Boyertown Area School Board Committee of the Whole Meeting: 3-11-25

001[Music] like to call this Mee in order roll call Mrs Scott here Mr Brad upo here Mr Roger upov here Mr Zada here Mr broy M drof Mrs Katz here miss nyman here Mr panell here rise for the pledge allegiance in a moment of silence unit States of America stands na indivisible the board of school directors held an executive session on Tuesday March 11th 2025 the topic was safety the session lasted approximately minutes thank you Mr penella good evening everyone my name is Dr Scott davidheiser superintendent of schools here in the Boyertown Area School District I'd like to welcome all of our guests here in both in person and those joining us virtually for this evening's Boyertown Area School District Committee of the whole meeting of our Board of School directors I want to thank

002the well the Washington Elementary staff and students for hosting this evening's meeting and also thank our support staff IT staff and Mrs Allison Moyer communication specialist for their assistance in seeing that our setup this evening meets the needs of board members our in-person audience as well as our virtual listeners welcome to Washington Elementary we're happy to be here for this evening for the last of this year's building visits many of you know Mrs Lisa dorenzo Washington Elementary bu building principal Lisa and her team will be spending some time this evening sharing with our board and Community about an annual Washington Elementary literacy event one school one book the school has embraced this educator created read to them program aimed at creating access to books and increasing family engagement and have taken it one step further

003to in to include making an impact on their community at this time I would i' like to welcome Mrs dorenzo to the podium to introduce her team and share details about the program thank you Dr David Heiser um good evening welcome back to Washington it's great to see you all on this springlike evening um I am incredibly honored to introduce you in a couple minutes to my team um these ladies lead lead our one book one school initiative and um we're excited to share a little bit about that with um with you this evening um in the one book one school program a book is chosen by a team of Educators here in the building approved by our office of teaching and learning and purchased by our generous PTO a copy of the book is

004given to each and every student here at Washington um at school students come together to celebrate and explore the novel with their teachers and peers this powerful approach to reading instruction encourages family involvement strengthens the link between a home and school community and creates a genuine community of readers at Washington our readers eagerly look forward to this special event each year without further Ado I will introduce you to my team I have Jessica Ramirez she is one of the reading Specialists here I have Mrs Tara Sartor she is holds two roles um reading specialist and intervention and Kelly Arnell is our interventionist they're going to show a a really sweet adorable video um starring some of our kids and and you'll you'll feel the excitement of of um our one book one school initiative so

005thank you Mrs dorenzo we would like to thank the school board and the administration for giving us a few minutes of your time here tonight to highlight some of the amazing things that we do here at Washington to support literacy we're excited to share with you now a video that we put together to give you a little glimpse into our one book one school initiative that happens every [Music] year read to them is a company whose programs show schools and families the wide array of benefits that come from Reading alloud together a child's positive relationship with literacy provides the basis for a lifetime of learning the schoolwide reading programs support reading together at home and learning together at school by providing schools with the necessary tools resources and guidance to create a culture of literacy

006in our community one of the programs that read to them offers is one book one school we select a book and each student in our School receives a copy to read at home as a family at school students explore the novel with their classmates participating in Daily trivia fun spirit days and Community Serv service one book one school reinforces reading instruction increases parental involvement Bridges the H School connection and builds a true community of readers bringing this program to Washington would not be possible without the help of our amazing PTO each year they purchase all of the books and trivia prizes that we use for this event we are incredibly grateful for our pto's continued support of this initiative at Washington Elementary one book one school is exciting we love motivating our students to read

007by teasing what our book title will be bringing mystery bags into the classroom to build excitement and getting things started with a fun kickoff assembly [Music] one book one school is engaging come to our building during this time and you'll see students getting off the bus with the book in their hand discussing trivia questions in the hallway begging to read the next chapter and enjoying video read alouds from our wonderful Washington sta chapter six a peanut butter sandwich I'm I told you to be careful scolded Keith when his parents had gone to dress and Ralph had one book one school is about Community not only do we build community by reading this book together as an entire school but we also give back to the community with a service project related to our book we

008have donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand while we read The Lemonade War collected donations for Preston's Pantry to help bring food to those in need just like Ralph Mouse in the mouse of the motorcycle and held a penny War to benefit Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital when we read The Chocolate [Music] Touch One book one school is fun each day we ask students trivia questions related to their reading and teachers nominate students who answered correctly to take part in a prize drawing everyone looks forward to Friday when we spin the wheel for trivia prizes whan dong congratulations whan even our littlest Learners get involved in the [Music] fun and of course one book one school is all about reading here are the books we have read as a school community over the years [Music] The Mouse

009and the Motorcycle by Beverly cley when Ralph the mouse rode into Washington teachers made the book come alive in their classrooms with exciting resources videos games trivia and dress up days motorcycle I'm not winding up with The BFG by Ral doll The Big Friendly Giant came to Washington with his enormous ears nonsensical vocabulary and jars full of dreams we learned about the author Ral doll and how his incredible imagination brought the BFG to Life The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies in The Lemonade War siblings Evan and Jesse learned valuable lessons about themselves their strengths and how to learn from their mistakes at Washington we kicked off this book with a little Lemonade War of our own students enjoyed some refreshing lemonade courtesy of our PTO and participated in a digital breakout room based on their

010comprehension of the [Music] book The Chocolate Touch by Patrick schi catling in The Chocolate Touch John Midas learns that the only way to cure his choca titis is to think of others before himself a valuable lesson for us all Washington students showed how generous they could be donating to a worthy cause with our penny wars students couldn't put this book down and some of them carried two books at all [Music] times Washington love one book one school but don't take our word for it I Read The Chocolate Touch with my whole family I like how there's a trivia question about everyday of other book that we read Mrs rire very funny books what I like about one book in school is that when you guys pick a book it's always like uh a different book

011it's not like one that everybody knows so it's fun to enjoy it's fun to read the book with my family I think I like the lemonade word and The Chocolate Touch because I personally love chocolate and lemonade I just love The Chocolate Touch and the lemonade wall because it was so fun reading it what I like about one book one school is that each book teaches people lessons so this year is The Chocolate Touch so this um I liked it cuz it teached your Lessing about not being greedy for Stuff what's next year's book going to be what's next year's book we're sad we won't be here for the book next year what will our book be next year what will next year is book be what will be next year's book at Washington we

012are so proud of our one book one school initiative when a whole school reads a book there's a lot to talk about so this year we read The Chocolate Touch so you'll notice in front of you we gave you each a little Chocolate Touch a little bit of chocolate for to enjoy tonight um we thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to speak about it and we welcome any questions you might have about this initiative at our school yes what is next year's book going to be we don't know yet but I really do you know it was clearly staged that we asked them that question to say that at the end but they start asking on the first day of school and they start asking again the day after we finish the

