001[Music] like to call the meeting to order. Roll call. Roger upgrave here. Mr. Zawada here. Mr. Brophie here. Miss Diroff. Mrs. Kratz here. Miss Nyman here. Mrs. Scott here. Mr. Brad Upgrove here. Mr. Panerella here. All present. If we 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 which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The board of school directors held an executive session prior to the April 8th, 2025 meeting. Topic was legal. The session lasted approximately 40 minutes long. takes us down to our discussion information section. I'd like to welcome the border town community to this evening's committee of the whole meeting. Uh we do have a robust agenda this evening.
002A lot of information to share. So we're going to get into those discussion items this evening as quickly as possible. Again, my name is Scott Davidiser. I'm the superintendent here in Bertown. I'd like to welcome all of our guests in person and those watching on the YouTube video this evening. So, we're going to begin with a 2023 24 audit. That will be a presentation in which our auditors will be um presenting virtually. I'm going to turn things over to Mrs. Danakola to make some introductions. Good evening everyone. Tonight, m our auditor, Mr. Kalchuk, will be um presenting the his opinion of the June 30th, 2024 audit. [Music] Good evening. Thank you all for having me uh on tonight. I'm delighted to be here presenting the results of our audit for the year ending June 30,
0032024. Uh we were on site with the district uh late in the fall and through the winter um testing the internal controls and processes as well as a number of transactions of the district all for the purpose of uh providing a result on uh the audit. And I'm pleased to tell you that based on our testing we found your financial statements to be uh fairly presented. we're issuing what's called a clean or an unmodified opinion on the financial statements. Uh, additionally, because you expend more than $750,000 in money that originates at the federal government level, you're subject to additional governmental auditing and single audit rules. This year, the programs that were selected for testing for your single audit were your IDEIDA special education funding as well as the child nutrition cluster, which is the national
004school lunch program and breakfast program. I'm pleased to let you know the results of our compliance testing identified uh no deficiency, no material weaknesses, significant deficiencies, or other reportable matters either in compliance with the major programs or in your internal control processes. Uh so overall a clean opinion across the board. Uh looking at the financial results for the year, uh this was a year uh where the district was able to uh leverage some better than expected results in a couple areas uh to to help enhance its future. Um, for anybody that had did uh has everybody received a copy of the audit or should I put a couple pages up on the screen? It is. The audit is in board docs. Would anybody like to see it on the screen as well? Um, Jeff, if
005if you can and share your screen. Yeah, I can. Hopefully I'm doing the right screen. Looks like it. Um, so looking at your uh what everybody's always the most curious about is the general fund budget. Um, and you'll see that for the year ended June 30, 2024, uh, the district down here was able to add about $7 million to its fund balance in the general fund. And when we look at what the draws were there, um, the biggest one you'll see is earnings on investments. Uh last spring as you as your district and all other districts were working on putting together the budgets uh the general sentiment was that earnings on investments and interest rates were going to go down sooner rather than later. Uh so this is an area where really across the board
006throughout the state. Uh we saw districts perform well above expectations in earning us on investments. Rates are starting to come down. So, this isn't a revenue source that um we'll fully be able to rely on in future years. Um but while it was available, uh it it is an area that the district was able to to generate some funds for future uses. Um you'll see other taxes is an area that uh was also above budget. Um and a lot of other taxes are really dependent on activity by people within the district and they're very um temperamental and we see swings in these areas. So the district as is an appropriate budgeted conservatively. This was a year where um the the results exceeded the conservative budgeting uh and as a result uh you were able to
007to see a positive variance in that area. the last item. Jeff, excuse me, Jeff. Jeff, if I can interrupt you just one second. Uh, your screen is not sharing, so we're not able to see that. So, if you I shared There you go. Now, it's now it's up. Yeah, I I moved it and I didn't realize that I shared the screen. So, I'm going to move my camera over here so that I'm looking at you still. Okay, great. And if you could just reference the page that you're on, that would be helpful for for everyone. is uh page 19. If you're using the page numbers at the bottom, it's PDF page 23. Um, and the last area I want to show is federal sources um which you will see was about $1.5 million over uh
008the budgeted amount. Now, unlike a lot of other areas, federal sources is really a dollar in a dollar out. Um, so any increase you see there is offset by an increase in expenditures. Um, so that really doesn't impact your bottom line except that when you're able to use federal uh funding to cover expenditures you have, it relieves pressure on your local and state sources. Uh, and this was really the last year that ESSERT funding was a significant portion of your available resources. So that's why you see that increase is really about the expenditure available and appropriate funding. On the expenditure side, um you'll see the district was able to see savings in certain areas such as regular programs uh while seeing overages in others such as special programs. uh there were savings and expenditures which
009were used by the district uh to fund transfers into your capital funds to manage your long-term needs. Um so you'll see that the the transfers and the savings from expenditures largely equal out and so really the the driving change in your fund balance was that revenue side as I mentioned. Uh so looking at your funds uh more holistically, you'll see that the district ended the year with about $10 million in unassigned general fund fund balance. Uh this is the the money that is really available for the district to use. Now much of this just because of the timing of funds is used in July and August to fund uh before your taxes come in. Um but that's what was available as of June 30, 2024. The remaining fund balance that you see there uh was
010either assigned, committed or restricted by the district. Um the majority of it is for capital projects and capital needs of the district including your technology reserve fund. Uh although you did have a portion that was committed for um Paser's uh support because as we know Paser's rates continue to be um historically high as well as to fund future budget stabilization. As you likely know uh the district reports in two different ways. So, we've been talking about the fund level, uh, which is what you budget based on, and it's a modified approval basis, which looks at near-term financial resources and uses. The district also reports on, um, a full approval, which we call the entitywide basis. And this looks at the district in how you may look at a business, where all capital assets are reflected
011as assets, all of your debt are reflected as liabilities. Um, and as I mentioned, Pasers continues to be the largest single liability of the district. The number did go down and so you're going to see that um, if you compare this to prior years, but as of June 30, 2024, your net pension paser's liability is about $163 million. As I've mentioned in previous years, this isn't really something you're able to offset. This is just a recognition for bond holders and other users of the financial statements that this is your district's proportionate share of the gap that Pasers is working to close. Um we've seen a little bit of an improvement in the rates uh in in the the funding percentage and we anticipate um because of the structural changes that Peters have made in the
012last five years that as the years go on we're going to see that start to close. Um, you'll see the district ended the year on an entitywide basis with an overall net deficit of about 57.8 million. Uh, by the way, this is PDF page 17, hard copy page 13. Um, but that was an improvement of about $20 million from the prior year. And the reason that number is so different from um the other pages is certain things like the purchase of a capital asset is an expenditure at the fund level, but it is turning cash asset into building asset at the entitywide level. So it doesn't decrease your um your net income for the year as a booker. Um, at this point, um, I don't want to go too far into the numbers because I
013know especially on the entity wide, they can be a little murky as to how much they really mean to to the district, to the board as opposed to some of those fund level numbers. Um, but I do want to open it up for any questions you may have. Um, and I'm going to stop sharing so that I can see you all. Who picks and chooses the accounts that you audit? I'm sorry, what was that? I'm having a little trouble hearing. I I do apologize. Who picks and chooses the accounts that you go in and audit? I'm sorry. Chris, one more time. I'm I I can really only hear what what's near the Who picks and chooses the accounts that you audit? Who picks and chooses the accounts that you audit? Jeff, the question was who
014picks and chooses the accounts that you audit? Oh, okay. Thank you. Um, so there is uh the the short answer is it's our audit team. Um we have a process by which we uh perform a number of interviews as well as analytical testing of the district as a whole to identify places where there's opportunity for a higher than normal risk of misstatement um or where there may be significant changes whether it's in the numbers or the the way the district processes transactions. Uh so we select them for a higher level of testing. um but then we use um haphazard as well as statistical sampling methodologies to identify the specific transactions. There are some things like taxes um that we will always work to confirm with your tax collectors uh and to test aggressively because of
015their significance to the district. Uh the state also always provides a confirmation uh that we're able to use to test all of the state balances. Uh so those are there's some accounts like that that are always tested and then beyond that certain controls um whether we test payroll more in depth this year or other expenditures more in depth. Um we have some different cycling and other methodologies that we use. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? Jeeoff, I don't hear any any further questions. I appreciate you taking the time to share some of the bigger pieces to the audit. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. It's always a pleasure to uh to get to deliver good news and uh to speak with you all. All right. Thank you. Have a good
016evening. You too. Bye. Okay, that segus us into item B, which is a finance presentation. So, Mrs. Denol, I'm going to turn that section over to you. Um tonight I want I would like to provide an update to the 202526 budget. Um and provide some overview of what has happened in the past as far as budgetary wise um district overview, talk about some key mandated costs and then go into the details um of our 202526 budget. As you know, we're approaching um the timelines of which we need to start doing some approvals on that budget. Um, from a district demographic perspective, our general fund budget supports the enrollment of 6,293 students, which includes elementary students of 274, secondary students of 3,640, 54 pre-K count students, and approximately 75 virtual academy students in our BASD virtual
017academy. The budget also supports employees of 760 employees, of which 30 are administrators, 474 are teachers. We currently have about nine long-term substitutes. We have 95 full-time support staff, 102 part-time support staff, six support supervisory staff members, and then we also have um contracted services for our teacher substitutes and paraprofessionals. Through Kelly services, we have approximately 46 teacher substitutes. And through Crest, we have 156 paraprofessionals. We also contract for a number of mental health supports and social workers. They are also on a contracted basis. So, our overall budget supports all of those positions and all of those students. I'm going to review the real estate tax history. Um, act one index um just to refresh everybody's memory is the limit by which um we could raise taxes as a school district. So, for going back
018to 201718, the district's act one index was 3.1%. At that time, the district increased taxes 3.09%. 09%. In the next two years, 18/19 and 1920, the district had an adjusted act one index of 2.9 and 2.8, the district in those years um increase taxes above that index because they qualified for special exceptions, which would be increase expenditures in certain approved areas. The tax increase in 2018-19 was 5.4% and 1920 was 3.64%. Since 2021-22 um through this most recent year 202425 the district has had a tax increase of 3%. The act one index has ranged um from 3.7% to 6.4% but the district has maintained a 3% tax increase in each of the last four years. Um the 3% tax increase in 202425 was a millage increase of just under one. uh it was 0.924 mills
019which gave us a tax rate of 31.738 mills. From a tax collection history I'm pleased to report that you know the community continues to support at a high level the district students um in 201718 at assessed value of roughly 2.6 million we had a collection rate of 97%. In the most recent year 202425, the assessed value was 2.8 million and at a millage rate of 31.738 mills results in an adjusted tax lev levy of 86,729,493. That adjusted tax levy is adjusted for the homestead farmstead relief that is given um by the state that we then return to um taxpayers. We had collections of $84,631,564. So a collection percentage of 98%. So again, very strong collection percentage in our community. Um the real estate tax impact after that homestead farmstead relief is applied. looking at historically
020what that relief has been and what the impact to the community taxpayer is in 201718 real estate taxes based on a property assessed at $150,000 would have been $3,753 but after that homestead farmstead relief the annual it would drop it to $3,61342 so an annual increase over the prior year of $4642 in our most recent year 20242 25. It was a millage rate of $31.738. On a $150,000 property assessment, that would be real estate taxes of $4,760.70. But after applying the Homestead Farm relief, the tax bill would be $4,583.74. So an increase from the prior year of $138.60. We have not released for 20 we have not um been informed yet for 2025-26 what the available homestead farmstead relief will be. We will receive that from the state in the beginning of May. When we
021receive that we will calculate um what the tax relief for each eligible property will be and we'll share that with the board. Um the homestead farmstead relief from 2017 1818 18 through 2021-22 was about $1.7 million was provided from the state that we could apply to um eligible properties for homestead farmstead relief. Um in 2023 24 it was upwards of $2.5 million in homestead farmstead relief that we could um provide back to eligible properties. So when that number is released, we'll uh share that with the board. As we look at the 202526 budget cycles for our local school districts in the Burks IU, um there's a number of different increases from 6.15% to 0%. There is one um in the Topah Hakan Area School District that shows us a negative. um they're a multi-county district
022and they had one their Burks County rate actually dropped. We um currently in our 2025-26 budget are proposed at a 3% tax increase which puts us right in the middle of the Burks IU school districts. Some of the um Burks IU school districts like Muenberg, Twin Valley, their um increases are ever fluctuating. Um just recently today there I believe one of them may might have proposed something a little higher. So that's where we fall currently. I wanted to touch on the key mandated costs of the district. These are districts these are costs that the district um cannot control. They are mandated by the state. Um the pasers contribution rate and cost history. This is net of the state reimbursement. So every pasers dollar that we contribute based based on employee salary we get roughly half
023of that back from the state. So in 201516 the Pasers rate was 4.78% for that year which gave the district a net cost of 6,483,25. In 2023 24 the rate was 34%. And our net paser's cost was 8,453,874. For 202425 the rate is 33.9%. And then for the budget year of 202526, the certified employer contribution rate is 34%. Charter school tuition is another mandated cost, a cost that is um out of our control. We have seen 128% increase in cost since 201920. The in 201920 we had 187 students enrolled. That tuition cost us $2,536,72. In 2023 24 we had approximately 282 students enrolled and that cost to us was 5,789,876. So a pretty substantial increase. Um in 2024 25 we currently have 286 students enrolled. So again we've had 128% increase in cost since 201920.
