001[Music] call to me order roll call Mr Brad upov here Mr Roger upov here Mr Zada here Mr broy here miss de off pres Mrs Katz here miss nyman here Mrs Scott here Mr penell here all present we could all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance in a moment of silence to the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands one nation God indivisible with liy and justice for all [Music] the board had no previous executive session at this time we'll be going recognition showcase so good good good evening and uh welcome to all of our uh viewers this evening on our stream and those here in person good evening to the board my name is Dr Scott David Heiser and I'd like to welcome everyone to the March 25th
002legislative meeting of the board of school directors so we're going to begin with a uh little bit of a plug but an advertisement uh uh to our upcoming uh Middle School East who is is celebrating an anniversary in a 50 50th Anniversary so I'd like to invite Mr mayori to the um Podium for his remarks and presentation um and a little bit of selfless plug in regards to this anniversary celebration that's a good way to put that thank you Dr David Heiser thank you board for allowing me to come up and kind of follow up on the teaser that we gave in the fall when you were over at East we mentioned that we were recognizing the 50th year of operation in Middle School East and this has truly turned into a fun big Community
003event that we have planned on April 10th so um we try to do a lot of pieces here we wanted to include our current students and their experiences and what's going on in our school along with our current staff and former staff members as well as our alumni so we think we've done a solid job of bringing all those parts together and and uh organizing a pretty eventful and memorable evening for this community and this is not uh happened without a lot of work from uh from our teachers and from District members and we are uh um excited to present the 50 years of Middle School East to you all so before giving you a little bit more of a detailed overview if I can direct your attention to our screen and before we hit
004play I just want to say that this idea came from our committee of teachers who have been organizing and working very hard in this celebration and one of the ideas that came up for a momentto was to get all of our all of our students all of our staff out there and do an aerial photo and an aerial video um commemorating this experience and with the help of Mr chaski and the high school AV crew a lot of organizing a lot of discussions support from um our athletics department and as well as our facilities Department who brought out our Robo liner to help us make this neat and organized we were able to accomplish uh this feat and um if I could have now miss Moyer if you could click the video and you can
005see what we uh we put together here [Music] so our students did a fantastic job we had about over 900 uh people go out on the field and get this done within about 25 minutes and it turned out pretty sharp and I may be a little biased but I think that's going to make a nice momentto that we have displayed in the East hallways for the next 50 years and I did not know what an impact this would have on our students we hoped it would be a fun good thing that they'd look forward to I can't tell you how many um calls or after feedback I got from different families when we didn't pre-announce this I mean it's not good practice to announce you're taking everybody out into a public space uh prior to
006time so we got uh calls after words of saying hey you know my my kid asked me to change their doctor's appointment cuz you're doing some some picture is this is this real um actually I did get one of those before and then several follow up and I was like yeah you know and and this was I mean literally about four or five I think that I know of um where students were changing their schedules because they wanted to be a part of this so we're pretty happy that that we um pulled that off and if we go to the next slide you'll be able to see an overview of what we are calling it an open house so we don't have things necessarily organized have people to follow a structure throughout the entire 2
007hours of the evening but we do have some events that are taking place during the time that people can choose to go to or not so again this is going to be on Thursday April 10th we're starting off and the doors are opening up at 5:45 we're starting off at 6:00 in the auditorium with a few remarks um uh the njrtc is going to present the colors a few opening remarks uh from some local dignitaries and then we will talk briefly about about what is out about out and about in the building that night so you can see up there at different times during the evening we'll have some performances that are going on from our Orchestra show choir and Jazz Band we are having uh some old uh planetarium shows led by Mr deadine
008we have three of those schedules throughout the evening if anybody would like to jump in and see those we have uh some current student organizations doing their thing that night such as yag as they prepare for their state competition a couple weeks from now Harrisburg they'll be there brushing up on their uh routine we'll have our TSA rooms open and folks will be able to see what currently is going on in uh TSA as well as we'll have on display some of the latest technological um tools and resources that we are using in the school so those who maybe graduated 20 25 years ago can see what's happening in our building these days um we also have of course the flashback to the old they're going to be multiple flat pain channels throughout the building
009that are going to be displaying pictures artifacts videos things that have occurred over the 50 years in East in the PE Department will'll have it's very funny to see some of the older types of activities that were going in our PE classes compared to what we're offering today uh bringing back some of the FCS and World Language examples of what's happening in the auditor excuse me in the cafeteria we will have responses from alumni who answered our question of where are you now and those displays will be um on site for everybody to see organized by decade you move into the library you'll have a lot of artifacts from yearbooks and newspapers and other again these artifacts that have been acred o over the years there is uh there'll be some light refreshment served so