013book this year so I've already been asked and we won't decide until till next year we use the summer to read a couple choices and decide which suits our school best all right thank you very much all [Applause] right thank you Mrs dorenzo and thank you team and and again thank you to all the Washington Elementary students and staff for their participation what a wonderful program and it really does show so thank you okay that takes us down into our discussion and information SE section of the agenda this evening uh we're going to kick off our first informational uh piece item a with our planetarium if you recall back during the February uh Committee of the whole meeting uh we shared some information regarding the planetarium the board had a discussion in regards to that

014and charged me and administration to come back with um furthering that disc discussion with some more information so as Fortune Fortune would have it um shortly after that meeting I was contacted by a planetarium consultant and U I'm going to introduce M Miss Joyce JT town uh to the podium and JT was fortunate enough to hear about uh through the media and we're fortunate now through streaming and through media uh the attention that the uh that meeting got and got JT's attention enough to reach out to me and asked if I would need any assistance so uh we certainly took advantage of the opportunity to have JT uh Mr Stout and I had multiple conversations over the telephone with JT and then invited her to come and visit the planetarium and um talked a little

015bit about what some of the intentions and what some of the things that the board aspired to with regard to it and so we ultimately uh asked JT to put together A needs assessment for us with regard to the Planetarium and this evening present some of those findings to the board and have an open discussion and any questions that we may have as we have an expert on planetariums here before us this evening Miss Town ah thank you Dr David Heiser um although I don't know how I'm going to top that uh one book um video that was just great that we just saw that was terrific but um I've been uh working in and with planetariums uh for my entire career uh since I left my high school planetarium which was a long long

016time ago um I I went to work for a Museum Planetarium uh the following year and then I've never been without a job uh since then which might be somewhat remarkable but uh it was good news uh these days I'm uh helping planetariums um figure out their next move sometimes it's um upgrading and so um I had the opportunity to go over and um take a look at the planetarium uh the Boyertown planetarium we're we happen to be in an area that's um pretty replete with school planetariums uh I did a count recently and there are 42 operational School planetariums in Pennsylvania right now and if you add the uh college and Museum planetariums to that it's about another um 60 % of that number uh the reason for that is um you know back

017in the in the late 50s when the sputnic flew over uh there was um there was some some fear and uh concern and so the federal government put up a lot of money in in 1958 to um to have schools put in uh Laboratories for Science and also and or for language and so a lot of schools took advantage of having a planetarium at that time so there was four years of funding for school planetariums going into the 60s and there was a few years of funding for uh public College planetariums and uh then um interest still continued well into the 70s and 80s uh through the 70s um up until the time your planetarium uh was built you know the space program for uh um you know going to the moon was still uh

018operational um and so so uh there was still a lot of great enthusiasm do I use this for going forward on my images yes I'm trying side let's see ah on on would be good thank you thank you um so anyway um uh you know a lot of schools were still teaching uh astronomy and space Sciences well into the 70s and 80s um before that subject started to to fall out a little bit uh from the curriculum uh but I took these pictures of um the planetarium at uh Middle School East last week and uh on the right side you can see the uh planetarium the uh star instrument at the center of the room uh it's still operational it's from the Spitz company over in Chad Ford and um the Spitz company in Chad

019Ford is another reason why there's so many school planetariums in Pennsylvania and uh New York and and the whole Northeast and that's because they were the uh original only originally the only American manufacturer of planetarium so uh when all of that government money became available for schools uh the Spitz company was really the only game in town nearly the only one for getting planetariums and uh that's where this um star projector the center of the room came from and it uh projects the stars as seen from Earth and that's it IT projects five Planet dots so it's a little bit of a one-trick pony uh and in the 70s and 80s uh teachers were eager to put up more kinds of visuals in the planetarium so they added uh uh video projectors and a series

020of slide projectors around the edges for making a panorama uh some uh other audiovisual devices some special effects devices and uh those were all in place uh here in this uh Planetarium and there's a uh a stage where you see those steps uh on one side of the room but um basically the room's in great condition the uh projection dome which is a real asset uh to your district is in excellent condition and uh it's really the Dome that um would allow um future very engaging learning environment uh to to uh be put into place so uh yeah I I I give it a thumbs up it's 33 feet in diameter it's a good size one of the biggest ones around and all the uh uh safety features uh seem to be in place in

021that room so uh I guess you have some choices coming up as to what to do uh with the space next and um some of your school neighbors have gone in the direction of uh upgrading their Planetarium to fome digital systems in which case uh they might have more capability certainly more capability for astronomy but also they could have more capability for uh other subject areas a lot of uh STEM Science areas and some of those places are um Allentown schools uh the Bethlehem uh brockel Middle School actually that was built from scratch a new planetarium 10 years ago uh the Elco Myerstown um school arola middle school in Eagleville methacton District uh North pen High School in Lansdale uh poville area high school all of these have um upgraded to what we call a

022full Dome uh full Dome planetarian full Dome digital system and what this is is uh two or three computers um you could see in this uh image on the right side uh below the desk on the far right there's two stacked computers there and those computers are feeding data images beautiful shows uh to in this case uh one projector at the center which is filling the entire Dome with picture so it's very uh low profile it's um nothing really mechanical there there's no moving Parts uh it's controlled by a keyboard Monitor and mouse and some sometimes a uh remote as well uh so that you can be in different parts of the room and uh it gives you a lot of it can give you a lot of Versatility uh so uh this uh image

023here is um from Westchester University and um here's another one I took about um 15 years ago because these digital planetariums came along about 23 24 years ago I'd say uh and they're getting better and better uh just like all of our computers all of our um you know video um uh technology or our TVs are getting better resolution and so are these planetarium so uh this one at Lon High School uh you can see again a single projector at the center and a uh little control desk with a computer there and the Monitor and uh here in this case he has um beautiful uh uh orbits uh showing there on the screen nice bright image so you might have the option then to uh to cover uh many more topics you don't have to

024stick with astronomy you don't even have to do astronomy if you don't want to uh storytelling multimedia Digital Arts uh even uh video game projects some of those uh could be done by students in other um rooms in other areas and then brought in and displayed onto the Dome uh so here's a uh here's another site this is showing a uh a scene a full Dome scene of of Stonehenge and um in the case of this one you could overlay the Stars sun and moon with it you could run time forward and backward you could see the uh you could see uh what is rising over certain Stones here and there's lots of other uh panoramas and scenes from around the world you can also take your own panoramas multimedia what we used to call