024Um in 202425 this current year we did receive state reimbursement of $425,833 we have received h we're expected to receive that total amount in this fiscal year as reimbursement from the state for our charter school costs. We've received half of that so far this year. Um but there is no state reimbursement in the 202526 state budget. So that was a onetime revenue. Are we going to be guaranteed the other half or I from everything we've seen? Yes. So to move into the 2025-26 proposed revenue, local revenue includes a 3% tax increase and total local revenue um is budgeted at $104,250,999. State revenue is budgeted at $43,633,378 and federal revenue is budgeted at $867,154 for a total budgeted revenue of $148,751,531. Of the 43.6 6 million in state revenue. Only 28.3 million of that relates to
025educational subsidies, our basic education subsidy, our special education subsidy, our ready tolearn um grant cost reimbursements, which would be the reimbursement we received for our FICA cost, our Pasers cost. That is budgeted at $14,165,26. And then we have other state grants which includes our prek grant and other smaller security and mental health grants for a total of 1,128,514. Within our budgeted state revenue, it does include uh Governor Shapiro's proposed ready tolearn increase of 1,449,817. So while there was no um charter school reimbursement proposed by Governor Shapiro, there was um an increase to ready tolearn of 1.4 4 million within his 202526 budget proposal. We have included that in our budgeted local revenue for 2025-26. As we talk about the revenue sources of the district, local real estate tax being um a large portion of our
026revenue. The I would like to talk about the proposed property tax and rent rebate that is also included in the 202526 budget. So the state provides a property tax and rent rebate to qualified individuals. What the um administration is recommending is that we um mirror the qualification requirements of the state and provide a similar um property tax and rent rebate to our community members that qualify. So the the guidelines would be that they need to be 65 and older as of December 31st. They would or be under 65 but a spouse was 65 or older or be a widow and or widowerower that was age 50 or older or be an individual with a permanent disability that's 18 or older. The elig eligibility income would be total household income of $46,250 or less. The um
027eligible individual would also need to either own and occupy a home as their primary residence and have paid property taxes on that. Be a renter that rented and occupied the home um and the landlord paid real estate taxes on the property or be an owner renter that owned and occupied the home but rented the land. So those would be the categories that of eligibility that somebody would need to meet to be approved for the state guideline. And our recommen recommendation would be that would be the same qualification for the district. Uh the income guidelines the income guidelines have index up at the state up to $46,250. However, the um state rebate amounts in the past were index were indexed up to $31,10 at the state level at the lowest income level. Um, up to $8,270,
028the state rebate amount would be 1,000. The district would be proposing a rebate amount of $250. Up to $15,510, the state rebate amount was $770. We would be proposing 200. Up to $18,610, the state rebate amount was $460. We'd be proposing $150. And then up to the highest level, the state rebate amount would be $380. And we would be proposing 100. So what the proposal would be that if they were um eligible and approved for the state rebate and they applied to the district, the district would give the um eligible amount based upon their income that's shown. Um from an historical pers perspective, the state did release data on the um latest data was 2022 for state rebates issued um to residents of the Boertown Area School District. There was a total of 93 um
029state property tax rebates awarded to residents of our district for a total of $289,172. So that would be what the state provided. And then from the rent rental perspective, the rent rebates provided by the state to the Bordertown area school district residents was a total of 153 rebates for a total of $84,187. Um, at this time when they released this data, the state was had a limit of only $15,000 on the rental side. They have a since index that up to $46,250 as an income limit. From an estimated cost perspective, looking at the number of um rebates that have been uh approved at the state level and then estimating some growth, we are anticipating that we would issue 930 rebates, property tax and rent rebates combined and it would be a combined co cost of
030$257,750 for the district. This um property tax rent rebate has been included in the proposed budget as of today. Now moving into the proposed expenditures. The current 202526 proposed budget contains a number of new educational and student centered positions. As for the teachers, there is an additional one elementary life skills position, one elementary autistic support position, one elementary emotional support position, one high school autistic support position, 2.5 learning support positions that would be utilized um throughout the district, a.5 EL, one speech, two and a half elementary counselors, one financial literacy to meet the um new state guideline, and then we would build in the capac capacity for um two full day kindergarten positions. The 202526 proposed budget also includes an hourly increase for support staff of $1 per hour. The 202526 proposed expenditures by major
031function. For regular education, it is a budget of 69,232,927. For special education, it's a budgeted amount of $25,992,220. For vocational education, it's a budgeted amount of $2,120,269. Other instructional programs would be $233,73. Our prek program would be $576,316. Support services would be $42,781,844. Our co-curricular would be 2,289,716. And our debt and other expenditures would be 7,377,652 for total proposed expenditures of 150,64,17. This is a 5.79 million increase over the prior year over this current year. Um this expenditure again is supported by a 3% real estate tax increase which provides an approximate increase in revenue of 2.6 6 million and the remainder would come from the increase in state funding and fund balance. The proposed expenditures broken down by the object type, the type of expenditure it is. 40% of our budget is personnel salaries for
032a total of 59,573,88. Our benefits which include health care um employer taxes um and retirement is $41,582,350 or 28% of our budget. Contracted services which again would include Kelly services crest and our other contracted positions is $15,187,143 or 10% of our budget. Our purchased property services would be 1% of our budget 1,111,422. Our other purchase services, which does include over $5 million of charter school tuition cost, is 11% of our budget for $17,112,088. Supplies are about 4% of our budget at $6,763,046. property or replacement equipment is about 1% of our budget,1,772,478. And then our debt service dues and fees is approximately 5% of our budget at 7,51,682. As far as how does our proposed budget impact our fund balance, looking at our current year and then projecting out for 2025 and 26, our fund balance
033at June 30th, 2024 was a total of 29,150,590, of which $141,776 is deemed nonspendable. that is deemed non-spendable based upon um the accounting rules for things like prepaid expenses and property things you haven't spent yet but you've accumulated on your balance sheet. The there's a $4.1 million that has been committed and $14 million that's been assigned for current or future budgetary needs. And then your unassigned fund balance is $10,98,814. um under school code of for a budget our size, we cannot have more than 8% of f of fund balance of our budgeted expenditures in our unassigned fund balance. So if we look to our projected fund balance as of for June 30th, 2025, we are projecting 27,874,824. So we have projected in our 2425 budget that there may be a small use of fund balance
034which would drop our assigned fund balance down to 12 million 12,724,234. So again utilizing those funds that have been committed and assigned in prior years to meet our current and future budgetary needs. Um, looking out to a projected fund balance at June 30th, 2026, we would be looking at a fun ending fund balance of 26,22,338, which would be um decreasing our assigned fund balance to 10,871,748. So utilizing fund balance but still maintaining um 8% within at least 8 no more than 8% in our unassigned um and trying to build in the capacity for future programs um by using some of that fund balance and some of those increases that we've seen on the state revenue side. The 2025-26 um next steps for the budget that we would be proposing would be on April 22nd to
035adopt the 202526 proposed general fund budget and then on May 27th adopt the 2025-26 final general fund budget. This is one month earlier than we would normally um adopt the final general fund budget, but with the number of positions that we need to fill from a teaching position um and the number of vacancies that we need to advertise and um fill, we would be requesting that we move up the adoption so that we have the time to secure um the necessary staff for that 202526 school year. We will not know, you know, by May 27th what the state budget will look like. um we very likely by June 30th wouldn't know what the state budget is going to look like. Um so proposed if we don't receive the increase that we're projecting in the state
036funding that would just be you know utilizing more fund balance or decreasing you know spending in other areas to meet that. And that is the 202526 proposed budget as it sits today. questions for Mrs. Denol. Yeah. Um, on our bonds, how much do we owe on the bonds and our loans? So, our debt service is just over 7 million each year. Just under 7 million each year. Um, let me get the total. I don't want to misquote. I can take other questions in the meantime. I can fill a little bit of the the void um while Mr. Dico finds that that response. I think you see here a couple of the the major cost drivers. Um, you know, there's, you know, we're our, um, piecers is still a cost driver. Um, we're we're at a
037point right now where our uh cyber charter costs are a a significant cost cost driver to us and we're working on some plans of how we might be able to investigate that from a residency um position a little bit better um to work on on some of those reimbursements as a possibility. Um right now at the state level we did take as superintendent and as directors did take a uh meeting this morning um from from some of our state organizations um the realistic timeline on a budget as Mrs. Denola stated is probably not going to happen in in the end of this fiscal year. Um we'd be fortunate if we we uh see something settled by July um but we're not necessarily confident in that at at all. you can see where the basic education
038funding right now um is it's it's underfunded and our special education across the state is really underfunded. They there are real um drivers of of of underfunding right now where they're really calling on local revenues to um to assist in that. And that's a struggle and it's and it's a messaging that the uh organizations across the state are trying to really announce with legislators to to fill that gap. Um it's certainly not just a struggle here with many of those cost drivers that I just mentioned, but um with many other districts here in the county and across the state likewise. Uh Mr. Upgrow, to answer your question, we have a principal balance of roughly $81 million. Um the net principal and interest cost after our state reimbursement is about 101 million. Is that for our
039bonds and our our loan? That's all of our bonds and debt that are outstanding. But does that conclude the loans loans? Yep. All right. Thank you. Any other questions regarding the budget from Mr. Denola? Again, the the the the recommendation from administration um would be to uh bring a proposed uh motion proposed final budget motion forward at our next legislative meeting at the end of April. um requirements mandate that the the um the budget sit for 30 days for public view. And we would uh we've calculated those days to where if it were an affirmative vote um approving a proposed final budget and it went on review for 30 days, uh we could move forward with a final vote of a budget at the legislative uh meeting in at the end of May. And again,
040as Mrs. Dident Nicole mentioned um if the board were to move forward with the recommended budget, it would afford the administration opportunity to to get out in front of many other districts um as uh there are many positions and it is a supply demand market right now when it comes to um hiring teachers and many other support. Mrs. Dur, what are student centered positions? So they are would be teaching positions. So we really want to show that we're focused really on, you know, addressing student needs and really providing the resources that students um require. Um we've, you know, seen a number of things over the years develop where we need more supports. So this really goes to the root of what we're seeing um to get those positions uh to support the students. Okay. How
041many of those are we going to be get or is that the eight you're talking about before? The 13.5 positions would be what would be built into this budget. And you say a dollar increase for support staff. Who's that all include? So support staff includes all of our custodians, all of our administrative assistants. Um it includes food service. So I thought they were on their own. Well, they are support they are supported by their own budget, the food service budget, but it would also include them with a dollar an hour increase that would be included in the food service budget. So, we decide that it would be decided at the district as a whole. If the board approves that the support staff receives a dollar an hour increase, the food service fund would follow that.