010we know that's always a draw for some of our folks so we hope that you we hope that our community comes out and celebrates the the greatness that's been easted for the past 50 years and uh board members please if you um I have heard of from some of you and we have our designated parking spots ready for you we're expecting a large crowd so if you do intend to come please just let us know and we'll make sure we uh save a parking spot for you and um we are asking those who are planning to come if you are coming with friends or family members might want to think about car poing we don't have the high school size parking lot uh we have a middle school size appropriate lot but uh we're opening
011up this community and who knows how many folks are going to be showing up and we want to make sure everybody gets an opportunity to pop in and walk the halls and relift some memories there any questions you may have that could answer Mr Zada still have open we do we do not have open classrooms anymore those are gone so are the pits all right thank you Mr mayori and um please mark your calendars for April 10th at 6 o' um to take a look and celebrate the anniversary of uh Middle School East all right takes us to public comment or excuse me student representative report good evening board members and meeting attendees we are excited to bring you updates from across the district including highlights from elementary middle and high school events this month
012this this past weekend Middle School West students took the stage in Disney's Newsies Junior after months of rehearsals the cast and crew delivered an incredible performance bringing energy talent and dedication to every scene from lead roles to The Ensemble each student played a vital role in making the show a success performances ran from March 21st to March 23rd we are so proud of everyone involved for their hard work and commitment to the production in exciting sports news the high school men's wrestling team took fourth place in team states with three individuals qualifying for individual states congratulations to JD Heiser Beck bab Brody Coleman on this achievement in flag football news our women's flag football team had their first game against owj Roberts school last week one member of the team said that her experience on
013the flag football team has provided her with the new opportunity to get involved at the high school she is looking forward to continuing strengthening her bond with the team as the season progresses we are excited to support the team for the remainder of the season and congrats on both of their wins in stem news Mr Pennington's bash TSA group competed in the governor stem competition has been named finalist for the state of Pennsylvania after securing third place in state last year the team has continued their hard work and we are excited to see how they perform in the final round Mr Pennington predicted that they would be strong contenders for the top spot and we have no doubt that their hard work will pay off looking ahead we're excited to announce an upcoming event to
014support our student athletes the Boyertown High School golf team's scramble golf outing will take place on Friday June 13th 2025 at Hickory Valley Golf Course in Gilbertsville golfers can participate for $100 per player or 400 per forsome which includes a cart and lunch this event will feature OnCourse contests prizes and a 50/50 raffle with awards for both both individual contests and top team in the Scramble for those interested in playing or in sponsoring the event please contact coach John Hagman Coach Joe mcleland or coach Scott wrath for more details payments can be made to the Hickory Valley Golf Club we hope to see you there this month we're featuring New Hanover Elementary new han New Hanover was buzzling with this excitement as students participated in special literacy events guests read alouds and engaging activities they
015showcase their musical talents and recent performance and had the opportunity to dive into Hands-On stem projects a thank you to Mr Han new Hanover's principal Mr Ron for sharing these exciting updates in other stem news Middle School West math counts team is headed to States in Harrisburg last month they placed first in the 42nd annual math counts competition with Boyertown Middle School East finishing second and well Wilson Middle School following in third congratulations to the coaches and students for their success we look forward to bringing you more of bash's best moments as well as highlights from Washington Elementary next month have a great evening thank you there's no one signed up for public comment period number one so at this time we're looking for the approval of the March 11th 2025 Committee of the whole
016meeting minutes second Mr Brad upov yes Mr Roger upov yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss dof I was absent Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman no Mrs Scott yes Mr Panella yes motion carries it takes a step takes us down to item seven item a special education plan presentation this evening we uh have a present short brief brief presentation I'm going to invite Miss kayin Bartman to the podium to explain a little bit about the special ed PL um presentation plan and its requirements every three years under school code so Mrs Bartman thank you good evening everyone I appreciate you having us here tonight to talk about our special education Plan before we get started I do want to make some introductions to some people that we have out here in the audience that
017are really vital to our special education department so first we have Mrs Stacy Morton she is the transition coordinator that works in our department next we have Mr John Otto who is our elementary supervisor of special education next we have Mrs Colleen Ritter she is a secondary liaison in our special education department next we have Mrs Jackie Carney she is our elementary liaison and then we have our bcba our board certified behavior analyst Miss Sarah Jones and we also have Miss Jessica Cunningham who is our secondary supervisor of special education so John and Jess if you want to so some of us are participating in the presentation so first of all to get started with the presentation you thank you special education plan is required every 3 years to be written by the district and