025slideshows back when I had to produce them now they're uh either jpegs or uh video files that will run all over the Dome so uh teachers and students can put together a multimedia show it could be uh on the history of Gilbertsville it could be on um you know any topic you want that you have some images for uh it could be the school yearbook it could be um uh here's one here this planetarian recently had an event where they put together a bunch of imagery um for a uh career day a college event so uh the plan planetarium teacher was approached by another department teacher who said uh Hey would' like to do this planetarium teacher had time to put it together because it does you know it does take time to bring these

026visual assets together uh and um made a one-day event with um very compelling imagery for uh all these students that you see here uh in their Dome Theater uh geology weather climate ocean and surface data visualization these are often built in to the software depending on which type you get world geography and Maps um these Steel images that I'm showing you are really not the way to show you because you can manipulate these you can fly around objects in 3D you can look at uh everything in the universe in three dimensions and so uh it's much easier to uh visual ual how things work uh as well you could fly through the human body there are also um Dome documentary shows they're like a half hour shows that uh have been pre-made they run linearly

027and you can order them up some are free and some of them could be a few thousand dollars and those um documentaries are are great uh because they have a narration on them um some schools not so much in PA but I've seen some schools who rely just on the documentary shows and they really don't have their teachers using the interactive software at all uh and um that's one way to make things extremely easy or easy for a substitute uh or to run or if you have laryngitis here's a uh periodic table that is uh huge on the Dome and um it's interactive you click on the ele element that you're interested in and then you get the uh screens of data uh this one I think is brillium and then you get overhead straight

028overhead a 3D model uh of how that um uh looks that atom looks so steam subjects Galore uh inquiry based science um you know I mentioned Visual Arts uh social studies uh also can be covered storytelling music Community engagement and something called domec casting uh which has to do with um live events that are shared from another planetarium or that you could share out to a planetarium in real time through the internet uh so a lot of um uh a lot more things uh are possible to do if you go in that direction and I'm often asked about funding sources I really don't know specific ones uh but what I see most often are um the education Foundation uh Banks or corporate donations sometimes those go along with uh naming rights for that um learning

029space um local or state grants Federal is a little tough right now and uh sometimes uh like in the case of Westchester University uh alumni donations uh could be had as well so those are some ideas and I'd also like to suggest um with with this image that um you know you don't really have to call it a planetarium if you don't want to if you don't want to do as much astronomy with it you could uh call it something else you could Rebrand and uh here in the uh purple lettering are some uh schools that rebranded their names uh the learning Dome is in Allentown schools uh brain space is in Pittsburgh uh the brown letters are college domes that took on another name and the the uh ones in Black are um their

030Museum or other and I I threw the sphere on there in Las Vegas just for fun um but uh actually um the content the content for all of these places um is like some in some ways the same in some ways sharable uh and so if you have some uh digital domes especially that have the same uh brand of projection system and software yeah you can do a certain amount of sharing not so much with the licens shows but with things that uh curriculum that you create um um visuals on the Dome and programs that you create yourselves and that the other school creates or the other facility whatever it may be and the reason to uh take a new name uh you know could be um to emphasize the multi curricular subject area so

031that you know there's not expectations of the people coming that they're going to see something on space so so um you know if they come in and you're running a show in biology and they just said oh I came all the way over I thought this was a planetarium and uh you well you get this great show in biology well if you give it a different name they're not going to always think that it's um you it's that it's astronomy Place uh also you might attract um teachers students and audiences that uh wouldn't go to a planetarium uh you might uh want to change the name uh to lend an era of Distinction uh to show that it's Innovative and experimental and then that might even help you with uh attracting new funding sources and

032um in some cases maybe not so much for a school district but in some cases they might call it something else in order to charge um for tickets for entrance so uh that's the long and the short of it I was wondering if there were um questions that I could um answer uh about any of that or something else okay in in the schools that you've dealt with have put these in has there ever been any regrets that they put something in and it wasn't the right thing to do I wouldn't say there were regrets because of what they chose I mean there have been some some things they wish they did differently um I was telling uh uh Dr David Heiser about a school that wanted to have 15 teachers take the training on

033the planetarium software because they really want thought all the 15 of them could could do do all the things and it it really didn't work out at all and it was um kind of a big mess and it would be easier if there's one or two teachers uh who are in charge of it and then if other teachers you know come by and approach uh ask for you know a program that could work together but uh in order to keep um things working well and the doors locked and the equipment turned on and off at the right time it's um so that's something um you know I try to make sure they understand the schools understand about um any ongoing costs and um you know when I when I came over to the Middle School

034um you these guys already knew about ongoing costs so um uh that wasn't a surprise but uh you know um sometimes they're surprised that it's very software uh focused that um you know you you need somebody who's uh pretty good with working with software and computers and that's a you could start theoretically you could start off smaller you really could and you should start off smaller smaller with just if you want to call it a planetarium or a science center or planetarium sence Center I I I leave naming rights to anybody that wants them but you could start out with that and then as you move forward you could then grow the program you really could because sounds like there's a lot of a lot of different things out there and a lot of it's

035built in but you don't want to say you know sometimes it's overwhelming when they're taking the training and they're like oh wow there's there's this earth science and there's all of this and there's all the astronomy and how am I going to like keep all of that straight and maybe those aren't their um their own subject areas and they don't understand them so you really do have to kind of take it chunks but it's got a huge growth Capa capability in it y once you get it rolling started y That's and then you become noticed that you have this and then you can start moving forward with it and get more interest yes that is that a good way to put it that's a good way to put it and there's a lot of software

036out there where you can build up your software Library yes and then slowly bring things along like you could start out okay as a planetarian then all of a sudden you've got subjects biology that the biology department or geography Department you can I would think that you could forecast future events astronomy wise past events absolutely so you could you could you could put in some things history-wise some things geography wise that's right some things future oriented so there's it sounds like there's a a huge capacity to make this a what's I what the right word is there a keystone yeah yeah yeah and you know and I don't know if I mentioned that um students are actually students learn the software pretty quickly too uh and so even if they're involved for a year uh

037they might be able to do a student project or take some of the burden off of the teachers by uh putting together some of the you know the music or some of the um visual assets for a show and um and you know there's really no nothing they can break if they break the keyboard just get a keyboard so uh yeah what you've talked like clubs Club astronomy club music Club so you could actually you know your Club your clubs could actually use this and enhance enhance what they're going so you could incorporate into many many different things you could and so you're only Li limitation is you know can the teacher be there to let them in you know um does the teacher have time to to to take care of everybody and your