042Thank you. You're welcome. Um, just one other note, passing the proposed um, general fund budget on April 22nd. Should that pass, we still have the opportunity to make any changes um, in the revenues or expenditures prior to that final budget adoption on May 27th. And Mrs. Dennico, we plan to come back with an update in May um, with regard to Homestead Farmstead. Correct. Correct. Correct. [Music] One other thing I see in here, um, full day kindergarten. When did we discuss that or what? I don't understand how things go from maybe we should have this to now it's on the budget. Again, this is just a recommended budget to you. You're going to hear in the next in the next few minutes, you're going to hear a presentation with regard to the information and investigation of
043all day kindergarten. We are going to ask for the board after um hearing that presentation to uh and recommending for a motion as to whether or not we are to continue with the planning of an all day kindergarten. what we've established inside of the recommended 2526 budget are two all day kindergarten positions um to build into the the millillage of those build the millillage into the budget. However, if it is not an affirmative to move forward with all day kindergarten planning, we would remove those and not and not have a necessary need to include those in there in building the millillage. We're not looking to hire those immediately. We know this is a time frame that of all day kindergarten. It would probably take a couple of years to establish. But isn't this kind of
044backwards? We're talking about financing before we even discuss having it. We haven't had any discussions. You're going well, you have. You've had a a presentation already and you're hearing a second one in the next 10 minutes. You're going to have a couple of weeks to think about whether or not you want to move forward with an affirmative on the administration continuing the planning of all day kindergarten and consider whether or not you would include that into the budget for this year. We can't, we're trying to be prudent with how we establish our programs and services. Um, taking on nearly 10 kindergarten positions if you were to recommend moving forward uh with all day kindergarten um is is really not feasible in one given budget cycle. So, we're trying to think about planning a financial plan
045while we establish the types of programs that the board so desires. So you would be doing this we're building millillage into the budget in order to establish the the the the resources necessary to over the course of what we estimate would be 2 to three years of building in an all day kindergarten program. So, in the next year's budget, if you were to or excuse me, into the 26 27, if you were to move with an affirmative um of establishing an all day kindergarten program, we would move forward with those two positions into the 2526 budget and we would move forward with additional positions in the following year's budget. We know, but we're not necessarily confident that we would be able to provide the all day kindergarten. We'd probably need one more budget cycle to
046then establish the millage necessary to have all of the the positions ready to be able to deliver them in in and open that in a given year. Start with two classes. No. No. Correct. Yeah. Okay. So, if I'm understanding that right, you're putting it in the budget, but we're not using them. So, where are you going to put that money? The money would go to less usage of fund balance, but it starts to build the you start to build the millillage to support those positions because we're limited from an act one standpoint how much we can increase taxes or how much we want to increase taxes. We couldn't u make have the board have a decision to say we would like full day kindergarten. That's going to require 10 positions in any one year. We
047wouldn't have the revenue sources to support that. So you slowly start to build that millig in to support those positions at the point you retire you would hire them. But we're close to being to our 12 million in that budget which is what we're only allowed to have. We could we would commit that for future for full day kindergarten in the future which we could do else. Um at this time I'd just like to recap the proposed property tax and rent rebate. Um we would work with uh Mr. Sultanic's office to create a resolution should the board so choose um to accept the 202526 proposed property tax rent rebate which would follow the state um guidelines as far as eligibility and then based upon the income um thresholds provide a rebate amount of up to
048$250 down to $100 at the highest income level up to $46,250 for eligible um property owners or renters. Um if the board is comfortable with that, we can work to um have Mr.'s office create a resolution. This resolution would be for one year only and then each year thereafter, the board would um have to make a decision whether they want to continue the property tax and rent rebate program and whether or not they would like to see any changes in it um in future years. So if we have like a nod affirmative that everybody's comfortable, show of hands. I wish it was more. Um the you know the beauty of an annual resolution, it's something that can be um analyzed every year. Um and should the district budget be able to support it, a recommendation
049could be made to increase that property tax rebate. Any other questions for Mrs. Denola? So, the plan would be um to bring forward a proposed um final budget at our April 22nd legislation uh legislative meeting for a vote as well as a separate resolution um for a vote in regards to the property tax rental rebate. Okay. One question. I'm sorry. Where would the uh when I'm looking at the general fund budget uh fund balance, where would the $15 million come out of for the Berton Elementary for all the repairs? Capital project that would come out of the capital project funds. That was that's just the general fund budget that you see. Okay. So, how much is in the capital projects fund? Um we can present that at the um May committee of the whole meeting
050when we um bring back um before we vote on this before. Well, the capital projects fund has nothing to do with the general fund budget. That's a completely separate fund, right? But we will know what all the money is in there then. We don't know tonight how much it is in there. Well, it has been released to the board at each in the weekly and it was um at the last board meeting. I can pull it up. I can miss D. I can pull that together and email the board with that. Okay. I just want to make sure that we have enough money to pay all this and where it's coming from because it gets confusing. It's like playing checkers. Thank you. All right, that takes us down to item D. And again, we're sw
051shifting gears a little bit here. Um and uh we do have um Mr. Jamie Lynch from CHAD Dwey. Um we wanted Mr. Lynch to come and present and just give a recap again of the Boyertown Elementary School. Um it's both its HVAC and roof projects as we um are recommending an agreement um to enter into between the district and the and um CHA duty with regard to the professional services for this uh anticipated project. So Mr. Lynch, welcome. Good evening. Thank you very much for uh inviting us this evening. Chris Holler from our office is with me who's been working with me on preparing your mic just better check. Thank you very much. Uh good to be with you and as I said uh Mr. Chris Holler's with me who's been working uh together with
052us on the projects. Um I have a slide deck here uh that uh you have seen in past presentations. So uh I don't want to um go through death by PowerPoint but uh I'll go through this quickly and you can of course stop me with any questions. This is the controller I would use. Okay. And is that forward? There's forward. Um so based on the study we had uh completed with our team I think we came to the uh conclusion with you that VRF with DOAZ natural gas heat would be uh the preferred system similar to what you have in other buildings for the elementary school. Um, we went ahead and took a look at the big box spaces in the elementary school in order to include them in the project and an upgraded building
053management system to replace the aging pneumatic system that's in the building. And then we also talked about the switch gear and the emergency generator. Uh, one which is very old, that being the switch gear, the other which is not code compliant, which is the emergency generator that would be replaced as a part of the project. And we put that together in an updated package for you. There again is the uh ancient uh electrical switchboard, the interior generator that wants to be upsized so that you have more of the life safety systems for the building on it. That'll be upsized and probably sit outside of the building in the finished um scenario. Uh we shared with you HVAC system chart that identified the benefits of each of the systems that we took a look at. Uh
054we also took a look at the roof options. The roof would be replaced as a part of the project and combined with the project as some of the equipment for HVAC is on the roof. And we were looking at an EPDM roof where we can also bid an alternate for a TPO roof which is similar as far as a single membrane product um for the roof. And we've included for now the Mansard roofs. Those are the metal roofs that you see on Boertown Elementary, but they are in relatively good shape. I would hope not to have to replace them because as you saw on the chart, they're al they're awfully expensive. I think that they're in good shape and hopefully we don't have to touch them as a part of the project. But we've included
055them in the total project budget. Uh the total project budget was distributed and I know we can't read it on the screen here this evening. We were talking about an all-in cost on that budget of just over $15 million. This was all broken down, hard cost, soft cost, has the roof in it, has the generator in it, the big box spaces, and the switch gear. Um provided a timeline. This is a little bit more of a detailed timeline for the project, but if you recall, we would perform the design during this year of 2025 with the idea of publicly bidding all of this work. So that we would do it in essentially two phases, which are two summers when the school is unoccupied. So the summer of 2026 and the summer of 2027. And the
056trick here is to finish the design in a timely manner so that we can get out for public bidding as quickly as possible, providing the contractors the ability to procure the equipment in time for next summer. And with any project of this type, we like to get out on the street as quickly as we can so the best contractors that haven't filled their books for the next two years are ready, willing, and able to be attracted to Bertown's project. So this timeline really remains uh the same. Uh design would start here upon authorization and we would look to try to get this out on the street for public bidding uh late in the year so that we have a good period of time for procurement before next summer's work. Um the board also asked me
057to put an organizational chart together that identifies exactly how we would do this and how you would manage this and ultimately stay in control of the project. And so I provided that. Um our team would be reporting up through uh Scott and Dr. David Heiser directly to you and also to your business manager on all items related to the design. My team is listed uh there with our designers who are doing mechanical and electrical design and also a resident project engineer who would be on site during construction to monitor the work of the contractors. I expanded this a little bit for our discussion this evening just to identify the difference between the design phase and the construction phase. There you have Scott and myself and Chris and our resident project engineer who are working for
058you to put the design together. Once it's complete, we would go out for a competitive public bid in accordance with Pennsylvania state statutes for a roofing contractor, an electrical contractor, a mechanical contractor. On the left, you see that we're needing to be compliant with Boyertown's municipal code, and they have a responsibility to review the design and issue a building permit for this project. So, we're going to be complying with their requirements. We'll be overseeing the contractors in the field, but the way that we like to provide third-party testing is to hire a third-party testing and balancing agent who would work directly for you and do water and air balance testing for the contractor rather than have the contractor do that testing himself. And so, you have another third party working for you. So, three contractors
059overseen by our resident project engineer, also subject to the inspections of the municipal code inspectors and with a third party who works for you that does the certification testing on the system. That's how we would deliver uh the work when it comes to construction. Just also wanted to provide you with a couple of examples of projects that were similar that have been completed in the exact same fashion in neighboring districts. Um Tracy Elementary School was a successful project in the East School District. Uh very similar. We replaced unit ventilators with ducted VAV in that case. Um new interior and exterior lighting, central heating plant, new building management system. This is a project that took roughly 9 months uh to complete. In the Bethlehem school district, we've done this in a number of uh existing schools,
060elementary schools. Calypso and Farmersville are most recent. Again, very similar, replacing unit ventilators with new ducted VAV, new air handlers, uh chillers, boilers. It all depends on uh the age of the facility. Uh another uh the Farmersville is the most recent one, a rather small elementary school completed over a summer. Um in Northampton School District, two elementary schools, one that's underway uh now were completed. Um these are ones that Chris Holler has been taking care of, so he's got experience in this realm uh as well. Uh out in Reading, we're replacing HVAC in Reading High School, if you're familiar. It's one of the largest high schools uh in the state. Um this is a 4-year constant project and we're replacing five classrooms at a time on night shift. Um so you can imagine in an
061occupied school um the thrill of doing that project frankly uh very heavy summer work uh as a result as well. Um Bucks Technical School is a large high school down in Bucks County. Um, it's over 400,000 square feet, not 350, but we've replaced a good share of the rooftop HVAC units. We replaced the entire roof. We replaced the fire alarm and building security system and multiple other systems were replaced. These were done in three summers in 2022, 23 um, and 24. So, um, all projects that are very similar, um, to what you're considering. Um, with that brief presentation, I know that you might have questions. We've worked with Mr. Sultanic's office on, uh, our proposal, the subsequent agreement. Um, Jen Hanland's asked a lot of good questions and tried to incorporate a lot of the
062components that I believe that you've looked for in the past so that you have the necessary controls. and I'm here to let you know that we're ready, willing, and able to both answer questions and get started um with your direction. Thank you. Questions? Yes, sir. Uh your heat your heat pumps u do you have a backup for them when it really gets cold? Do you have a backup? So, it's a VR uh F system very similar to what you have in the other elementary school. And so it's going to be a system that's uh absolutely capable of taking care of your heating requirements. Um as in other buildings, there's not necessarily a backup system that would be prescribed for a building. It's got all the capa capacity and horsepower it would need in order to
063heat the school even during cold months and cold months. As far as temperature- wise, well certainly we know what the temperatures can be in this neck of the woods. We have single digits and below. So certainly not below. 20 below, we're in big trouble. Well, single digits and below is what I identified. Uh and so certainly um you know these systems have been installed in the in the buildings that I identified and others. And so we feel we do feel confident. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. You said you're going to be hiring a third party HVAC testing company. Yes. Wouldn't it be better for us to hire them? If you hire them, they're working for you, not us. Uh, that's a very good question and maybe I misspoke, but what we would
064do is prepare the RFP for that company on your behalf so that you could solicit proposals and they would be under direct contract with the district, not with us. Okay. So, we would manage them on your behalf. That's a very good question. Okay. So, you feel this is necessary though? Uh we prefer uh have you ever heard the term fox watching the hen house? Oh yeah. If I get uh a third-party testing firm that can validate the work of the contractors and certify that for you rather than having the contractor do that himself, I think it's a greater protection for the district. If I'm hiring a contractor and he says he's going to do it, he better well do it. He better well do it. But it's always good to have somebody watching and make
065sure that he does. And you said you were going to have a project engineer. Now that's from your company. Yes. So Mike Hartney, who's proposed for this, is actually a master electrician. And so that's always a nice thing to have on a job site when you're doing electrical work. And he would oversee the work of the contractors. Has done this on numerous projects in his 20 year career. Um so we feel very confident that he would be a great asset for you in driving the contractors as far as what they need to do. Is that um the same thing as a clerk of the works essentially? Yes. So you don't feel we should have our own for that? Uh that would be the representation that we're providing for you on your behalf? We will always
066report to you. We will give you regular updates. As I've said before, I'll be at your board meetings in order to tell you what's happening on the on the projects. We always work for you and for your best interest. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Okay. I'm very concerned about that because anytime we've had somebody work for you guys, nothing against Mr. Sheiel, but he does not have the qualifications to do this. All you're going to do is he's going to basically he's working for you. you're going to tell him you need to do something else and he's going to go to Mr. Sheiel and Mr. Sheil's going to come to us and say you need to approve this. They need more things. So we have nobody looking out for our best interest, our
067best interest. Uh I'll be doing that and he won't be coming and coming to this meeting. I'd be the one that would be recommending anything associated with the project and we'll carry you through each of the details every step of the way in order to execute So, um, again, done it on numerous and dozens of projects in in the past. Um, and I have every confidence that we'd be able to guide you in the right direction. I have not saying you're going to do anything, but I think we need somebody to look out specifically just for us, not for you guys, because you're going to be looking out for yourselves first, not us. Sorry. That's how I feel. I appreciate your opinion. Yes. Was there a uh in any of the projects that you showed