018to get participation from various stakeholders it is outlined in chapter 14 regulations so the next part that we are going to go through are the special education plan parts so there are many parts to the special education plan and we're going to take you through just to explain a little bit about each of those parts so the first one is the profile plan and Essentials that H includes the name of the superintendent the name of the director the number of students that are are receiving special education and then the total enrollment the next section is our steering committee so all of the people that helped us to create this plan as I said the members that I introduced to you when I started this presentation they were vital in creating this plan and then we
019also held a meeting on March 14th with various stakeholders uh Mr Zada joined us at that meeting we also had parents from every level level we also had Administration there we had regular ed teacher teers we had special education teachers uh Mr Stout joined us as well so we had a really great meeting to focus on different parts of the special education plan three of the parts that we focused on during that time were least restrictive environment we also focused on trainings and then positive behavior supports the next part of the plan is the school district areas of improvement and planning so in this section of the plan there are various indicators that we provide data and then we have to meet the state requirement for those indicators so a few of them graduation rate
020dropout rate participation and performance of children with IEPs on Statewide assessments and then educational environment as I said we collect the data and then we're compare to the state to see have we met that indicator the second part of that comes down to our compliance monitoring Improvement plans so every six years we are compliance monitored by the State and then we create Improvement plans to continually get better as a department the next part is the identification method you have to outline how you are identifying students with a specific learning disability and here in Boyertown we use the discrepancy model okay I'm go to the next uh these next two sections impact Boer Town um but not as directly as they would some other school districts um for non-resident students oversite uh sometimes there may be
021what's called a residential treatment facility that resides in a school district uh boundary uh Boyertown does not have a a school district or a residential facility like that within District um but in the situation where we may have students who are placed in a residential treatment facility the host School District at that building resides in is responsible for making sure that they get their I AP goals or I AP services and accommodations met sometimes we enter what's called an inter Lea agreement um the incarcerated uh students oversight is the same thing we don't have a a juvenile detention center within our district but the same principles apply that if there were one um sometimes we would service those kids but we don't have that here in Boer town so uh the next term is uh
022least restrictive environment which is probably uh one of the buzzwords that you're common um with in special education um I liken to look at lease restrictive environment as a spectrum whereas the least least restrictive environment would be a regular ed student just participating in the General Ed curriculum and all the way on the other side would be a student who may need to be educated within their home um we have students who are all along that Spectrum um there's a lot of things that go into leas restrictive environment that the IAP teams discuss um a lot of times when we're discussing interventions whether it's a reading intervention behavior intervention anytime we add something like a par professional those things restrict the environment so when we're looking at least restrictive where's that sweet spot that we
023can service that child without over providing and underprovided next we look at the positive behavior supports that we have uh in place so some of the things that we already have in place are that we conduct function functional Behavior assessments uh for students if they are engaging in some challenging behaviors in order to identify the function of those behaviors um and if it's needed looking at those behaviors and identifying why the child is engaging those behaviors we can create what's called a positive behavior support plan that's really um a road map for teachers to try to decide like what can we put put into place for the student um to help decrease those difficulties what skills do they need to to build or what skills do we need to teach them um to replace some
024of those behaviors that the students are engaging in so some of the schools also have schoolwide positive behavior um plans so some of the schools use like Unity tickets where students can earn certain privileges or certain things um the kids really like like buying in and it gives them a chance to um be like rewarded and get that good um reinforcement for the skills that they are displaying already so some of the other things we already have is school-based counseling so some students need um someone to talk to to work on with those coping skills or just talk to with things going on in their life so we do offer some school-based counseling for students already um during our steering committee a lot of the um people that were there really mentioned over and over
