. Panerello. Yes. Motion carries. Public com period number two. Dia Savage board effectiveness. Hi again. I wanted to talk about um fiscal responsibility or perhaps financial negligence. Um at the last meeting, Mr. Broofphy expressed concern that there's no process around your long range planning and he is right. I was surprised that he asked administration if they have a five and 10year plan. The long range planning belongs to the board and Mr. Brophie made a lot of points
154that deserve discussion. If you're not discussing it publicly, then effectively it doesn't exist because the only place you're allowed to discuss and deliberate about the budget is in a public comment in the public meetings per the sunshine law. And you talk about the general fund, the capital project fund, and other fund balances as if they are separate and unrelated entities when in reality any longrange planning must talk about all of it. It's all connected. Ultimately, the source of all of our funding for everything is mainly brought from our taxpayers. I've seen some board members try to bring up budget concerns, admittedly sometimes in an unprofessional manner, but always discussion is cut short by the leadership. So, as I commuted to Harrisburg today, I heard the lyrics of a song written by Steven Stills of Buffalo
155Springfield that reminded me of this board. Battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Boyer town deserves better. We are headless. Just to point some out to you, Mr. Savage. Right now we have uh how many people are involved in that? Over 100 people to uh direct the district in the next 5 years and our goals. So that's all being taken care of right now by over 100 community members. That gives us board comment period. Uh Mr. Joe, if you want to start off, let you start. Uh, all the presentations tonight I thought were very good. I only have one question. Last meeting, I think it was I asked about having something done with the uh policies, particularly policy 800 AR-1. I've never heard a word back. I thought when we asked something we
156would get some type of response, but I guess I was wrong. Yes. Can we get some clarity on exactly what it is you're requesting? That's I think a little bit. No, this time it it's the part where you're only maintaining the videos for a year and I really think they should be kept longer since uh everything is digital now. It doesn't even take up much space. Okay. And that's the only thing that inside of 8 800.1. What was the videos? Yes. Right. That's what I said the last time. All right. We will bring that back to the June committee meeting. Thank you for clarifying that. Thank you, Mr. Brook. Nothing. Mr. Algro, I don't have anything. I wanted to thank um I guess it's Mrs. Moyer and uh Crest for doing the advertising for attracting
157more Paris to our district. I I looked at those that Dr. David Heiser sent out and I think they were very well done and hopefully um they will uh be it'll be a good start to equipping our classrooms and helping our teachers with um a good workforce of Paris. Thank you, Miss Diamond. Yes, I was at a function within the last two weeks and it was brought to my attention that the BCTC is changing their horiculture class. And it's also my understanding that it's only going to be offered at one of the schools, not both of them. Are we aware of that? Yes, we are. Their their enrollment went down to four students, I believe it was. Is that correct, Mr. for up to Grove. Yeah. The enrollment four from us or four together to
158in totality. Wow. Um so the the the ita became a point where they are going to be um offering uh a way for those students to finish those those four that were inside of that program. But uh they are eliminating that based on enrollment that they've seen declining considerably over the last five years. Okay. Hey, if the enrollment goes back up, is it going to be brought back? Well, without a course, there won't be an enrollment. So, they there won't be any enrollment for that that that particular course any longer. Okay. Thank you. At BC at BCTC at the um OIE campus. Okay. Uh the other thing with uh being brought to the attention um about the sound system also the heating and cooling over at West. I know when we had that one chorus
159thing that was over there that my grandchildren were in, I did bring it to, as I said, Mrs. U. Torch's attention that there was an issue. uh the auditorium wasn't right, but also the halls and they said the dining room were extremely hot. The kids couldn't handle it. So that was under Miss Torch. That was LA over a year ago. I haven't heard anything this year in regards to that. So I don't know if that was already addressed. I don't know. I haven't been over there and I forgot to ask my daughter-in-law if they were at something recently or not, but Well, I know I was there and I I know it was it was horrible. I don't know that. We'll we'll check in to see if that's been addressed. That would have been over
160a year ago um with Mrs. Torcha and I know they've held a number of events. Um they just had their spring musical. It would have been about a year now. They just held their spring musical in uh March, April, and I didn't hear anything from that. So, I'll I'll check in with Mrs. Don Barowki to see where we where we stand. Mr. I have no further. Yes. After I was very disgusted after last meeting here because of the actions that were taken by a board member to uh really go after somebody on his qualifications for this school. And the problem is that that person that has been here for a long time, moved all the way up through the ranks to become a major player in how this school works. um as big as it
161is and to be belittled by that actor to the point where he resigned to go to another school is really disappointing because of the fact that actually the hate in the school that they talk about is actually in this boardroom and they know who they far. Okay, that takes us down to upcoming meeting dates and you can see listed there, we have a May 27th uh legislative meeting that is the day after Memorial Day. So that is Tuesday after Memorial Day and we are then back here June 10th for another committee of the whole meeting. If you got something to say, say it in public, guys. Yo, we're not doing that. Motion to adjurnn. 9 minutes. Broy seconds. Meeting adjourned. [Music]