068us up here that were just completed, was there a a project manager from the school as what Miss Nyman is suggesting on any of those or was it all done as you're suggesting? All of those projects have been done uh really the exact same way. There's a facilities team or facilities director at Northampton, at um Bethlehem, in Easton, in Bucks. we have always worked directly for that individual and ultimately for uh the board. In a couple of those um instances, we're the the district retainer engineer. And so we're doing multiple projects at the same time, but all of them have a facilities director that we report to and ultimately superintendent, business manager, and you the board that we report to. Yes. Okay. So, who's writing who's writing the testing plan? and the acceptance criteria. So
069as the design engineer, we specify what the requirements are. So for instance, for water and air balancing, if there's um x number of CFMs required in order to provide the space, whether it's supply air or exhaust, we provide that specification. The contractor provides a shop drawing submitt that we review and approve that demonstrates that his manufacturer is going to comply with that. That then goes to the testing and balancing third-party agent who is performing the testing and balancing and he does the airflow test, reports back to us and you since he works for you. The report goes to you, right? And then we look at it together and agree. Okay. Right. Scott, have you ever done any air balancing? So, you're you're you're you're aware of what you need to do and how you I
070had a balancing company. How Okay. How you do the results and you can review the results and and and approve them. When they come through, there's a there's a specified range you have to be in as long as you're within the range. It's within that range. Um I mean I So you can analyze them. So that so that would be that would go back to what does you I'm assuming you have an HVAC engineer also correct? Yes. They will be review also reviewing those. Correct. Yes. And getting with Scott to go over those results. Yes. So there's a couple of steps as far as quality control. Yes. Right. Um and so you'd bring a manufacturers's rep in and they're to certify their equipment and do the prescribed tests. So for instance on a VRF system
071there's a pressure test for the res the refrigerant line that needs to be completed. So we Mike our resident project engineer would be present when that test is done. It would be recorded again the results would be given to you. They'd be in the file. All of those tests that the manufacturer does would be in our presence. Then there's owner training. So Scott and his team would come in. We would videotape the owner training. So, you're learning about the controls, the refrigerant um distribution device, the cassettes, how to maintain them, how to change filters in them, how to clear the condensate pans in them, right? And then there's the third party balancer, and he's confirming that the air flows are correct. So, all of that information goes on file is and is a record for
072you as far as the success of the project. So, so all all all manuals and schematics are transferred to us at the completion of the project. You own everything. You own our drawings. You own our files. They reside with you. Electronic copies are provided uh to you. You've got copies of all of the approved submittals and a very good recordkeeping program as far as the things that happened on the project. Okay. in your your WBS, you you when you're you're going to provide us with a detailed daily schedule or how how do you do your how do you do your scheduling? Great question. So, uh we require the prime contractor, if you will, which is going to be the mechanical contractor because he's got the lion share of the work to provide the job site
073schedule and he would be the coordinator of the other two primes. So he's coordinating. For instance, the roof area is being covered. A new roof is putting being put on, but there's a new roof curb that needs to go on. It needs to be cut. The unit needs to be set. Then it needs to be flashed. What's the schedule for doing that? The electrician, when is his, you know, the big issue is is replacing that switch gear. The question is how long is it going to take to get right? So he's putting a schedule together that says I can replace X number of unit vents until I need a power requirement. that switch gear is probably going to come in the second summer and be installed. And the same with replacing the emergency generator. So,
074he sets that schedule. He coordinates with those primes. Our representative runs over top of that and asks questions every day. What's happening? Why is it happening? He updates the schedule on a it's really going to be a a weekly schedule update because there's eight weeks in the summer, right? I I'm not going to go for a month and find out there's an issue. We have to track it every single day. So, there's got to be a a regular schedule update that says where are we? And we'll also put together a phasing plan for the job. Where should we start? Right? There's easy ones. There might be harder ones. What's happening with a summer program if any in the building? Hopefully, there isn't, but if there needs to be, can we work around that? And then
075ultimately, when that switch is replaced and the generator is replaced, power has to go down in the building. When will that happen and how will it happen? Where does the gear get placed so that we can place the gear conduit and wire to the gear and minimize the shutdown so we could do it over a weekend as opposed to taking the school down for an excessive period of time. The last thing we want is no air movement in the building in the middle of summer when there's humidity because something happens when that happens. Right. Well, a couple things that are important to us. First, you're you want you're going to have your procurement plan in place so you'll be on top of that. Yes sir. Secondly is is the scheduled dates of beginning and end
076are very important to us. So therefore I would I would think you'll have a risk matrix and recovery plan. Certain things like weather, you know, you lose two or three days from weather. Uh how are you going to recover from that and you know how your mitigation everything else you're going to do with that? I expect we would see something along that line. Yes. Uh so that's important on the roof side with HVAC and electrical. I better not lose days for weather because we're inside. The roofer does have to plan for inclement weather. And so there's a weatherbased schedule that he puts together and our spec specifically says include weather days in your schedule. Now if it rains for the entire month of July, there's not a lot that I can do, you know, about
077that. But this is also a roof that can be replaced in one summer, right? I don't need both summers for the roof. I just need to figure out my game plan for how I'm going to add the HVAC equipment to a roof that's been done. And the big tiein there is your roof manufacturer needs to come in at the end, certify the roof, and provide you with that 20 and hopefully 30-year warranty. I'm just concerned our our end date most likely won't be able to move. and you're risk and we can't we have to make sure we have that in mind and make sure it doesn't get to a point where we have to have the discussion at the end of it on why we're moving our end date or how we're going to get
078around not moving our end date. Uh absolutely. And listen, I do not want to ask Dr. David Heiser to ask for the first two weeks to be virtual education. I uh concur completely with you as far as risk management. And you also mentioned recovery. I didn't I failed to answer that. Our schedule specification says the moment that it appears to us and to you that the con that the schedule is behind a written recovery schedule has to be provided. And so whether it's a roof, an HVAC or an electrical, those are the three things where the minute we sniff something that has gone ary, we're on the contractor and say, "Look, you got to come in. You have to have a meeting with us. We're going to grab we're going to grab Scott. we're going
079to grab the team and let's assess what we need to do. The other thing we do is if overtime is necessary, especially in the summer, they got to work it. If weekends are necessary in the summer, they got to work it. And how's the fee schedule work? Are we going on a milestone fees? Are we going on uh course schedule cost loaded or what what is how how are you going to collect the fees? This is all front. I don't Just wondering how you're going to do that. It's not front. I promise. Okay. Um I have to say that absolutely. Um so the way that we do that is payments uh as you're accustomed to are done on a monthly basis and and right out of the gate we ask for a schedule of values
080from each contractor. So they have to break the project down into labor, materials, and equipment. And so we pay for materials when they arrive or they're stored suitably and insured. We pay for labor when it occurs and obviously equipment is if there's a lull on the job, we're doing that. So, at the end of each month, the contractor submits to us a pencil copy of what he'd like to get paid. We review it because it's broken down into each section of the job and we can assess, are they done? Are they not done? 10% is held of every payment in retainage. It's not released until the end of the job. And we're not frontend loading the schedule. We're not paying for um things before they happen. It's essentially an earned value schedule of values, right?
081So, we're only paying for the work that is complete at at that time. And then we share that with Scott with anyone who wants to take a look at the payments. Um, and you know, in each summer, there's going to be one that's probably at the end of June, July, August, there's probably another one in September. And then if Yeah. And if there's a need, you know, for us to come in and do some work, as it always ends up, where they have to do night work for some reason, even during the school year, to clean things up, or as I like to look at it, I'd love to get in in May and get things ready at night, and do something that might give us an advantage. I want to hedge our bet to
082make sure that that completion date is met. Great. If we can come in at night, if we have permission of the school leadership and Scott and you, we'd love to figure out a way to faster, better, more, right? So, so you've built that into your contingencies also then, correct? Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. So, basically, you're our contractor. You're covering Bortown's back. None of your people are going to be putting a hammer or a nail or you're charging us for any of your people to do any work. Correct. Correct. Look at these hands. They're they're very soft. You know, we are not hammer and nail. I'm not putting the roof on. We're overseeing the work. We're your design professional. And I'm sorry. That's a very um but you know like Mike Hartney
083who would be in the field. He was a master electrician. Um, you know the name Alberell Electric from the Bethlehem area, worked there for 20 years before he came to us. So, he knows when it comes to electrical, when it comes to HVAC, when it comes to building construction, right? He comes on the job, he has immediate credibility because he understands what these contractors have to do and he's driving them in the direction that is in your best interest. Get it done. Get it tested. Get it done right. keep the site clean, keep the thing orderly, and report to us regularly because we can only help the contractor that comes into our house, your house, in order to try to succeed. Do you plan on having a site safety director or site safety individual? So,
084in uh in Pennsylvania, site safety is always relegated to the contractors. And the way that we manage that is we ask the contractors to provide you a copy of their site safety plan. The other thing that we do is write into the specifications a district safety plan for what it expects of its contractors. And so they have to comply with that safety plan. And under OSHA guidelines, each of these contractors has a safety officer. So on the roof, as soon as they get on the roof and they want to start replacing it, I should see flags around the perimeter of the roof, they should be set up. If we're doing work and we've taken the fire alarm down in order to do HVAC work in the summer, there should be an adequate fire watch set
085up by the contractors in order to do the work. So that's what we would look for. You'll be overseeing that, correct? We'll be monitoring their performance. Yeah, you'll be It won't be up to Scott to be monitoring it. I'm not asking Scott to take care of safety and prevent things from happening on the job site. No, when you said it's up to the contractors, I just want to make sure that even though it's up to the contractors, it's still re really up to you. Like you're still going to you still have some responsibility to make sure that's happening. Yeah. When when we see things again, you have someone who's been in the trades who's watching over also our experience on these other jobs. Um guys, contractors, you have to perform well. Also, if there are
086kids on campus, if there are kids around the school, if they want to get that leg up on the work, the first order of business is everybody who walks on this site gets their clearances done so they can be on a construction site on which there might be school children. So, that's the first part of job site safety. Basically, all bids that come in for each individual part would be you, Scott, Dr. David Heiser, Mrs. Danakola, and the board. So, we'd be making the final decisions basically on your recommendations who to go with. Yes, sir. Okay. Um, with the upcoming tariffs coming in, are you thinking about where your equipment's coming from? Always thinking about what the lead times are on equipment. And yes, the tariffs are always uh a concern. Um especially, how do
087I say this, in the manner in which they're being rolled out. Um uh we've all been through the um experience of COVID, which was something that really drove um the availability of product down and costs up. Um we're in the early phases of whatever this tariff process is um and where it's coming from. To date, we've bid projects in the past 3 months. We're in construction on a number of projects. We are not hearing of the delays yet. So this is another uh reason why the timeline for the project is important that we complete the design get it out to bid as early as we can give the contractors the ability to go and procure the requ the required equipment. The other thing is that's something that we take seriously with respect to what we're
088specifying. I don't want to specify something that is for some reason going to take 18 months to get from an HVAC standpoint. A lot of the equipment for VRF is fortunately very readily available. Um so I think it is a reasonable expectation that we can get everything we need. Electrical switch gear right now and generators you you may know that that's been a problem for the past two years even more back to CO is how quickly we can get electrical equipment. And so now we plan for that. Um, and we know that we have to allow probably a year for that switch year to get here. So if we can order it and get contracts and shop drawings by the early portion of 2026 to have it for the summer of 2027 and install. That
089seems to me like a solid period of time that we should be able to get the gear for you. I hope that answers your question. I'm not too keen on what the financial implications are of the various tariffs of that are that are being proposed and how they're being implemented. It's just matters where your stuff come. Yep. Various is the is the question. The other thing is in order to promote competition, we have to allow multiple manufacturers in the spec. So we find out after bids are received who the equipment is based on for the bid and so then we learn about that. So in advance for the manufacturers and the vendors of the big equipment that's in the bid, we do a little bit of homework to find out if it's readily available and
090we'll advise you as we get close to bid what we hear and any changes with respect to the impacts that you're speaking of. Yes. I just want to make sure if we want run our equipment at 70 degrees that we're going to get 70 degrees and we're not going to have a problem with them not coming up to 70 or down to 70. Wow. How do I answer that question? I don't know. You're selling the equipment, not me. I'm not selling the equipment, but I am selling the engineering design. Yes, you're right. So um one of the first criteria that we look at when we work in the design phase is to identify the set point temperatures that are desired for the school in its occupied and also unoccupied condition. So, I don't know what
091that is for you. And summer and winter are different, right? In summer, do we want it cooler? In winter, do we want it warmer? So, first we set that up. Then we figure in the design that we have, we're working with an old older building. And we've talked about this before with respect to the windows and the exterior envelope. On your does that include any insulation? We're adding insulation to the roof. There's no doubt. No new windows, no new walls. Well, it's not going to go right out again, but you have to size the system for the building that you have. And it wouldn't be cost effective to start replacing walls and windows associated with the project. Um, just because we need a new HVAC system for comfort and electrical system doesn't mean that the
092the bones of the building also have to be replaced. Most school districts would not find it financially feasible in order to renovate the whole building of that of that type. After all, you have other facilities in the district that I know that you want to attend to in the future. So, we have to be somewhat responsible. But back to your back to your point, that's exactly why we're hiring a third party to do HVAC testing and balancing, why we're having the manufacturers's rep come in and demonstrate for us and ultimately for you that they can meet the requirements of the specification and build in contingency in the system so that it is robust on the coldest days as mentioned earlier and that you know some of the toughest days in order to to provide good
093temperature are actually shoulder season days when you might have high humidity in October and in late April. So that's what the system has to take care of as well. So I'm respect. Yes, ma'am. Any further any further questions or comments from the board? I want to thank Mr. Lynch for your presentation and in your uh responses to the questions from the board. And just a reminder to the board that we will have um this recommended agreement brought forward in a motion at our April 22nd meeting um for your consideration. Thank you very much. Appreciate all of the questions and comments. They're all very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, that takes us down to our next presentation under item E, all day kindergarten. As we had mentioned, and as the board's well aware,
094there has been an exploratory team commissioned by Mr. Stoutton and uh assisted by Mrs. Landis to uh consider the planning for full day kindergarten and they are here to report back on uh a second report back on those and conclude those findings. So, Mr. out. Mrs. Landis, thank you Dr. David Heiser. Uh we are uh pleased to present this information to you tonight. Um it'll be myself and Mrs. Landis uh presenting the information that has been compiled over the past uh 3 to four months. So we are going to share with you uh the specifics of the planning process that have taken place. We had numerous meetings along the way and um I want to reiterate or say right up front that uh we tasked this committee with not coming up with a recommendation for