025again that they really would like to see um schoolwide um social skills and coping skills they really felt that that was a need um going forward that something that we don't currently have so more of a tier one if you're looking at like the multiple tiers um of supports um that's something that every kid would get um being able to like learn those skills that they have that in their toolbox already so then if they're starting to engage in some behaviors they already have those tools in the Box they don't need to then start engaging those behaviors um or they might not need more intensive supports down the line because they've already gotten some skills another thing that was brought up repeatedly was that we need more DS escalation training for staff um some Staff
026feel like they have a little bit of knowledge but they could use more or Refreshers or just more updated training and continuous training um how to deal with some students when they are having a hard time in in school all right so our next section here is intensive inter agency and this is kind of looking at when you have students can they can come into the district and they might have more needs than the public scho can kind of meet so in this situation it kind of is Us in collaboration with another agency like the IU to best support their programming and what that might look like um the next section is the education program profile this outlines teacher case loads so we have learning support teachers emotional support autistic support life skills as well
027as our speech providers who carry case loads so that's outlined in our education program as well as our special education facilities so that's outlining you know where that instruction takes place within all of the buildings um in Boyertown School District and then for special education support services that is kind of outlining people that support special ed that don't carry a case load so essentially everybody here tonight from our special ed team I'm kind of presenting but we support either you know teachers we'll be in meetings um supporting programming and kind of having those pieces in terms of our special education development and then our last piece here is our Personnel development so our professional development so as it's been mentioned um we did meet and talk about as a group kind of what that could
028look like here at Boyertown so in our special education plan we have outlined what we'd like to focus on which is autism Training Positive Behavior Support uh professional par professional transition science of literacy parent training and then IEP development and our steering committee that was a really great you know feedback for us because it then did help us as we looked forward to planning our professional development moving forward some of the feedback that we had from our steering committee was again as um Sarah mentioned that deescalation techniques to the entire staff that was something that we kind of heard universally um another was parent involvement so how can we just communicate more with our families regarding resources and strategies available and then also PA more specific ific training right now a lot of the trainings
029occur through Crest which is the agency that we partner with um how can we also then kind of lead some trainings to support our Paras that are in our district and then the very last section of the special education plan is some assurances affirmations and then we have to have the board president and the superintendent sign that document so our special education plan will be posted it actually is posted Mrs Moyer did that right before this meeting started it has to sit on the screen it says 30 days but it actually only has to sit for 28 days for public review so feel free to go to the website open it up take a look um if they have any questions please feel free to reach out and then it is officially due to the
030state by May 1st thank you thank you Mrs Bartman so for the board what we will do in this week's weekly report we will attach that plan that official plan for you um it will also be placed on our committee of the whole meeting um on the at the April 11th or April 8th meeting uh Mrs Bartman will be here if after reviewing things for a couple of weeks if you have any more questions we can respond to those questions at that point and then um at the uh excuse me at the at the mar or at the April legislative meeting we will place that on for a uh recommendation for approval uh of the board and that should satisfy the requirements we have sat then in public display for over 28 days at that
031point in time okay M nman can the state reject this plan that you have they will probably provide us some feedback I in my years of doing this I've been the director for quite some time now they have never rejected it but they have provided some feedback and maybe some suggestions on things they'd like to see within the plan and then we make those Corrections or fixes and get it back to the state thank you thank you team next we have the finance report we have a snapshat of the general fund up good evening tonight I'll be presenting a few highlights from the February 2025 treasurers report um under local Revenue delinquent tax collection was $ 31,1 16915 earned income tax was 3 $373,500 $4 transfer tax collection was $852 4856 for state revenue our
032basic education subsidy was $2,860 $ 6,152 our prek count subsidy was $96,700 and our social security subsidy was $499,800 was approximately 4, 345,000 and8 excuse me $5,080 94 cents and in the category of expenditures the salaries benefits and Professional Services accounted for 82% of the total expenses for this month that concludes my report for this evening thank you thank you at this point we're looking for a motion to approve the treasures report seconds Mr Brad up Grove yes Mr Roger up grve yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss dof yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr panell yes motion carries under the super attendant itemized agenda we have a number of items for your consideration this evening we'll begin with item a this is the 20 2024 2025 idab agreement
033with the bciu and administration does recommend approval of this agreement with the IU in the amount of just over $1.4 million to be used for special education services in this current fiscal year [Music] Mr Brad up grve yes Mr Roger upov yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drov yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr panello yes motion carries honor Item B steals Elementary curriculum resource recommendations there miss ation does does seek approval for the Steels Elementary curriculum resource um recommendations as presented at our last Committee of the whole meeting I'll second Mr Brad upov yes Mr Roger upov yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss dof yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr panell yes motion carries under item C it capital projects Administration