038imagination yeah yeah anything else I think one of the things that JT convinced Mr Stout and I of was the uniqueness to the space number one right and going through the components of it how unique it it was and then also this idea of it being a learning space and not really pushing us into a corner in a dome it's pretty impossible push us into a corner that was a joke uh no corners get it but uh you know that really were looking for an individual or we'd be looking for an individual that would assist teachers really as a almost a media specialist type of role that would be in there not somebody necessarily that's a science certificated or um really somebody that can can help with the software aspects to help assist teachers and

039and students alike in there right that that kind of thing um there's purchasable uh programs there's programs to which we could we could also make down the road um and that was a key I think when when we sat and we discussed the elements to to this you can't make another one of those spaces right they were made for a reason at the time and we still have those spaces so I think that's key to to that um and we went through some of the cost structures and and JT had gone through some of the cost structures as well um for some of the things so it's really dependent upon how much we want to bring this back to life so it's cost dependent up front of those types of things that we want to

040do if you want to include new Lighting systems if you'd like to include um tearing out the carpet if we want to include uh a modernization of the seating that's inside of that um obviously the projection system itself needs to be replaced and we need the new uh we need servers to be able to run the necessary software it's all those additional ancillary other items that um you know we we'd be presented with with that there are possibilities Mr Stouts had conversations we do have some Foundation Representatives here this evening he's had some conversations with the foundation and their their interest in in assisting with with some of the funding sources uh for it as well so uh we see this as you know it's really changed a little bit of my perspective uh with

041regard to it um and lending The credibility of an expert to come in and say yeah stop thinking of it necessarily as a planetarium any longer and more of a learning space that's that's kind of unique is is pretty positive uh component to that um so I'll leave it open for some other questions that the board may have real quick um have you had discussions with the foundation on the the particular unit they're thinking about purchasing not yet because what I'm trying to see is not at this point go in with the least expensive unit when there's more stuff that we can grow with good better best yeah okay we can cover that I think the one thing be expandable is I think some of the units you that were brought up were not expandable

042once you put them in that was it uh so of course they're cheaper ones which of you know it's how that works but but it would look like the expandable ones even though there are more would be the way to go also there's through the state there is State funding for this through the stem through the stem grants and we we have a list of those of what we can we actually can go and get and we have we also have some uh representative state representative backing to go after those grants should we move on them which we would need to do that fairly fairly soon so uh and I can talk to you about that if if you need anything for me to to to tell you that but there's there's interest there also

043so there are some other funding s sources I'm sure we can look for naming uh we can look you know there's there's probably alumni here that would be glad to see the the the planetarium come back uh there there's Pro there's got to be a lot of other different things out there we can bring forward to get this going because I think it's a everybody remembers it and a lot of people want it back so it behooves us to actually you know really take this seriously and grab it and do something with it yeah and I think one of the things our next step should be if the board uh and it sounded at the last meeting and if that's still consistent for this meeting that it does have interest in in bringing this back

044um I think what we'll need to do is put together then a list an itemized list of and and really just from JT's lens of being um an expert in what it is to really have a menu and to see how interested uh the btown Educational Foundation may be with regard to a number of those things and the board itself um would be we've made some suggestions on a few things that you know we know we have some demolition in there we have to get a lot of items believe it or not there's a lot of stuff in there we need to get out of there um we were Mr Stout and I were were very surprised by by uh what's what's in inside of there and um you know so there is going to

045need time and energy to to get a lot of the things out of there there's going to need to be some we talked about the resurfacing of the Dome itself to encapsulate it um as being a a pretty important piece to that then outside of that then it's what types of equipment do we want and it's a almost a menu menu list of how big and how how bold you want to be with sound lighting projection and you know and I think JT uh to partner with her here in the immediate to be able to get some of those lists back and then get those things back to you as well as some possible fun fing sources for some of those things would would behoove the board Miss N I think you have a question

046I think we should definitely look into this and I would like to see what kind of grant money is out there there might be enough grant money to do a majority of everything that we don't even have to go out and look for anything else at least to get us started to see if this can be brought back and accepted in the community which I think it will from everything I've been hearing but it would be a start to find out what grants are out there and how much they are and what we could [Music] get so I guess from the board's perspective Mr Panella is that are we pretty unanimous in terms of the board yeah I think the board would like to move forward so I think what we will do we will

047partner with with Miss town in putting together an itemized list uh we'll start to um have some more conversations with the foundation as poss possible funding source and looking at some other things that we could link together with funding sources get those back to you as soon as possible so that we can uh great i' love to be involved and uh Mr broy reminded me of something I'd wanted to say one reason why people might remember that planetarium I wanted back is that there was an award-winning teacher here for many years and he received a very prestigious award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific one year which is uh only given out um you know every 5 to 10 years is to uh you know just the best Educators uh High School Educators in

048the country uh so uh that's a feather in the cap of this District as well y thank you thanks thank you JT okay that takes us down to Item B our steals Elementary curriculum resource recommendations so we have Mrs Landis our director of of office of teaching learning and our supervisor Miss Jen Joyce here this evening to share some information and I know board members had an opportunity to come in and view some of those these curricular materials that you're going to be hearing about this evening thank you thank you um so you probably recall that last year we had come several times to you regarding the new steel science standards we had given you uh a two-part overview of what all those new standards entail um and you had approved our secondary curriculum materials

049last year um so we've been working with the elementary um teachers sorry I'm having the same trouble she did um we've been working on the elementary curriculum materials and with our teachers to recommend those items for you so up here we just have a review of a few things we had links on the first slide to the previous presentations for you to refer back to um and just a reminder here of the secondary steals resources that you had previously approved um we had the labeds and the SAS at the high school and as well as the Middle School um and back in June of last year you had approved those and we still had Esser funding available and we were able to use those funds for the secondary materials Sr funding did end this past

050December so we no longer have that funding available so we would be looking to use our our district um budget through the office of teaching and learning to pay for elementary needs so we have some resources that we have been looking at with our elementary teachers over the past year or so and mystery science is the one that has really risen to the Forefront we have some links there um that have been shared with you previously to give you an opportunity to look at some of those things in some more detail uh Mrs Joyce has done a fabulous job working with our teachers and reviewing all of these materials and making these recommendations and she's going to be sharing a little bit more detail with you in just a minute as to um how how

051these resources work and how they can be used in our classrooms to help our students become critical thinkers and um explore new Concepts in science um this slide should look familiar to you we used a similar format last year when we did our secondary presentations for you and just looked at each resource in a couple different areas first of all is it aligned with the science standards and yes they are um there there's not endorsements per se um there aren't any available but we do know that there are several other local districts that are also planning to use mystery science or are already using Mystery Science it does include that student phenomenon and that opportunity for students to explain their thinking and those design Solutions which we talked to you about last year and those