095all day K. We t this uh committee with coming up with the data to give the background information to consider all day K as a as a viable opportunity here within the boyary school district. I will say after numerous committee meetings it was pretty evident that there seemed to be um a pretty resounding uh look for all dayk in our district but um that was not the goal of what we set out to do. So um our four identified goals were to collaboratively explore the implementation of a full day kindergarten program to identify key considerations for a successful transition identify key consider considerations for a successful transition which was a second step specifically focus on staffing space schedules and supplies. I call that the four S's of all day K. And then finally our next
096steps the meeting dates. This started actually back in January and I think we had a weather weather delay in one of our um days. So our first committee meeting was actually February 5th and then we met again on February 20th. Those committee meetings um were consisted of a team that uh Mrs. Landis is going to share with you shortly. And then we met again on March 5th with uh our committee uh with um the kindergarten teachers, the reading all kindergarten teachers within the district, the reading specialists within the district and the intervention teachers within the district. So that was um our final kind of large group committee meeting and then we compiled the committee together one last time on March 20th to go over our results and work on the presentation that we knew our
097goal was for this board meeting uh to be presented. Whoops. Whoops. Sorry about that. For the three meetings of the committee that uh Mr. Stout had mentioned. You can see here a list of those who participated in that. So we had representation from central office um including Mrs. Danakola as the chief financial officer and Mr. Han as the chief human resources officer in addition to Mr. Stout and myself. Um we also had Dr. Horton who's here this evening our director of pupil services and Mrs. Bartman our director of special education who's here tonight as well. Um Mr. Sheil, our director of facil facilities was a part of that um because as we explored those different areas of of space, we wanted to definitely have his input. Um we also included stakeholders such as Mrs. Clinton
098from food service. Um Mrs. Shade from our stu who is our student data coordinator. Um Chris Quigley from from Quigley buses was there to discuss transportation and the impact of that. Um and then we had several teacher representatives. Um, we had every building, every elementary school building was represented by someone. So, we had two principles from two of our elementary schools. Then we had some kindergarten teachers, um, a reading specialist and a special area teacher as well because those areas are would be impacted by a potential increase in um, classes that they would be seeing with having full day kindergarten if that were to come about. um our curriculum supervisors were also part of the committee as well as our elementary uh special education supervisor. And then as Mr. Stout said, we had those three
099that one particular meeting where we took from what we had discussed at the three smaller meetings and spoke with all of our kindergarten teachers as well as our reading specialists and intervention teachers. And you'll see a little later on some survey data that we collected from all of them as well so that everyone's input and voices were heard. Um when we had our first meeting, the one of the first things that we did was set the stage and look at some different articles. Um these articles had been provided to you in the past as some different resources for you to take a look at as well. We found that the NEA article on full day kindergarten helping to close achievement gaps was a really good one. So we looked at that one in depth. Um
100but then this additional resource piece has a list of a whole bunch of different articles about full day kindergarten. One of the things that we found interesting as we explored those articles was that really almost all of them were at least 10 years old. And typically you want to look at, you know, really current data when you're looking at research and information. But what we discovered was um a lot of districts have been doing full day kindergarten for quite a while. Um we'll talk to you in just a moment about what some of the the local data shows us about full day versus half day kindergarten in our geographic area, but um there there are a lot of districts around Pennsylvania and around the country that have been doing full day kindergarten for quite a
101while, which is why the data um and the research is a little bit dated in that particular area. Um, one of the other things that we did in that first meeting was some brainstorming about the advantages of full day kindergarten. So, we looked at both the benefits and the challenges when we met with that smaller group and then also discussed it again when we had that larger group with all of the kindergarten teachers present. So, we kind of broke it down into a couple different areas as we looked at benefits. We talked about academics, social, emotional, um, impact on parents and family, and then what kind of schoolwide advantages are there for full day kindergarten, and we recorded the group's ideas, and there's a link to that document as well. So, as we looked at
102that and we broke that down into those different those four different categories, um, we took a look at those. I'm not going to read all of them to you right now, but certainly that instructional time piece was something that we discussed. But one thing that was really key that all of us talked about that was really important to our kindergarten teachers was also that additional time for play and for children to learn social skills. And those pieces are incredibly important for our kindergarten students um so that we can um you know develop them in a well-rounded manner and not just um you know focus on more reading and more math. While that would be part of it and absolutely important, we also want to give our students time to develop appropriately. So play, discover, and
103exploration was an important part of what the team considered as well when we looked at those pieces. So as there are always benefits to our decisions that we make, we wanted to make sure we took into consideration the challenges. So this first slide is going to be a comprehensive look at our initial group of challenges that we determined. Uh we specifically focused on four key key areas. The financial uh challenges, the operational challenges, the implementation challenges as well as student well-being challenges. And we um did an activity that was an activity to break it into four categories related to district. Each one of those four categories related to the district, to specific buildings, to family, community, and any other kinds of characteristics that came up. I'm going to try to zoom this out. It's hard
104to see. Um let me see if I can make this a little bit bigger. There we go. So, we did the survey data and we uh came up with the financial challenges, the operational challenges, the implementation challenges, and the student well-being challenges. So, if you look what was really nice about this, and again, this is from our initial planning process with our smaller committee members. When you see information in a graph format, there are certain things that absolutely stick out more so than others. And like Mrs. Landis talked about the benefits. I'm not going to go through each of the challenges, but uh a couple of the highlights of each area. First, financial challenges. We're staffing the actual classrooms. Uh Dr. David Heiser made reference to that earlier when the question came up. Um you
105will see information a little bit later on that really based upon our current numbers, we would need about 9.5 teachers to be able to staff all day K. To put them in a uh budgetary process in one initial year would be very challenging. So to build that capacity within our financial constraints would be a positive way to go about this. Um and another one here was additional space was another huge highlight and you will see information that Mrs. Landis is going to share with you a little bit later because in our six elementary schools we certainly have six different challenges when it comes to space. Um, another consideration with respect to that is as we're looking to add those new classrooms in this budget, that taken into consideration with what space is currently available and
106what the board approves is also going to be considerations moving forward when we look at what actual space we have available within our six elementary schools. The operational challenges, the first one that really stuck out again was classroom space. It was um kind of resounding when you look at uh we specifically and you'll see it a little bit later on asked Mr. Kale and Mrs. Dorenzo to be a part of our committee because at Bertown L as well as Washington Elementary School those could be the buildings that face the biggest challenges to be able to fit all day K into their buildings with their current makeup of um classrooms that are currently in the building. Implementation challenges. This was a little more consistent as far as numbers go. right sizing enrollment. You'll see some information
107a little bit later on. You approved an enrollment study and I'm thinking is another area that's on the um presentation later tonight is to really talk about what the enrollment study process may look like moving forward and a timeline related to that. Um because as we know when we rightsize when uh it was precoid and we um had the opportunity and and and um uh Pine Forge closed um we are now faced with new challenges as far as enrollment numbers with under building. So the enrollment study will be able to hopefully give us a little more clarification on what projections may be. And there's a couple other ones here that are um concerns that came about implementation staffing the hiring challenges uh additional resources counseling special area teachers and things like that depending on what
108our model of all day looks like. And finally the uh there was a concern that had come out um from both committees with respect to uh students developmental readiness to be uh developmentally ready to uh perform in an all day environment. So those were um some of the areas that came about as challenges in our smaller committee. So we had the opportunity then um as we shared earlier to have all of our kindergarten teachers at our I believe our March 6th inservice time. We had all of our reading specialists and we had all of our um intervention specialists uh perform uh the same uh kind of umformational collection practices that we had done in our smaller committee and then we um challenged them to uh fill out the same survey information and come out with
109results. So the first committee results were 20 plus committee members that um took it. Uh this one was 44 responses. So overall we had probably approximately 70 total responses between the two but you will see consistency with respect to what the concerns were in these particular areas. Again financial um was actually staffing the classrooms with the additional space operational was looking at um classroom space the potential for modulars. There were hours of for support staff making sure that they had the ability to cover an all day K classroom versus what we currently have with our current staffing implementation. If you look at that the master schedule Mrs. Landis is going to show you a little bit we had the opportunity to evaluate what a prek schedule is within the Berenary school district what a current
110half-day kindergarten schedule is and we also analyze what a first grade uh schedule looks like. So, we had the ability on all ends to see what um the consideration would be to make an all day K schedule because all day K is just not about more work. It's about develop developing our students from a developmental readiness to have them be as best prepared to move on to first grade as we possibly can. A couple other areas there were right sizing enrollment. We talked about that before and staffing. And this graphing uh element here looks very similar to what had taken place. In fact, the uh the meeting with the kindergarten teachers, the reading specialist and intervention teachers did have very similar concerns about developmental readiness of our kids coming in, making sure that we provide
111those opportunities to build their capacity as learners. So, they're not we're just we're not just throwing a lot more information at them in an all day format. As we looked at different considerations, um those four S's come up again. the staffing space, schedules, and supplies. Um, one thing I didn't mention earlier in terms of some of the staff that we had available to us in our conversations, we had a few people on our smaller committee as well as when we had that larger conversation with all of kindergarten and reading and intervention. Um, we were fortunate to have a couple staff members who have had experience working in full day kindergarten and could lend that perspective as well. Um, so Miss Weslowski, who's here tonight, um, she teaches at Middle School East, but in a prior
112role in a different district, she had taught full day kindergarten, and we have some other staff members who have done that as well. So, it was great to have their input also. So, when we talked about staffing, um, again, we had Mrs. Shade there who does our student registrations and so we had our current enrollment data as of February of this year. Um, so we took a look at what our what our current kindergarten enrollment looks like. And you know, we notice every year that, you know, we we get quite a bit of a jump from kindergarten to first grade and then our enrollment tends to jump again from first to second a little bit. But, you know, just kind of doing a little bit of notice and wondering with this information and thinking about
113whether we would see that same jump if we had full day kindergarten, anticipating that there may be some families that choose to send their children to us rather than sending them to a private um daycare or kindergarten program instead. When we looked at space, as Mr. Stout referenced earlier, we got some input from our elementary principles in terms of their current number of kindergarten sections and the projection of additional sections that would be needed and whether they have the space in their building to accommodate these additional sections. Again, this is based on their current information. And um as we look at the proposed budget and think about, for example, those additional special education classrooms that are needed as well, um those classroom those teachers would need classroom spaces also. And so that would even have
114an impact that's not seen here on this document that we need to take into consideration when we're talking about space as well. But as Mr. Stout reference, Boyerton Elementary and Washington Elementary are our schools um where we have the the the greatest need for some space in order to accommodate the things that we're potentially looking at from a kindergarten perspective. Here are the links to the schedules for preK, kindergarten, and first grade. Our our preK counts program does have a longer day than what we currently have um in our kindergarten program. So, our prek, you can see their day starts with arrival at 8:35. Um, and they are with us each day until 2:30 for dismissal. So, you can see some of the different things that are built into the prek uh schedule that they
115have on a daily basis. And then our current kindergarten schedule, this is an example um from one of our kindergarten classrooms. So, you know, for our morning kindergarten group, they're coming in at 8:45 in the morning and they're leaving at 11:20 for dismissal. So, their day is significantly shorter than the prek count students are. Um, our teachers do an amazing job of incorporating solid instruction for our students as well as helping our our students to grow into well-rounded individuals. Um, but that gift of time is something that would um certainly be something that many of our kindergarten teachers expressed that they would appreciate. And then the first grade schedule just gives you an idea of what a first grade day looks like. Obviously, they h they are here all day with us. Um, and they
116have a much longer language arts time, a much longer math time than our kindergarten students do. And they they're able to build in more time for science and social studies as well um because they are they're with us for that full day schedule. And then in terms of supplies, we just started brainstorming some of the potential types of supplies that would be needed if we were to move to a full day uh kindergarten program. And so you can see here some of the the items that came up for discussion, some possible steps and solutions that the group started to generate. And this is a piece of the process that if you decided you wanted us to move forward on continuing to explore this further, this is a part that would definitely um be become more
117developed and more thought out in terms of some possible steps and solutions and different resources that we would potentially have to meet these different needs for supplies in the classrooms. And now Mr. Stout's going to talk to you about next steps. Okay. So, the next steps are really the uh what we're looking to possibly move forward. As Dr. David Heiser made reference to earlier, there has been a lot of time spent on the evaluation of this process to this point. Um and I think it's time that's been uh a a great opportunity for our team to really not only just look at all day K, but um really just kind of look at where we are as a district with respect to practices in our current setup. So, um, these are the next steps that
118we're putting out there tonight as potential recommendations for for us to move forward. Dr. David Heiser made reference earlier to the, uh, ability for this board to look to get a thumbs up to proceed with the plan for full day kindergarten. We're looking for that thumbs up approval at a motion as of April of 2025. Uh, the next piece of this, and and Dr. David Heiser and I talked about this at length, is a feasibility study uh, within the district. We would like to have a potential recommendation to move forward with a feasibility study for the district. Um, this is compiled with the enrollment study that you uh have already gone through the approval process to do. The enrollment study will look at our numbers throughout the district to make a determination as to the
119appropriate enrollment environments within our community-based schools. The feasibility study will be looking at what do our schools have the capacity to do. So, we're making these recommendations to move forward, but we would love to have some more uh detailed look at what our district has as potential options because what I'm going to share with you here shortly is kind of a little bit of an outside the box to potentially meet the needs of the um of the all day K um environment. Uh the next bullet there is the results of the enrollment study that is an approval process is the summer of 25. So, we'll have those numbers to come back to the board and share. But the next bullet is the one that's really that outside the box. As we look at what Mrs.