034does seek approval of the it capital projects as presented um at our recent uh Committee of the whole meeting and again these are um from out of our capital reserve pan roll moves I'll second Mr Brad up to Grove yes Mr Roger up to Grove yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drof yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr panell yes motion carries honor item D Boyertown YMCA before and after school program lease agreement for the 2526 school year Administration does recommend approval of the Y MCA program for the 2025 26 um school year as presented I'll second Mr Brad upov yes Mr Roger upov yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drov yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr panello yes motion carries under
035item e solicitor appointment for the fiscal year 20125 26 Administration does recommend approval of the solicitor appointment for um the 26 um as presented at the committee of the whole meeting I'll second is any questions can we question question a horse can we get a reduced rate for seniority time with you who's senior that would be you uh there are laws against being discriminatory toward us older individuals and the answer to your question is a direct no okay figured so Mr Brad up Grove yes Mr Roger up Grove yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drov yes Mrs kraps yes Miss nyman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr pinell yes motion carries thank you very much under item F student overnight trips there are three separate trips listed there and which were presented at our
036committee of the whole meeting Administration does recommend approval of the three overnight trips listed go ahead Miss Diamond uh question on the youth in government it says that four staff and 68 students but it has down for seven substitutes um I don't know if any nurses are going yeah that that I I will need to check on that with uh regard to that I get some information back to the board that probably does include some ancillary positions such as nurse um and I'll need to check on what the other two positions would be that would be going on that it says four staff going correct we have seven substitutes coming correct I need to check on why yes wouldn't the nurse and whatever else be included in what's going um when this is listed as
037staff I think this might just be referring to those individual teachers I think some of these may be some other ancillary positions inside of that I'll need to get the in I don't have the answers for you tonight I can get those to you by tomorrow Mr Brad up grve yes Mr Roger upov yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drov yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr panello yes motion carries h itm g Washington Elementary School donation uh Administration is recommending the approval of the elementary school donation if you recall there was a presentation made at was Washington uh two weeks ago at the committee of the whole meeting um reflecting this math literacy collection I'll second Mr Brad upd Grove yes Mr Roger upov yes Mr Zada yes
038Mr broy yes Miss dof yes Mrs KZ yes Miss nyman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr panello yes motion carries under item H Middle School East Boyertown bear donation uh it is recommended to the board for approval the ceramic um Boyertown bear donation from the sour family um as was presented at the last Committee of the whole meeting FAL moose second Mr Brad upd Grove yes Mr Roger upu yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drov yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman yes Mrs Scott yes Mr panell yes motion carries under itam I first reading of policy 006 is the recommendation of administration for approval for um policy 006 meetings if you recall this includes the um committee meetings and language inside of this policy panol moves yeah Mr uh I don't think it should
039be in there that a board member only has three minutes to speak because you're giving the public three minutes we're board members we're elected officials I think if we want to talk more than three minutes we should be allowed to I don't like that in there Mr Brad upov yes Mr Roger upov yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drov no I thought we'd have a discussion too when you have a complaint but I guess I was wrong thank you Mrs Katz yes Miss nman are we making a change on that or is it still floting in minutes there's no change Mrs Scott yes Mr panello yes motion carries under itam J first reading of policy 85.1 this is the use of uh generative artificial intelligence in the education and uh Administration is recommending
040approval of a of the policy 8 15.1 for first read as presented at our last Committee of the whole meeting why to moves I'll second com lman are we making any changes to that with the email that we got it is not suggested at this time that any changes be made to the policy has presented to it those suggestions to any policy changes are more in line with um administrative RS and um other administrative items that we would do once the policy is approved last week it was mentioned that and I'm sorry I can't maybe if you know this policy a little better you can find um I I'm looking for where we're going to be monitoring uh this AI at least twice a year checking is that somewhere in here do we did we
041make that change that that that is not placed into the policy that's what we want us we need to place into administrative regulations once the policy is created we start to get into the constructs of then all the things that we want to add in here okay outside of that we start to get into having to really change policy more often than policy should be changed so therefore keeping it a little bit more Broad and giving direction in policy is one thing and then once the policy has been created allowing for those administrative RS and other things that we would be including in things like uh student handbooks communication systems and things like that to uh announce what it is we're doing with the policy okay so how about when you run into biases with