052three dimensions of learning and integration of the science standards that we we had talked about previously it does have kindergarten through fifth grade coherence um we'll talk a little bit more about kindergarten and what that looks like at this point with a halfday program um and how that might change in the future if we should determine to move more to a full day kindergarden um the assessments are aligned it is accessible for all students there's not differentiation included per se because of the accessibility of the program as a whole it is really well designed so that all students can access learning through the materials that are provided and there are certainly things that our teachers would do in the classrooms to make sure that everything is understandable and accessible for all of our students there's

053a digital platform for teachers with the resources and so on available for them but not a student digital platform it is somewhat customizable um the teachers have some things that they're able to customize for themselves it does not include professional learning um that's something that we've been working with our teachers on throughout the year this year to give them opportunities to dig into those materials more um look at the kits that come with them and and the different resources and make sure that they have time together to collaborate and talk about science I'm going to turn it over to Mrs Joyce now and she's going to dig a Little Deeper with mystery science and tell you a little bit more about this program in particular so as we mentioned um our new standards the seals

054really encourage students to think and act like scientists so we need to be in a place where our students are not only doing those Hands-On pieces but also are thinking about why are things happening um so when we're looking for a resource we want to touch both ends of things we want to make sure our students are experiencing things Hands-On but that that critical thinking element is there and how are you applying this understanding because that's really what the steals are asking our students to do apply their thinking it's not just memorize things and there's there's an important element to those standards of of un uh basic understanding and knowledge but it really does come down to how do you apply that thinking um so when we're looking at Mystery Science it really does address

055both po uh pieces of that for us I wanted to walk you through just as a reminder um what our students experience I I can't log in and share it I was a little afraid copyright wise of showing the live site to you so I took some pictures just to show you a little piece of what it looks like as a teacher I log in and um my credentials open up um pretty much every unit and and a lot of other resources within the site this is a second grade unit on plan Adventures um and what we've turned on is what they call an anchor layer this anchor layer really starts every unit with um a burning question if you will this this problem uh that students are presented with that then comes back throughout

056every lesson so it kind of connects across all of the lessons and forces students to use what they've learned to Circle back and and revise their thinking because that's what our scientists are doing it's not I I have a problem I try something oh we're solved no we we have to deep uh dive deeply a little bit more I might get more information and have more questions I might revise my question a little bit and continue down that same path or I change my my Avenue of research um so that's what our scientists do in real life and that's what we show our students we're constantly coming back to those thoughts revising our thinking um when we go into the um anchoring phenomenon this was an example where um students are shown Death Valley I'm

057going to connect to our uh planetarium for a second here so if you think of all those things that you saw in that presentation about what our planetarium could be turned into on a much smaller scale that's what mystery science is doing um we're showing some videos to kids I can't send 500 second graders to death Valley to experience the desert that's not going to happen um but what we can do is show them what that looks like so there's a short Bri uh video for students to see um what the what that Valley National Park looks like then they walk them through and there's a discussion point where we prompt you okay what do you notice what do you see what are you thinking um there's some turning and talking so all students get

058engaged in that process um and you continue through the videos of you know watching a video seeing some things having a discussion um engaging with each other with those questions and then they throw at you after seeing what this desert looks like it doesn't always look this way though sometimes they have what's called a super bloom and students are all of a sudden looking wait what it's filled with flowers where did that come from this is a desert again those are not things we can have our students experience firsthand this is the closest we we we can get for them um the next step in that process then we we kind of release vocabulary in a lot of programs you you'll hear about students earning vocabulary because um the the vocabulary students need in these

059lessons is not something we just give out ahead of time that you memorize it's we build context we build understanding and then we give you the label for that term so in this case they talk about how the desert was years and years very dry nothing growing and then all of a sudden you have a few weeks of a super bloom you go back to a dry desert that's empty and you don't see many living things several decades later you might have another uh Super Bloom that is then called a cycle kids are given that explanation but we've developed that understanding we've seen that happen through those videos so now I have something to stick that word to if you will rather than I have a word floating around that I'm trying to stick it

060to something we're we're giving them that experience and that understanding first kids then jump into a a a see think Wonder chart which is very routine so our kids K through five experience that it's a beautiful way for you to build consistency but to also really Drive students into um engaging at their level so in this case in second grade I can draw I can write but I'm going to record some of my thinking in some way what did I see in in this desert experience what was I thinking about that why do I think that happened and what am I wondering because questioning is the important part we want our students to be curious and we want them to start asking questions about science and wondering how things happen the next phase from that

061um we have students at this level that would um use a model not necessarily create their own model and when we say model in steals we don't necessarily mean the diarama or a 3D piece that we're creating it's a diagram we're we're using a diagram to document our thinking so again at the second grade level we might support that thinking with what you see in the bottom left there um where students were given you know some of the information ahead of time and and they could fill in the information that was missing very developmentally appropriate for um second grade group what I do love about just the routines in in any of those steals aligned um resources but especially in Mystery Science you're never just wrong you always have a chance to come back and

062and revise your thinking so you make your thinking public we talk about what did you put here what did you add and as a group when we hear that I can then go back to my drawing and add things to it because that's what we're focused on not being necessarily just right or wrong it's how are you changing your thinking and how do you revive what you've done um so when we talk about that entry level for all kids there it is I'm not afraid of learning about science trying what I um to learn something new because we're going to learn from each other and we all have a chance to gather our thinking along the way so this was just the opening anchoring phenomenon and this is going to carry out throughout the rest

063of the lessons um I had the opportunity to watch this lesson um in part with one of our second grade classrooms and if you've ever had a classroom full seven-year-olds in front of you you'll know it can get very exciting especially when you're doing science um but I will tell you the students were locked in uh the video started the teacher was doing some of the discussions along the way um but they got to see about the Poetry which primarily grows um I believe in Hawaii but then has mysteriously appeared halfway across the planet somewhere else how did that happen how did that possibly happen that we go from Hawaii all the way to this other Island and the kids are discussing this and wondering how that happened what could possibly have gone on the

064experiment itself had to do with um seeds and their structure structure was a new word for them and something again that was um built into we we talk about the parts and the pieces and what it looks like and then give that word structure but they did um three different experiments with um different shapes it was paper and paper clips and to watch them stand like a tree and drop the seed and see how it traveled um and the teacher bringing back that what is the structure of this seed that made it travel differently uh the one you see there traveled like a maple leaf you know how it spins they were fascinated with how a different each seed moved um just by a different way of Folding It um but when we move from

065that then we go back to the end um we connect to the anchoring um phenomenon what did we learn about the way seeds travel and move that could help us understand why we get a super Bloom every so often in the desert and and not a regular occurrence um so again having that little bit of understanding then come alongside of this bigger issue that we're trying to understand really does help create um some critical thinking in the classroom and make keep our students curious about the world around them and what's going on so um and and as you know at the end of the day as the kids are doing the experiment they were so excited to do the next part there was you you could hear a pin at times because they were so