120Land has shared earlier with what the space is available within our kind within our elementary school environments, uh it's quite obvious that at Washington L specifically in Buertown L, we are going to have spacing concerns and we had conversations about modular classrooms. Um and one may argue that putting a modular classroom in a elementary environment may not be the best practice for elementary school students. I would never suggest and I'm standing here saying I would never put kindergarten students in a modular classroom but to build space within the the uh the building itself uh just to gain more classroom space that's a possibility but a very outside the box consideration that um we put out there and we had some preliminary discussions about this in our teams is to really look at new grade level
121configurations across the district and that would be to change our current elementary school makeup of grades within our six elementary schools and look at a possible K to4 model. Take one of our middle schools, which you would need to have a capacity of approximately a thousand students and create a 56 building. Create one of our other elementary schools, whether it would be east or west in a 78 environment, again with the capacity of approximately a thousand kids, and keep our senior high through a 912 model. This would allow fifth grade to move out of the elementary school, uh, which would give you all of the space available within the elementary schools to have a K through four model. You'd be able to maintain your special area teachers and keep the consistency there. Um, and then,
122uh, create a one Bertown middle school, maybe a one Boertown intermediate school, whatever we would term them. But we'd have to look at some focus as to what those instructional models would look at at a 56 building and a 78 building. As I just talked a little bit about the implications of having the uh new intermediate middle school model again uh to be determined as to what you would term them. Uh the focus would move then to what the scheduling process and the staffing process would look like in the two middle schools. Uh, I thought this was incredibly intriguing as we dug into data across the Burks County school environment, district environment, and also the McGomery County schools. I know we are considered a Burks County school, but we wanted to collect data from both
123both counties. And currently, right now, Buerenary School District is the only school within Burks County that does not have all day K. And in the McGomery County schools, there is only one out of all of the 21 school districts in the McGomery County um county that does not have all day K. So out of 39 school districts between Burks and McGomery, Bertown and I believe Springford are the only two schools that do not have all day K. So moving forward with the next steps, we would look to have the results of our feasibility study uh potentially available in fall of 25. Uh as Dr. David Heiser and Miss Denakola had shared earlier building in the projected required funds into the general budget. Uh we're projecting a potential of 9.5 kindergarten teachers as well as a
124combination of special area teachers and again depending on what that model would look like uh which would have an overall cost of approximately $1.5 million. and we'd look to build that in over the next three budget cycles with a potential target goal of full day K full implementation of fall of 2027. So, as it was discussed earlier tonight, this is not something that's going to happen in fall of 25, not fall of 26, but be looking a few years out so that we had all of the financial capacity to potentially build it in as well as the uh feasibility to take consideration of space within our district. Uh and that's what our committees, our two committees over the last so many months have uh determined as considerations for full day implementation. Any questions? Mr. Opter
125Grove. Hey, do you consider busing? We did. Um Mrs. Quigley was a part of our process. Um it's and you know it's it's an interesting consideration until we would consider what would need to happen because what what would take place with all day K is that we eliminate the midday kindergarten runs. Uh as as you it's in every building it's it's its own run. So um the current runs that happen in the morning and in the afternoon already go to the communities. It really would be does do the buses in those environments have the capacity to have the extra students in those in those spaces. So there may have to be some additional buses to happen, but there also would have to be less runs in the uh midday because each building has specific midday
126runs that take kids uh home from morning kindergarten and then pick they they do a reverse run and pick kids up to come to afternoon kindergarten. So, uh, the actual financial piece of that and the number of runs would have to be looked at a little bit deeper, but we weren't quite sure what, um, the the end product of that would look like, Mrs. Diamond, and you're aware of the time these kids are going to be on that bus. If you're going to use the middle schools for five, six, and seven, eight, that's going to be a significant change. That that was absolutely just and and again, it was an outside the box way to think. Um, you're right. When you look at going from let and hypothetically speaking, if if middle school east would
127be a 56 building and just say middle school west would be a 78 building and you're transporting students from Earl Elementary attendance area to Pine Forge to Middle School East, that is definitely a a long a long time. I'll make sure any phone calls I get go to you on that one. They already do, Mrs. Nyman. So, no, they'll really go to you now. They really go to me now, Mrs. Nyman. Mrs. Dear off, I'm make sure I understand it, but I think you just answered it. So, you're saying two middle schools, one would be east and one would be west. No, we what we would do, and this is just an outside the box spacing scenario, what we would do is we would have one middle school that would have all students in grades
128five and six, and we would have one middle school that would have students in grades seven and eight. So, again, hypothetically speaking, Mrs. deer off if we said middle school east would house our fifth and sixth graders all Bertown area school district students would go there so that you would have to have a capacity of about a thousand students because we have approximately 500 students per graduating class so you're putting two classes in there so each of the middle schools would have to have an enrollment capacity of about a thousand kids so there would be no more east and there east is what do they say west is best yeah I don't I shouldn't probably say that but there would only be one. So, um, you know, so if you look at extracurriculars, if you
129look at all the things that go along with that, there would be a new planning process of what something like that would entail. Hope you can run fast when the parents would hear that. Well, they just heard it. Okay. So, how many have you done us? I shouldn't say a survey, but a count on how many kids are in private kindergartens in the area right now. Yeah, we have those specific numbers and I think a reference was made to this earlier tonight. We do lose um more than a handful of kids in the kindergarten environment because the parents really want all day K. So, they go to non-pubs, they go to parochial institutions to to go to K. Um, so our numbers coming back in from an enrollment capacity. We're not even quite sure what
130happens in first grade every year because we don't know who's coming back and that's why you have seen us put some some more strict guidelines on trying to enroll because you may not be able to attend your neighborhood school because it's just there's too many numbers coming back. Um but there is um the consideration if you look at the big capacity of having a full class you're probably talking a total of like four to 500 kids because that's what our typical classes are. Um and if you if you go back to what our enrollment um let me go back into our presentation um and we have our February enrollment numbers you can kind of see what what had taken place uh as of February 1st of where we were. So if you look at um
131our current our current kindergarten numbers right now are 400 where our first grade is at 422. Uh it's 22 students different but that you know the capacity of our grade levels kind of gains over time because the first grade stu the first grade students also don't necessarily come back sometimes until a little bit later on. So I I think it's when we looked at it's like 30 students max each year that typically go out to the non-pubs because we're already looking at capacity issues which I really need to hear more about honestly because I want to know where you're going to put them right how you're going to get them there is is another is another big issue. Uh those two things are absolutely have to be solved. Yep. Uh what you know one or
132you know how much I like studies though I'm a real big study fan like not at all. Uh, I see you put down like the the the difference in curriculum for the kindergarten class where you've shown, okay, here's what half day is, here's what a full day is. And I think that's that's good to show that. It's actually actually really good. Uh, I would think what if we're doing that, we're expecting the students to come out of kindergarten a little further ahead than they are right now. It's what is what I would be expecting out of that. What curriculum changes are we planning on doing through first through fourth grade to take advantage of that or are we just going to give away that advantage by fourth grade which other initiatives like this have done?
133I can I can name them but there's initiatives out there have done the same type of thing and by fourth grade the gains are gone because it wasn't used. So what's our plan on curriculum through one through fourth grade to continue to use the to continue on with those gains so that we move and improve our first through eighth grade capacity. Right. Uh it's a great question. At the primary level specifically, we truly work to differentiate our instruction to meet the individual needs of our students and we group stu students accordingly. Um, I would love to uh hypothesize what you're saying that the kids coming out of uh an all day K program are going to be more developmentally uh ready for first grade or more further advanced from an academic standpoint. And the first
134grade teachers would just make accommodations and adaptations and have groupings of kids that would be grouped in similar needs that would be very consistent across the kids that came out of our all day K program. They don't they don't teach to the middle. they teach to the to the students and and group them accordingly. And it really starts down in preK where you know they do activities that are based upon the individual needs. So as that trickles up through K 1 2 up into third grade um I would love to think that our bar is a little higher and that we have uh it's double the amount of instructional time that they get um and over the course of 180 days that adds up to a lot of time that they have that um again
135it's not necessarily doing more. giving it more focus and being able to build more of that instructional capacity within our students. So, um I can answer your question by saying that's what that's what if you have a challenging class, our primary teachers meet the needs of those those challenging classes. If you have a class that might be a little bit higher, they work very diligently to meet the needs of those higher kids as well. So, um it would be a very similar process based upon their needs. Yeah, because you know, theoretically, you're asking me to to approve $1.6 $6 million plus plus building costs and other costs. That being the case, I want to know what I'm going to see like am I going to what what improvements am I going to see in the
136students as they move forward to that because I would expect to see improvements. Now, I'm not an academic, so I can't tell you what what those improvements should be, but I would suspect that you would you or the group will be able to come back and say, "Here's the here's the here's the improvements you should see uh on how we're going to do that. I don't it could even be something we're going to we're going to make sure our our testing scores are going to fly up on account of that." And we can we can see that will happen because that's part of the problem we're having. So, I'm just looking for what it what is the deliverable for the for the 1.6 plus the building cost, right? And and that's one of the things
137Mrs. Landis made reference to. We did specifically focus and we grouped them because, you know, these are these preliminary com conversations to look at it the four areas of academic, social, emotional, parent, family, and schoolwide. What are the benefits of those pieces that come out of that? And if you look at that and analyze the data that the committee came up with, there are a lot of really strong foundational things there that do come out. Uh the proof will be in the pudding year 1, year 2, year three. And we compare instructional assessment data for kids coming out prior to all day K implementation versus a full day. And and you know, we we tweak curriculum. We twe tweak schedules every year to really meet the needs of what the the kids bring to us
138each year. And I think that's what I'm looking for here. here's what here's what our development was before and here's how it's improved because some of the things I understand are aspirational and they're they're subjective and and you I on the outside won't see those right uh you on the inside will see that those changes are taking effect and you're getting the improvements that you're looking for but I'm just want to know we're going to our overall outcome what we're looking for is an improvement if we're going if going to do this, what what are the what are the, you know, the kids and the parents going to get out of this? And that's that's one of my concerns, right? And I I could share with you just in the uh believe it or not,
139seventh year of implementation of preK, which is hard to believe that it's been so many years, but uh the developmental academic readiness of our prek students because you you have to realize that they're at a more at risk population, hence why they qualify for prek. but the more uh developmental and academic readiness that kids are more prepared for all day or for kindergarten when they're coming through an almost all day prek program. So um there is data to support for those students coming out. So that that's a similar one but that's only a microcosm because 54 students that are spread out throughout our district. So there's only going to be pockets of students that actually have data to to compare. So will will there be some sort of measurement we're going to do later on?