042AI is that a is that the a the administrative regulations or that's all to kind of fall under there and the Train the professional development trainings cor and okay all right miss you have another question Miss n Mr br up to Grove yes Mr Roger up the Grove yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drov yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman I'm going to vote Yes at this point but I'm going to hope that those regulations spill out um spell out a lot of those suggestions that were in that note Mrs Scott yes Mr penello yes motion carries under item K we have personnel and administration recommends approval of personnel listed inside of the agenda Panella moves I'll second question ke I have some concerns in the Personnel um I'm hearing some things that
043do not make me happy about people not working there 4 hours or eight hours or whatever it is and hearing that some administrators know about it well being as Personnel I don't know what it is you're you're speaking of if you have more details that we need to know then we're going to to take a recess and speak that about that in executive session I will try to make an appointment with Mr Han to make sure what I'm hearing is accurate and if it is we have serious problems I would suggest that you include myself in that meeting as well well hold up do those accusations have anything bearing on this agenda these the people on this agenda is there someone we need to break for it doesn't it doesn't okay then continue Mr Brad
044up to Grove yes Mr Roger up to Grove yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Miss drov yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nman I'm going to V yes at this time Mrs Scott yes Mr penell yes motion carries okay Mr there's one item forgot tonight there's one item that was not brought up tonight under finan cial report a is there a reason there's just I did mention it there's we don't ever read it at the thing at the thing we just added it so that people could see it so you don't even mention it I did mention it I mean yeah I read it I said we also have the Snapchat up there no no one signed up for public comment period number two so this time it's board comment Mr R Grove no comment
045Miss Diamond I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Dee and whatever their name is now I don't and nothing against Mr sheal but we need somebody there to look after boyertown's interest and I don't think we're going to have that with de deie is going to come back and talk to Mr sheal and all he's going to do is come right to us and say they need this this or that there's going to be nobody protecting our interests in that and that concerns me $15 million project and we don't want to have oversight on that um you will have oversight on that we have that expertise inside the district you were hiring if you so choose to move forward with an agreement with with dwey um you're moving forward with an a an
046outside firm who is protecting your best interests as a school district along with working with the school district and its director facilities and bringing back all that information to the board to be updated regularly and um noted when whenever there's going to be any types of change orders or any issues related to the project itself so the your agreement with with your movement into an agreement with Dewey would allow for a couple of different things them acting as really um in your best interest as a school district and working as a client and allowing them to procure the design of that to walk through the as a construction management firm then walk through the entire bidding process in working with the district um assigning um and giving uh insight into those bids and the work
047then in terms of who you decide or if you decide to move forward with the project and working with the district throughout the multiple years that are there that's why we have a director facilities and that's why you engage with an outside entity to work through to add additional experience all the the difficulties and Endor issues related to that will be discussed openly with you as a board back here in this meeting room in order to move the project forward and for you as a board to unilaterally make the ultimate decisions on certain items who in the district has the experience Mr Shield does not have the experience I don't know that anybody is ever going to have ultimately all the experience necessary for those things that's why you engage with an outside contractor in
048order for them to allow that expertise in the items that you're seeking at Boyertown Elementary School you engaged with them to do an investigation to bring back their their thoughts and ideas and evaluations and you're now going to be moving forward in considering whether or not you want to work with them in the role of design and construction and their expertise to bring back that information and knowledge and yes you do have institutional knowledge here in within that department and ultimately like I said It ultimately does come back and get re-explained here to the board um through many different types of processes well I guess I'm just going to go on the record then as being opposed to this because I have concerns $15 million is a lot of money and we need somebody looking
049out for Boyertown not for deu for Boer town and and I would just say that you in in in this role that you're seeking um you you whether it's dewy you move into an agreement with or someone else you're still going to need to partner with some other type of outside organization and I'm not sure if you're suggesting that we also then hire and an additional organization to work with whomever you you enter into an agreement with on top of our own director of facilities so that to me that sounds a little bit more than is needed in a project like this since they are working as a client in your best interest and certainly working with the director of facilities and with Administration um in the best interest of of the district and you