066excited about it it was amazing to watch how the kids really locked in and were engaged with what was going on so I did collect some staff feedback um we've been piloting um we did an extended pilot this year to be sure this is what we wanted to use um we had about 77 total responses but about 39 of the responses were from folks that had used full units the other folks had used some of them or just engaged in some of the mini lessons I will say we'll talk about kindergarten a little bit more but um as a halfday program doing full units is a real challenge right now on their schedule um so we have looked at those mini lessons especially for kindergarten to build up that um understanding of science but also

067honoring the fact that they're there for a very short time during the day um overall very positive responses that alignment to the steals piece um on the lower end is something I want to make sure that we keep looking at I think that's more of an understanding on our end that we have to continue to grow and as we learn more about Steals and how things fit um there is an alignment guide that mystery science has put out showing how their lessons are aligned to PA steel so we have that uh but we'll continue to develop our understanding and find those matches um student sensemaking you know the students are really the drivers here and and in the driving the driver seat trying to make sense of what's happening and that's what we want to

068see um definitely High engagement with our students uh the materials are very appropriate um and I the opportunities for students to do something or show their thinking were were very evident there we do have some things we want to focus on in the future though some areas of growth um so artifacts of learning how are we tracking and un um uh you know our students learning and showing that they they are developing a a science understanding that is something we want to continue to Monitor and make sure that we have the right pieces in place that could be as simple as a science notebook U but those are all things we'll have to talk out ahead of time and and figure out what we want that to look like the teacher edition is a concern

069um when you're used to you know the big book that comes with things that's not what happens here this is a digital resource for teachers um so all of their access is digital which is what makes it uh less impactful budget wise we're not purchasing massive teachers manuals we're not PA U purchasing a bunch of student um textbooks so um what we've resolved on that end is to go in and print out some of those things for teachers and almost make like a Master Copy for everyone so that um it's there and available but really the digital piece is beautiful because you can access it any time it's it's wherever you are you have your device you can log in and access it to look at it um but we can resolve that piece of

070uh for thing uh for teachers at least some of the additional questions we do have you know again the number of student copies you saw some of the student pages that were there those do not come with anything so we would have to produce those we again did talk about a student science notebook um I love the idea of a long-term you know um remnant of my understanding showing what we've learned all year and that can absolutely be something we uh try to incorporate with our students um the time allotted for science lessons um we know in our fourth and fifth grade um schedules they definitely have more time than our especially K but our first second and third grade uh that tends to be um closer to the 30 minute Mark 40 we probably

071have about 40 45 minutes if not 60 in some of our um schedule is it depends on the day and what's happening because sometimes you can really push a little bit and have that full 60 minutes it's usually closer to 40 and 45 uh that's a sweet spot right there for fourth and fifth grade when it comes to these lessons uh for first second and third we would like to make sure that that 30 minutes if we can expand it closer to 40 and 45 the hard part there is what do you take away from where does your time come from and that's where we have to have some serious discussions over how do we um you know beg borrow and steal a few minutes from other places to try and get our science time

072in there so that's a problem to be worked out but we definitely want to take a look at that um another concern that came out in um the feedback was just the amount of prep time needed at the elementary level we go back toback we teach everything so I start my day and I have a prep and I do have lunch but nine times out of 10 our teachers are going from math right to science there is no break in between those two content areas so that's where it gets a little difficult to transition from one thing to the next especially if there is some setup involved with science and now that we do have some uh recess Duty involved at our elementary level for teachers that can be a little challenging so there were

073some concerns about that um which is absolutely a concern we'd want to um try and problem solve as best we can but I wanted to make sure I mentioned those for us as grow and questions that we will be looking into overall um i' had just asked would you is this the resource we won uh I didn't have anyone say no um but you know with any resource um I tell staff all the time there's no one thing we can purchase that is going to do everything we want it do to it to do for all of our students across the board that's impossible so we always have to be looking at things and determining how do we have to uh modify customize and we have some customization we can do with mystery science for

074sure uh but that is the upcoming work um if you approve this moving forward um some of the curriculum work would include what does the pacing look like and what things need to be customized down to that anchor layer being on or off there does uh it does make sense at times um to have it turned off and that you're focused on the other lessons which are very valuable and and highly engaging as well um but for the sake of time it might make more sense that the anchor layer is turned off for certain um units so those will be all of the pieces we need to work on coming up I think this one will show one of the things that we always look at when we're exploring different resources is the cost um

075and the materials are needed so as Mrs Joyce had shared um we don't have hardback student books it is really the resources that we print out from the teacher platform and making those things accessible for students so there is a cost to the platform it's a perb building cost and that gives the teachers access to the lessons those videos that Mrs Joyce talked about um the materials the assessments we do have a discounted rate um we can order these materials through Discovery Ed with the bciu Discovery Ed is something that we've utilized here in the district for many years that provides great resources and videos and so on for our teachers and so through Discovery Ed through that contract we're able to get discounted pricing through the bciu as I mentioned earlier there are some

076other districts in our area that are using Mystery Science as well um and then there are mystery packs these are the Hands-On materials that are aligned for the grade level units and at the present time we would be looking at purchasing those for 1 through fifth grade um we did get some of those this year and um they're packaged very nicely it makes it really easy for the teachers to open them up and everything's really well organized for them um we had one grade level that we had to piece some things together ourselves because the packs weren't weren't quite ready from the company yet and um we definitely saw a difference between the ones that we tried to put together ourselves versus the ones that they sent us um the ones that they sent us

077were were fantastic so um you can see the year cost there for grades 1 through five um and based on the number of students that we currently have in those grades it comes out to a cost of about $25 per student we have a list down below of the number of classrooms that we currently have in each of those grade levels 1 through five and we mentioned kindergarten a little bit previously um if we do determine in the future to move to full day kindergarten then we would definitely recommend purchasing those kits for kindergarten as well um but again at the present time with the halfday program we're really looking at some of those mini lessons that can be incorporated um but they just honestly don't have the time for those full-blown uh units and

078utilization of the kit so the additional cost there to add on kindergarten is included there for future reference as well in terms of next steps um we would hope that you would vote on our at our next meeting on March 25th we would be seeking approval of this Mystery Science curriculum adoption and the materials purchase for this upcoming school year as you may recall this coming school year the 2526 school year is the year that districts are required to implement the steel standards we will be doing the the practice pssa assessment this spring uh this is the first year that it's moving from fourth grade to fifth grade at the elementary school our students will be taking the science pssa it is aligned to the new steel standards but because the standards are not mandated