140We what show you talked about before and after. So we are going to we are going to have some sort of measurement to show that this that this investment is the right one and we're getting something out or or do we have to change something? We we may have to tweak some of our assessments just because they are, you know, the uh instructional model will look a little bit different for an all day K program, but we collect a lot of significant daily formative as well as summitative assessment data on our students to support our kids. So, the data is already built in. We just might have to tweak what that looks like over time because their their instructional schedule is going to look a little bit different. So, yes. And and I think all
141valid questions and I I think from Mr. Stout, Mrs. Lannis's perspective with regard to this investigation, we're at that point now. We don't really have the answers to many of your questions. And they would come in the study of what it is we're going to be able to design to to do this. And some of that is we need to go find that. Some of that's an investigation into model schools that run successful kindergarten programs in an all day environment right now so that we can replicate look to replicate some of those designs whether it's program services unique attributes that those programs have. We've not taken that study to that level yet. We've given the the the the larger cursory uh components here from um from from teachers, folks that are in the classrooms, the
142interventionists, the administrators, and done a dive into some of the larger finances and specifically what we can and cannot accommodate right now. Even the suggestions of some of the the ideas of a a 56 and a 78 center that really they're just almost, you know, the expression of of spitball ideas right now that we would need to conduct a a very very targeted feasibility study to suggest we want to do this and we want this to occur in specific ways. you know what, you know, if we're working with a service provider, what are three options that are available to us inside of a of a school district to be able to do from a standpoint of our our building structures right now as they exist and so forth. So there's there's a lot of really
143unanswered questions that need a lot more certainly much more thought, much more study. you know, obviously bringing an all day kindergarten program in is going to require the metrics of its success rate through time and there should be a demand on that um from from the board and from our community um when it comes to that. Uh we're we're nowhere near any of that. What we wanted to provide and and and and hopefully for for for all of you here on the board and in our community saw tonight a lot of the big things that are in the air. We gave some some data that what we're going to ask the board to do is to take a motion at our next meeting to to suggest do we continue this planning. Um as you saw
144we we we involved nearly 60 to 70 people at certain times in meeting structures. It was 25 to 35 people of signific significant time to do that. and um in addition to looking at some possible other targeted feasibility studies to to suggest whether we want to do this or not as you as I spoke and Mrs. Dar asked the question about the two kindergarten positions as you saw in Mr. Mr. um Stout's explanation of the finances of and the FTEEs involved. A financial plan needs to be segmented to build up to this. We can't handle that in in all one year along with all the other things that we certainly want to accomplish through the next few years as well. So, we're trying to create that sense and put those two things in there. So,
145there's a little bit of tie to the board suggesting, do you want to move forward with with with this plan? It doesn't necessarily commit you in inside of that in a real detrimental way at this point, but it really gets us a lot tighter and more destined to putting together the design program that we think would be most successful moving forward with. Okay, that's that's pretty good because what I'm what I'm looking for is is the next we're the next meeting you're going to ask me to give a heads a go-ahad on something. I want to know exactly what I'm giving a go-ahad for. The motion would I I haven't uh thought of the the actual motion itself, but the motion would be to pro proceed with the planning of an all day kindergarten program.
146But no committee no committ to that program that that's really up to the board to make decisions along the way. are that that planning committee would continue to come back to this board and to give more desired recommendations, right? This was not a recommendation tonight. This was simply here's the information. Here's what we found. We did find that through the study and well not a study but through the efforts of Mr. Stout, Mrs. Landis and the team and the teachers and everybody that there was an inclination and momentum toward yes this is the idea. this we do believe this would build success in our school district. It would help within our family structure in our community. Um and and we you know there would there's momentum for that. Now it's designed the thing that we
147believe would be the most successful program out there. So the motion would be to proceed with the planning of that really open-ended to that degree. Um Okay. Thanks. That's fine. Miss Darl, we put this much effort into the We have the space, we have everything. Put this much effort into trying to bring the kids like say fifth grade back up to where they should be because they were all affected from COVID. If I have money to spend, I'd like to see us get those where they should be. Well, recommended in this budget is a 13 and a half FTEEs that really are factored into most especially those those elementary grade levels of excuse me the curriculum is that going to be altered at all to get these kids back to where they should be? There's
148a number of factors that go into educating students. It's not just simply a curriculum itself. So, the curriculum is going to continue to be evaluated through time. We're going to continue to measure our students growth. We're going to continue to try to bring our size case load sizes down, whether it comes from a counseling end, from a special education end, um, in order to allow those students and all of our students the best opportunity moving forward. All day kindergarten is just another piece of of all the efforts in in regards to that. So yeah, I I mean that those are all the elements that we're we're working on right now and that's part of not only future budgets but this year's budget most especially. I'm sorry. Yeah. Um, is there a a comparable a few
149comparable schools that have had full day kindergarten that we could look at to to because the big part for me is student achievement increasing as we as we move along. Could we look at these schools that have had full day kindergarten to see is their math higher than ours? Is their reading higher? are there are part and and that's what we suggested in the next phase of this was to move forward if the board were to move forward with approving the continuation of planning of an all day K part of that is I don't know that we have the answers to some of the questions that that were asked tonight we need to go find some of those models to replicate some of those successful programs and schools um so that we we know in
150in terms of those that have moved forward like I said Much of the research, many of the articles are decades old. Many school districts, including many in this region, have moved not just last year or two years ago, they've been going for for many a year. We need to find those that that how did they transition? How are they most successful? How have they measured themselves? And how have it how has it increased their their achievement? That's the big question. Has it increased their achievement? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And that's going to be part that's the continuation of planning and study to be able to give back to the get back to the board some of the many answers of questions that were asked this evening. Okay. Um and I know personal experience um I do
151have a granddaughter that's in one of the schools at Springford that doesn't have full-time kindergarten. uh we did put her in a preschool school and she basically in first grade she's testing as a third grader right now. So my belief is that it does work because we're adding 90 more hours of education for these students. The other thing that looking out the other box here and I think some of the counselors can say this, the students have a lot of time, the ninth graders curling into the high school because they're meeting all these new people where now all of a sudden we've got um fifth and sixth graders together that are going to be together for all the way through graduation and seventh and eth 10th and 11th and 12th. So you're actually going to
152have students that are going to be together for I guess six years or seven years. So they'll they'll build that relationship and have that type of and that's other you know that's something we can take into consideration. I mean that's important because they won't get that sticker shock going into high school. It's It's scary enough, but um I um I know of another school district in the area that's kind of doing this the same way because they have an issue with space and uh I'm anxious to see how that works out. But they're, you know, they converted their middle schools into regular whatever you want to call them. Plus, it helps with the sports, too, because we talk about busing. you know, the sixth graders and seventh graders all play their inter murals or sports
153and they'll be all at the same school districts then at the same time, too. But thank you for all your work. It's been interesting. Yeah. And and again with the board, I wouldn't want you walking away this evening with the idea of that, you know, just a a spitball idea be has now become the recommended um you know, study of of how do we adjust and and so forth. you know, we need to do some deeper dives. I I we will the administration will be coming back to you as a board to suggest and recommendations possibly on another RFP that would be a real targeted study toward how can we accommodate this from a facility standpoint. when we look at across our nine um our nine buildings and really assess how and what and where
154and why to be able to do some of those things along with looking at um other model school districts to to find successful programs and how do we replicate some of the things that they've seen success with as well. So again, um our movement moving forward is really to bring forward a general motion to the next meeting to to ask for um the board's um approval to move forward with with further planning of this this type of program. One more quick question. Do we start doing any kind of targeting for um the students that are in half day? you know, called like if they have issues. I know we probably don't do IEPs yet, but by then we're starting to realize which ones do need help. So, we do have students in kindergarten who have
155IEPs. Some of them come into kindergarten from early intervention already having IEPs. Some students are identified um with needs in kindergarten. Um, we also our intervention teams that provide reading and math support for students who qualify for additional small groupoup instruction at the elementary do provide those supports to groups of kindergarten students as well. Yeah. And just to to add on to that a little bit, the uh prek program again is has been in existence for seven years and um the purpose of it there is criteria of how you qualify for the prek program. So it is uh typically more at risk students. Um, so it's providing more uh background time uh the building their normal capacity for what school's about and um because we do it for a little bit of a longer than
156a half day but not quite a full elementary school day, it really does help to uh support kids coming in that might have a greater level of need. Well, I want to thank Mr. Stout, Mrs. Lannis and the and the team members that were u part of all this study. I I appreciate and I think hopefully the board appreciates the amount of information Mr. Upgrow. Yeah. Um did you ever like um a 100 families out of a 100 families, how many of those would actually put their kids into an all day, did you ever do any kind of survey like that? We did not put a survey out to our community to um to get a poll for what that would be. I can tell you through the strategic planning process and looking at data
157that has been compiled and having multiple sessions all day K has definitely come up as a topic uh as far as a potential desire and a potential need from that um eclectic group of strategic planning members uh but it has not been an official survey. Okay, thank you and thank you both and your team for the information. Thank you. Okay, moves us to item F, uh, our guidance 339 plan. I'd like to invite Dr. Horton to the podium, our director of student services. All right. All right. Um I am going to go over the guidance 339 plan today. I'm Kristen Horton, director of student services. And although I'm presenting this plan for you today, I want to um share with you obviously this is not something that I created on my own that there were
158a number of people working on this um our counselors and advisory committee um that you'll learn a little bit more about. So the 339 is required by all school districts um to have a plan looking at the importance of career planning for our students. So what efforts are we doing as counselors and also in our district our teachers play a big role in supporting students to identify future careers and aspirations and this plan is aligned to the Pennsylvania career education and work standards. So just real quick to look at that the career um standards for education um cover four areas that career awareness and preparation and career career acquisition which is getting a job. How do I get a job? So that first step is awareness. What are my interests? What are my skills? What
159do I like to do? Right? And then looking at how would I acquire a job based on those skills? Then we're looking at career retention and advancement. Right? So if I do get that job that I hoped for, how do I keep that job? What skills do I need to have to maintain a job and to move forward in that career? And then entrepreneurship, those who are creative and looking to start their own businesses. You know, what skills do our kids need to have to go out and to be entrepreneurs in this world. So, here are the components of the 339. Um, we're looking at career and technical curricula. And so, really, that's looking at what is happening in our buildings on a monthly schedule. What are our counselors doing on a regular basis to
160support students? Although it indicates career and technical, really it's all the things that we're doing. It's meeting with students who need individual help. It's doing classroom lessons. Um all the things that are happening on a regular basis looking at that specific career plan. We're using smart features in this district. So in Boyertown, we're utilizing the smart futures platform in order to ensure that all of our students are completing the required career artifacts from the state. And so if you look at us on the future ready portal, you'll see that we do a really good job in Boyertown. We have 98% of our students who are completing that. Um actually 100%. I'm sorry I was wrong there. The um state is looking for 98% and we have 100. So we're doing a great job there. The
161plan also includes occupational information and what that is is really a list of external resources that we can use to help guide our students on their future paths. So when we're looking at these occupational the occupational information and the external resources, we're sharing with students information on career clusters such as health sciences, manufacturing, engineering, education and in that we're sharing resources for community colleges, colleges, um military careers in those careers and we're providing them different links. So a big part of that is also opening students eyes and showing them resources outside of the local area. Right? That was a big part um of including resources from diverse areas states like colleges students might not naturally look at just again to broaden their world and show them what opportunities are available to them. So we have
162a big listing for our students and for our counselors to use when working with students. Cumulative records is a little bit misleading. You would think that we're looking at student records but really what this piece is is looking at goals. And so the counseling department created smart goals at the elementary level, the middle school level, and the high school level to show the different ways that we can support students in helping them to have success postgraduation. So the goals that the elementary counselors are working at, they're more based on that career awareness, right? We're looking at those beginning skills. What are the different careers out there? What are some of the things that I like to do? What are my interests and those basic levels? at the middle school, our counselors are really looking at
163how do I connect what I'm learning in school to the world of work because we want to be making those connections to show what you're learning today can have impacts for your future later. Um, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. That was a big piece from our advisory council when we heard um, you know, how are we making those connections and showing students that what they are learning connects to their future. And again, those goals you'll notice are academic, career, and personal social goals that we're working on with the students. The high school counselors are working at attendance and truency. They notice that we have students um who sometimes come in late and so that impacts their ability to be successful. Especially at the high school, our uh home room advisory period
164is where a lot of those career opportunities, artifacts, um and information sharing lessons are happening. So we want to make sure that our students are coming in in the morning so that they can have the opportunity to have that um learning environment. Um orientation to career and technical options. This is a schedule and an outline of the different activities that we are doing to um bring awareness to the connection to BCTC. So this is where we're showing um our families and our students what BCT has to offer. Um we're having um presentations all the way down in fifth grade where the counselors are coming and talking to our fifth graders about what opportunities are available to them at the technical school. Um so we start that in fifth grade and then again in the middle
165school in our reach program and again in the high school. So that shows what we're doing for our students but also the open houses that the B that BCTC holds to inform parents um of of the opportunities there. um career placement and transition services. These are just some of the things that we offer here in the district to help students look for their future and what might be a good fit for them. So, we offer some college testing, those preac, PSAT, and the ASVAP looking for students um who are interested in military career and we offer that here in the district so students can get a baseline on their scores to see what colleges or what opportunities might be a good fit. Also, we have our internship program, which is a great way for students
166to get a feel for potential jobs to see if it's something that they would be interested in to help transition them into their future. Transition services for our students with IEPs. And then the opportunities through our NJOTC program offer many opportunities for our students looking for a military career. Students who do go into college and stay in the program have the ability to have a reduced tuition or get to go to school for free if they enlist. Um and they also can enlist into the military um with a higher ranking. Um the other part of the plan looks at consultation with teachers and administrators. So how are we making people aware of what we offer? So we have the program of studies, we have information on our website. Um we also for our teachers we
167have the teacher in the workplace in the summer so that we are creating awareness to different opportunities so people can come back and share those with students and um better explain what skills are necessary for certain um career fields. And then we had our um stakeholder involvement. We had an advisory council committee in January. We had teachers, some parents, uh administrators, a board member, Mr. Up to Grove joined us um from the BCTC perspective and we had the opportunity to hear you know what were we doing well and what are some areas that we could grow um and again making that connection to what we're learning in school to the world of work as well as increasing some uh awareness opportunities through career fairs um potentially at the high school and looking at that at
168the elementary school some career awareness activities as well. So, in a nutshell, that is the 339 plan. Um, any questions I can answer for you on that? And then again, here's just a listing of our school counseling team if you're not aware um of who everyone is. We have our elementary, middle school, and high school counselors, and they played a big role in helping to put this plan together. Yes, this is Gerald. How do you determine how many counselors you have at a school? Well, there's a recommended ratio from um the American School Counseling Association as well as PCCD um for tiers one, two, and three. And the recommended ratio is 1 to 250, one counselor to 250 students. So, we consider that, you know, pie in the sky and something to always strive for.