050will be a prized as a board um you know through monthly meetings um as to updates on the project and its progress along the way so our plan will be to uh and we did delay bringing that agreement to you this evening because it was still being looked at by the legal services on both the district side and on Dewey side we will bring that to you we do have that finalized we'll bring that to you at the committee of the whole meeting um in April for further discussion and dwey will be on hand to answer any questions that you do have with regard to the processes okay m w um thank you to Allison and lyanna for their presenting their student board report and also I just wanted to thank um everyone that was
051involved with Once Upon a mattress and newses Jr thank you for sharing your talents with the Boyertown community I did want to talk a little bit about the budget I'm having I'm struggling with that because I know everyone on this board is wanting our students to achieve and a few meetings back um I asked the question were the 24 Paras that we didn't hire that were on the last budget are they on this new budget and I was told no so that means have we stopped hiring Paris are we going to help the these larger classes I think because of all the things that we do now as a school and because we have 22% of our students that have some sort of IEP our classrooms that tend to be more than over 18 to
05220 students are going to have maybe five or six or 10 students in there where the teacher has to um change their curriculum a little bit or whatever they have to do I can't imagine that a a classroom with over 20 students a teacher can handle that well and it has to be frustrating for them it has to be frustrating for the students that do know the material it has to be frustrating for those that can't catch it because they don't have that extra help in the classroom I know some do but if we have just decided that with this budget we're not going to make allowances for that one I know we have larger Elementary classes not all of them but there are some that are larger and not all of them have Paras
053it's very frustrating if you read the survey and you look at what the teachers are saying what some of the parents are saying they're getting burned out because they're not seeing they're not getting all the help as a school board we have put a lot more curriculum in and um this is this is a big deal this is one of the biggest things everyone on this board has said something about student achievement for the past 3 years that I've been here but yet to take that off the budget and to just you know not have that money there if we need it or when we need it is is just to me I can't pass that the way it is I really can't uh unless someone can explain to me why it's not there well
054I think one of the things you have one of the things that is inside our recommendations for the budget and and Mrs Dan Cole will be presenting at the committee of the whole meeting in April giving another thorough Deep dive into the finance presentation is that inside of the budget is a recommendation for 13 F 13 and a half FTE eight of which are special education teachers those teachers specifically designed to really drive down our case load numbers not just Paris but certified special education teachers they are they are in there they are Miss they are uh um and that includes a um an expansion of our autistic our life skills and our emotional sport programs at elementary specifically including an expansion of our um Autistic Program at high school and then in addition to
055that includes two and a half um learning support teachers along with a speech pathologist as well so you know our focus is really trying to drive down case load numbers to better manage I think a lot of the things that you're mentioning with regard to that to better equip all of our our folks and and we certainly know the less numbers in a classroom the better we can manage that and we want to drive that with certified teachers and in delivering that so our Focus really in working with the building Administration and hearings from from teachers throughout this winter was a real focus on that eight of those FTE obviously out of the 13 and a half are designated special education is that mostly Elementary that they will be in or the expansion of the
056three uh the a little bit of both a little bit of both the expansion of those three programs life skills emotional support and autistic are are mainly focused at elementary but we do have an autistic Focus um at um high school as well and um additional learning support teachers through grew out that expansion so it's a little bit of all over uh at both Elementary and secondary levels but we know we're at many of our uh recommended limits when it comes to our case load sizes most especially at Elementry right now that our Focus needs to be on and and it is in the inside this budget okay so there are no you didn't so you have no extra support staff in that budget just what is existing or did you put like 10% more
057in so we didn't we didn't land on on a number we do have some some leeway to add in there some pairs as needed they're driven more by needs right some of which we don't know some of those needs yet necessarily as we bring students in from early intervention that come into our kindergarten programs and most especially at our real primary levels we're not necessarily sure yet but to add those in is not problematic but we do know that we need to add in those teachers from the start to really drive down our case load numbers um and to manage that a little bit more evenly and create some Equity across most especially all of our six Elementary buildings right now okay all right that that's good to know thank you uh I want to
058say congratulations to try es cavage on his major league outing and spring training he pitched he ped pitched a shutout with these skills okay let's start again he pitched a shut out with three strikes outs in the game so that was a great job Trey keep it up congratulations to the girls flag football team who got off to a good start two to zero and tonight they're playing in haford high school so keep up the good work congratulations also to the students who participated in the region five Coral festival and concert um tonight they are playing in Quaker Town at the Jazz Festival special congratulations to cat Maloney for receiving an outstanding solist award uh the other thing I wanted to talk about was if I understand this correctly we have btown Elementary HVAC project