079to be taught until next year those scores will not um count against us uh we will be continuing to work on identifying required assessments working with our teachers on professional learning days to collaboratively create create rubrics and identify our our pacing of those units and the things that come along with that so that's some of the future work that would occur next school year as as our teachers continue to dig in and even a little bit at the end of this school year on upcoming days there are Technology and Engineering standards that are part of Steel um that's our TN in the acronym um as you know at the middle middle school and high school level we have teched courses that can help cover some of those standards we don't have that at the elementary

080school and 25% of the standards that are going to be assessed on the science pssa will come from the Technology and Engineering standards so that's an area that we need to keep an eye on um not all of those standards are addressed in Mystery Science um an elementary school currently does not have a technology focused special area class so that's something that we'll need to monitor as we look at this first round of assessment data and see how our students perform on those particular areas and what we might need to do to to better incorporate some of the Technology and Engineering pieces at the elementary level moving forward question Mrs Nyan yes um just curious um what other schools are already using it and have we checked with them to see if they're seeing any

081anything that's missing or anything that's not what they thought it should be um I think Fleetwood is one that we know is using it and there's some others in the area that are looking to use it as well um there's also several that are using open Sayed which is one that we chose not to use last year um the feedback overall has been very positive I know when I go to my monthly Burks County curriculum coordinator meetings this is one of the areas that we talk about regularly and um Mystery Science comes up quite frequently with a lot of positive feedback yes any other questions is there any downside to not having um a digital platform for the kids um I don't really foresee a downside um you know there's great graphic organizers that we

082can print out for students to use and I think that's going to be more effective particularly for our elementary students to have that you know right there in front of them I think with the teacher platform as you may have noticed on the examples that Mrs Joyce provided the videos are very short that first one of the desert is only a minute long so they have those short videos and then again there's really a lot of the discussion the teacher facilitated conversations um and discussion and so on that really helps the students to engage along with those Hands-On activities from the the experiments and the kits that they have so um I don't think there's really a downside to not having a digital platform for the students I think that as the teachers get more

083and more comfortable with it the teacher platform I think will be really helpful for for the teachers Mrs Scott I don't really have a question I just want to um say that I that um I went Mrs tratz went to view it and I thought it was very good I thought the resources were very complete for the teachers and the lessons were very engaging I the kids are are going to enjoy that because it it looked like a lot of fun and even the teachers even though they don't have a textbook um it was explained to us that if like I would be the type that would want it on paper and go in and write my little notes on and everything and that's easily done um that you know they can copy each each

084lesson each unit and so and the and the uh student helps and and and instructional papers that they get as well where they you know do all their questioning and their engaging piece of the curriculum is very good so I I was really pleased with that thank you thanks for the presentation can I say that going to the mystery the mystery science Steels program moves us away from the traditional question and answer format to a question answer and here's why that's the answer and here's variations to that answer for and often times question answer and then that answer generates a new question and we're building upon our understanding and growing our learning as we go scientific theory at its best yep absolutely that's that's what that's why that's that sounds to me like a basic

085concept of the whole program which I I believe is a is a way to to get to the thinking you're trying to get to yes okay thank you thank you any other questions all right thank you very much I do want to uh make one note here if you recall Mrs Joyce um we'll be moving on this is her last week here in the district and she will be moving on to the Burks County IU I'm sure we'll be seeing some of her services and action with us on many of these other implementations of of curriculum throughout the the years to come so we wish her the best okay we're going to shift gears a little bit now to um a facilities overview Mr she our director of facilities is here this evening this kind

086of dub tails in as we've been talking budget uh Mr shei is going to talk about some of the capital projects that we have on schedule along with just a little background for the board to give a little Baseline on a number of areas that uh his Department touches and where we are with with some of those needs at this point Mr shill good evening uh you guys seen me up here and usually I'm bringing problems and hear me can you hear me now can you hear me now okay good usually I'm up here telling you guys about problems or specific things and today I want to give you an overview of pretty much the entire district and what facilities Inc compasses um for our our district on there we go so I want to

087cover some staffing the our work order procedures building conditions capital projects for this year uh security which I have Chief B who wants to who's going to speak a little bit on that and uh our district Vehicles starting out on our staffing um we have we have six full-time maintenance individuals of various trades electri electrician HVAC carpentry Plumbing five part-time custodial 48 full-time custodial five fulltime groundskeepers one supervisors and two others that's shipping and receiving in my Administrative Assistant our maintenance positions I I showed you the different or I just spoke about the different professions and the Specialties and there's a graphic of our work orders so you can see where a lot of our work orders fall most of them are in preventive maintenance and uh plumbing and HVAC are the three areas where

088we have the most work orders our custodial POS uh positions at the secondary uh buildings there's one head custodian one lead custodian on second shift and then varying uh custodians per building because it depends on square footage is how we staff the buildings our custodians cleaned between 15,000 to about 26,000 square feet each which is about the standard so we're right there in line um our primary buildings have one head custodian and then just custodians we don't we do not have a leite custodian at those buildings we have just uh started hiring in-house Subs which has turned out very well we've had a lot of interest in that so we actually brought some on board and they're working very well to fill the vacation sick time and open positions we have in the department so

089our work order system is basically a building generates a work order if they have door knob that don't work uh pipe that leaks that is then sent to my office where the supervisor sees it assigns it and prioritizes it we do between 2500 and 3,000 of those a year which is a a a large amount um so like I like I told you before a lot of them are preventative maintenance as well for generators changing filters and that stuff so we're trying to upkeep what we have as along with putting all the fires out that happen as they come across um we have 27% carpentry now carpentry is deceiving because that's hardware such as door knobs as well as you know window latches stuff like that it's not carpentry like building cabinets we used to

090do a lot of that we have since stepped away from that um because it's too time consuming Plumbing is a big one one our buildings are older Plumbing as it goes bad we try to replace as much as possible to valves and and sections of pipe that are are leaking uh electrical same thing some of our electric is tied together we have older electric and newer electric we're trying to slowly convert to um newer services and uh our custodial staff does a lot of our PMS so in the summer winter and spring we CH filters in the univent so that keeps our our classrooms uh safe in air quality wise in fact our our IQ is very good we got a very good letter from our testing service saying how good our air quality is

091in our classrooms for the equipment we have because we're required to bring outside air in it's it's a law so we are filtering that air with MV 10 filters um which is working very well so as far as our grounds crew we have one head of grounds and then we have a team of four others they we have shifted from building each having a grounds crew which is what was in the past to having one District grounds crew which seems to have worked well because when we have activities and events they can work as a team to get ready for a baseball game football game uh we also have What's called the um Turf tank has anybody heard of that a Turf tank so most of the districts in the area have use them they