169And so, right now, um you heard earlier that there were 2.5 counselors recommended at the elementary level. And that's to help put us into more of the recommended range so that we can provide greater support to our students um to help them meet with success. Earl is one of the small schools we have and you have two counselors. We have one counselor there. They're both part-time. So we have two part-time counselors at Earl. Yeah, I should add that. Thank you, Mrs. Dearhoff. That's a good comment. Yes, good detail. Yes, good detail. Yes. So, both um Mrs. Miller and Mrs. TML are both part-time counselors. So they together combined to make a full-time counselor at that building, but each of them is a.5 position. Okay. So they don't go anywhere else then. Correct. Okay. Is that
170the same for Gilbertsville? Gilbert'sville. Julie Weber is out on maternity this year. So Marian Elco is the long-term sub in there for her place. Sure. You're welcome. Thank you, Dr. Horton. And just for the board's information, um, this plan will be submitted. We will need this to approval. Um, Dr. Horton, will this sit on our website at all? Is there any requirement for that to do it that Okay. It's not required to sit for 30 days like the special ed plan or the comprehensive plan. It just requires board approval. So at our a April 22nd meeting, the board will be taking a motion recommending approval. Thank you. I see your computer. Some reason. It does take us down to item G and that is the special education plan. Uh at our last meeting, you heard
171from U. Mrs. Bartman uh and shared the uh actual required every three-year special education plan. That plan um is on review and is viewable on our website. Must sit for those 30 days. We are going to be asking for um that to be approved at our next meeting um legislative meeting as well. Um are there any questions? We do have Mrs. Bartman here in the audience this evening. if you had any further questions um from that presentation. Okay, great. Well, that takes us down to item H. Um the board I did share with the board uh the results of the RFP um and uh gave them a matrix of uh the scopes of services and pricing for all of those pieces. Um the board has those in those possession in their possession. Mrs. Dan Cole
172and I did make a recommendation uh for consideration for two providers um inside of that um u of those results. What I would ask the board to do is to give us some feedback heading into our committee of the whole meeting um in May. And my recommendation to the board is that you narrow the scope down to possibly two or if there's uh maybe one additional that you'd like to see and hear from and we can ask them to come and present do a mini 10 to 15 minute presentation almost an interview kind of style. They could share with you how their presentation and feedback for the scope of the study would be provided to you. show you some um some information on that. You can ask some questions and then make a determination to
173bring forward one at a um legislative meeting in late May. Most of those organizations, as you saw, their timelines are in that four to six month range. Um so, taking that into consideration, that would take us probably to early fall sometime to get those. that would fall neatly into the scope of when we might look to do um some type of targeted feasibility study if we're looking at all day K and neatly package and have that information so that we have some some um some information uh late fall uh prior to the winter break to be able to make some more decisional things as it relates to possibly budget um and so forth. So thinking about that, I I would just ask that the the board and I will put it on uh the committee
174meeting in May to for further discussion unless anybody wants to discuss anything this evening in regards to those. Okay, that will take us down to uh item I. We have the uh McGomery County Intermediate Unit agreement for student services. This is an annual um contract that we do have with the MCIU. We do have two students in placements with the IU along with it gives you a schedule of services and the rates that are there. Doesn't bind you to anything that you're paying right now. It just gives you a menu of what those costs are. it gives us as a nonproviding school, we fall outside of the county um for that. So that we would pay a little bit higher than if we were, you know, inside that since we are Burks County school. So
175this is a contract that we do need to have and we will move down to the um legislative meeting at the end of April for your approval with regard to it. Are there any questions? Yes. M you said we have two students going there. Is there a reason why they can't go to the BCU? Yeah, it's it's due to the nature of their IEP that's been established for as their provider services and best fit for the needs and requirements of what they what they have within their IEP that we found those to be such. Okay, that takes us down then to item J, the proposed Burks count uh Burks Career and Techn uh technology center general fund operating budget. This is the BCTC. Um this is again is their general fund operating budget. They're asking
176all sending school districts to uh to uh and recommending this budget. The increase for Boyertown, I believe I ran that is approximately 3.7% increase from 20 or 2425 for the 2526 school year. It's about 3.7% um increase in cost related to its services. So, uh we will bring that forward to the legislative meeting at the end of April as well. Again, item K. Um, this was a legal discussion in executive session, a memorandum of understanding. We are going to look to move this forward at the legislative meeting um later this month with regard to um said employee and we was discussed in executive session. There are two overnight trips. I have your computer There are two overnight trips. You'll see the STEM state final competition in which we do have one staff member, five uh
177five students attending. You can see the cost structures there paid by what's paid by um uh the district. And then we also have a competitive the PMEA allstate orchestra. And again based on the teachers and chaperone requirements there you can see the the cost structure regarding those two trips. Lastly we have under item M the BASD donation list. This is something that you're now going to see um being placed on all of our committee of the whole meetings under policy 702. Donations, gifts, things of that nature need to come through the board for acceptance. I, as the superintendent, they come to me under the board policy. I either approve them or not. So, if they are approved by my office, I will move them forward to you. But those that you're going to be seeing
178inside this board meeting um inside this document will be those that the district gains some sort of real estate value to them and I've approved them. Uh but also there is some fine print that often comes with some of those real estate values. that the items listed. If this document were to be open, and you see it on the screen right now, you'll see that there are three donations. One of which is flexible seating for a classroom at third grade in Boyertown Elementary School. Um, I would suggest to the board that 10 years down the road there may be if we want to replace any of that flexible seating since that is now property of ours as soon as we take it in as a donation, it becomes ours and therefore you then take on
179the responsibility of repairs um other sorts of things if there are. Uh, but based on the value, based on the the the quality of things you're getting here, I would highly suggest you accept this donation of $300 for that seating. Um, the next is a donation. Again, this is for books u related to Josh the Otter. You heard about that already. Um, and is the Border Town Rotary Club and their donation toward kindergarten and reading books. And uh the lace last is to replace some musical um accessories within our band program um at Boyertown Area Senior High School. And again, it's replacing some older mallets and drumsticks and such. So these again are being coming through donations. They're they're real estate value. You you now own them as a school district. So we're going to
180continue to bring these things. These are not what I would suggest high action or high level things. There are other things to which um we may approve and bring to you um that come with you know after a year you may have to uh uh there may be software upgrades if it's some sort of technology um or you may in five years want to consider an extended warranty on a piece of equipment or something like that. So the the the real onus of this policy is to bring attention to the fact that these are great donorship opportunities, but that you assume when you be when they're donated to you as an asset and therefore you you assume some of the respons well all the responsibility that comes with those things. So um we will work
181through some of these things out of my office and then bring those to you. So, Mr. Upro, BCTC report. Uh, yes, I have a BC students for the third quarter, high level 10th grade, Savannah Nagel in cosmetology and Carly Hartman in video and media content production. And 11th grade I have Connor Falskey Key Carpentry, Tyler Landis, computer systems network and security. Laura uh Glacia dental occupation and Galvin Ford painting and decorating in 12th grade. I have Derek uh Kapensky plumbing and heating and Colton Eert in welding and technology. They were high levels in the third quarter at the BCTC. Thank you. That's all. No one signed up for public com period number one. So, at this time, we'll be looking for the approval of the March 25th, 2025 board of school directors meeting minutes as
182presented. Moves. I'll second. Mr. Roger Uptogrove. Yes. Mr. Zawatada. Yes. Mr. Broofphy? Yes. Miss Diroff? Yes. Mrs. Kratz? Yes. Miss Nyman? No. Mrs. Scott, yes. Mr. Brad Upgrove, yes. Mr. Panerella, yes. Motion carries. That takes us takes us down to um item eight, the itemized agenda. Um under item A, settlement agreement for student 2550256. Again, this was shared with the board through its its weekly report. We are recommending approval of this item. I'll second. Mr. Roger Upgro, yes. Mr. Zawada, yes. Mr. Broofphy, yes. Miss Dir. Yes. Mrs. Kratz. Yes. Miss Nyman. Yes. Mrs. Scott. Yes. Mr. Brad Upgrove. Yes. Mr. Panerella. Yes. Motion carries. Under item B, personnel, we uh district is the district administration is recommending approval of the personnel listed. A motion, Mr. Roger Upgroth. Yes. Mr. Zawatada. Yes. Mr. Broofphy, yes. Miss
183Diroff, yes. Mrs. Kratz, yes. Ms. Nyman. Yes. Mrs. Scott, yes. Mr. Brad Upgrove, yes. Mr. Panorello, yes. Motion carries. No one signed up for public comment period number two. So, this goes to board comment. Mr. Upgrow, no comment. Okay, Miss Nimon. No. Mr. Kratz, good. Miss D. Can't miss a chance. Um, I just want to thank everybody for all your presentations tonight. They were very interesting. Uh, also I want to thank Mrs. Landis because she's one of the few people that I can read a signature. I always check those when they ask for something and you're setting a very good example for the children. Thank you. That's all, Mr. Brophy. Nothing. I just want to thank Mr. out and uh sorry misl cuz it was it was a great job and I and I hope
184that the board took everything that you said and uh that we get this moving forward and start moving the district in the right direction. Okay. uh upcoming meetings. We do have on April 22nd a legislative meeting here in the education office um for legislative action and there is a little bit of a gap. There's a 3-week gap between the 22nd and the 13th just to how the calendar sets itself up uh this year. We will be back here then on May the 13th and for another committee of the whole meeting. Motion to adjurnn. I'll second meeting adjourned. [Music] [Applause] [Music]