059the roof at btown elementary and the turf these are all being being brought about by I think it's CNA or something um is that correct they're going to be handling all three of these designs quotes Etc if you move into an agreement with regard to chha they were they were they are now the Dewey was purchased by cha so they they still go by Dewey as it's a recognizable name but it is cha kind of Slash Dey so they are the ones that the board did hire to investigate all th all three of those projects the roof and the HVAC are somewhat tied together um as they are unique in terms of the fact that you know one has to come before the other in terms of what types of things we're going to be
060placing on the roof so they've presented over the past I believe it's been close to a year right um on all of those Pro uh projects to date they've given you all the investigatory details surrounding that you did move into an agreement um for design and to take to bid um with Dewey slch for the turf field you have not entered yet into an agreement with them for the HVAC system and roof my concern is to have one company do all three of the projects I don't see how they're going to be able to do that uh and I think before we ask for their PMA certificates and I don't know that we ever got that information I don't know if they're certified or not I'd like to know that uh and if they're going
061to be their Clerk of the works their firm Are they going to act as Clerk of the works or they going to hire somebody my suggestion would be um as we have it scheduled for our next Committee of the whole meeting is the agreement will be on that um particular agenda you already have the proposed Services we presented those at our last Committee of the whole meeting and had a little bit of a discussion with regards to those that's been updated and is in the weekly report for the board my suggestion would be to um enter into a discussion and ask all of those questions as they will be present at the meeting um to make some of those determinations collectively together you won't be voting at the committee of the whole but you'll have
062an opportunity to get as deep and in depth as you care to with regard to all the questions that have come up with regard to the bees um both roof and the HVAC um program and then a decision can be made at a voting uh later next month as to whether or not you choose to move into an agreement with them just curiosity question uh Finance report a February 2025 general fund snapshot I know answer this once but why is it on the agenda if there's going to be no discussion or any any talk around it it's simply there as a as a snapshot informational piece for you it had been asked by the board um as I had been here for eight months and I heard it all fall of having those accounts and
063where are we with various different accounts um and this is to meet the need of that so we place that Financial snapshot of some of those accounts on there for you so I did hear Mr uh panarella uh asked for that to be and I think it was put up on the screen shortly would wouldn't it be this is just a question wouldn't it be more appropriate to just have that in the newsletter and not show up on the agenda since there's no intent on discussing it I just once again curiosity question um well as all of that is really public information it's there for for you and it's there for a public to to note um the amounts and I know this was of a larger discussion back in earlier in the fall and
064wanting answers as to what those uh certain amounts were in those accounts yeah but showing agenda gives the indication we discussed it and that's not actually true no no it doesn't mean that it has to be discussed it can just be placed there as an informational item for you yeah that's an informational I appreciate the informational item but I'm not sure the agenda is the right place i' think it be more appropriate in the the letter in the the newsletter but I don't know Mr Mr uh you could you could leave it on the agenda and Mark it as an informational item that would be fine okay thank you all right we'll do that thank you uh yes guess this is just a question have we do we or do we consider uh working with
065local farms when it comes to providing food to our our cafeterias is that something that we've ever done or that we do Miss D Cole I don't believe we currently do that but I we need to verify that with our food service director okay I believe there is some um work with local farms when it comes to Dairy and that we do work with local dairies in regards to some of those milk dairy Services I believe and that's coordinated through the national school launch program yeah we can get just more information on that we'll check with Mrs Clinton upcoming meeting minutes or dates I should say as mentioned numerous times we do have an April 8th Committee of the whole meeting uh that will be held here in the education center at 700 p.m. and
066we do have a legislative meeting scheduled for the 22nd again here at the education center we do have a pretty large agenda already building for our April 8th Committee of the whole meeting um a number of items including some of those that we discussed this evening that will be part of that agenda the board will get a lot of information in front of that um as well and uh I do expect and we do have some um outside presentations being made as well okay Dr davidheiser we got some information on the subs I just wanted to clarify before we go out there are um Seven Subs that are going to be for seven sub dayss three teachers are actually going to be out for two days so that's six subs and there's another teacher on
067Friday so that this the teacher count is accurate but it's actually the total amount of sub dayss um to answer your question thank you Mr Stout motion to adjourn for a few seconds meeting adjourned [Music]