092actually it's a robot it's really cool to come out and see that lines the field for us so we pick a point and then it satellite lay out the field and it I can't believe it because it's going like this and it it'll do a straight line I'm I'm impressed so that has helped us out greatly um we do all the bushes trees Landscaping we do have a mowing company that does part of our grass they do the high school cdale Supportive Service West and btown L so that gives ourrs crew the ability to take care of the other areas at the other buildings and it C it's roughly 259 acres is what our district has so it's quite a bit of bit of land that we have so we have 11 buildings they cover

09399 square miles there are three stadiums you have Memorial Stadium Bear Stadium and you have Bear Park and 22 out buildings that we take care of and maintain so if you look at I lost my papers here building conditions this is the build dates and renovation dates now if you look the buildings that we have were built a long time ago some of them in the 20s some of them in the 50s some of them the newest is East at the 70s Renovations were a lot of Renovations were done at the high school but if you look at our elementary schools it was like a lot of Renovations were done in like the 90s region I don't know if there was State money allocated at that point I wasn't in this position at that time

094or thinking about buildings actually at that time so uh but what we did when we renovated we expanded a lot so if you look at our district we expanded on our building so we really didn't gut them and Rehab them and use the same structure we built out and we tied on to a lot of our older systems so that's a challenge trying to keep them working together like we have a lot of pneumatics but we have a lot of like rooftop units so if you know those two really don't play nicely together so some of those are challenges that our department faces it's not as simple as going in and every school's the same everything's different we have Steam Heat and some some of the buildings we have hot water you know same with

095air conditioning we have chillers versus vrf units so it's very very broad so we have roof ages and conditions as you know since I've been here we've done a lot of the roofs um we've done Gilbertville roofs roof we've done Earls roof West and the high school were recently done with their Renovations uh or ear we did so cdale the roof is newer the company that put it on went out of business so the warranty went away the roof is solid we IR scanned it it's just doesn't have a warranty because Hickman went out of business New Hanover is the roof that has the biggest deficit right now it's on our capital projects for project for this year to uh res scarify and coat um and then that will give us a warranty again on

096that middle School East is uh warranty expires 2026 we've scanned it it's not in in bad shape but it's something we want to keep watching as it ages next we have the heating system it's not heating system so we have other buildings owned by the district I don't know this is goad did I skip one I thought so well I looked out I I yeah thank you thank you I've I hard time to sorry for me to read the red um so heating systems I told you a little bit about the heating systems where we have steam versus uh boilers and we fire tube boilers this building has fire tube boilers they're huge if you ever see them they're giant tube looking things um they're really they work really well though the ages are there

097most of our boilers are in good shape it's some of the systems attached to them so the piping and whatnot is getting older so we're we're replacing it as we go um once again I told you guys about pneumatics pneumatics is slowly aging out it's hard to get parts for it so I do I have a company several companies coming in to give us quotes to get more to an electrical control versus a Pneumatic control go ahead 1972 install you even get parts especially if they're pneumatic well 1972 is the boiler for the fire tube boilers those those we are still able to get parts for the the problem is is the fire eye controllers which they have updated so they're like a card system if you you know where they go through the safety

098features yeah I know yeah so we're able to get new fire eyes those are still made okay so you get new fire you could probably get SIM similar devices if you need them but correct but the original you know flapper nozzle pneumatics are getting very that's why I'm concerned when I see 1972 correct control system well the like I like I said with the fire tube boilers they work off of a firey system which is right on the boiler the the pneumatics is the classrooms the the temperatures and whatnot the actuators and dampers so your feed your feed Valves and all aren't pneumatic they're all pneumatic but for the boiler they're off they're actually electronical oh we did we did we do new uh actuators and stuff so all of that is run off of

099the pumps the runaround pumps and stuff are all electrically controlled good thanks thank you with vfds so like I said we try to we're updating as we can um the only building which we've spoke a lot about is Bor down L with the electric resistant heat and it works it's just inefficient and it's aging so that's one reason that we're looking to redo those uh that building so there's other buildings at the district ownes that we maintain we have pine Forge elementary school yet even though we don't utilize it we're still maintaining it as a district we have the Supportive Service building which is where the buses are parked in my offices uh the education center and then we have the 410 reading North Avenue building which is I took Mr davidheiser there and I

100think he thought I was going to leave him there um it's if you want to video a haunted house that's the place to go how many of you has do you guys have you guys ever seen this like any of you it's right behind cdale on the The Alley when you go and you go back there that it was purchased in 2002 I believe um it has access to the high school property and the the plan for that Mrs denol and I spoke about was taking it down it's a block building it's sitting there and it's in really really bad shape so um that's something we're going to look forward look forward to doing so that way um and I believe Mr sh you you had noted I think the the decision at the board

101back at during that time period to buy that it's a two acre property a pretty rectangular acre property from that lane all way to the adjacent soccer field of the so I think there was thinking over time of access um to that and uh so it's just good for the board to know that is a property that the district does does own it is a dilapitated building that um you know um you know we we we do have it's it's certainly not a a functional building or structure at this this point in time we in two in 2021 they looked into it or 2020 they looked into it with the associates and came back with a report but there was no cost involved so we we were looking to find someone to give us pricing

102on that yes yes yes it's the tar in the roof to be specific tar in the roof the tar in the roof is as fastest yeah nothing else they found so so some of the special conditions we have in this District are we have our own water uh sewer plants and we have our own water treatment plants which is a very um intensive license to get and it's uh one of those things where we get mandates from the state and we get treated as like we're a large utility company which we're not so costs on that can vary now the pfoas and the pfas just came out and um if we get hit with those we have to treat for it so that's one of those things where it's a cost where we can never

103foresee what the D is going to throw at us I know it's very costly to treat for pfoas um so hopefully we don't we didn't have to test because of the number of students we serve so next I think it's the next quarter we have to test um so my recommendation is if we can tie on public water we should whenever we can so this leads us to capital projects for this year so first the first capital project is the YMC squared at the high school which is one of our chillers their uh mag bearing Chiller the motor it it levitates the compressor and one of the levitation points failed it's a sealed motor there's nothing we can do to fix it you can't rebuild it it's sealed so the whole motor has to re

104be re taken out and replaced not rebuilt um the complexity of this repair would we would like to bring in the manufacturer to do it because you don't want to this is one of those where you don't want to bring some somebody who doesn't know what they're doing and install the motor and wind up with more damage second uh parking lot cracks um we would like we would like to seal the parking lot cracks at bash we don't want to resurface the the parking lots or the spots until the projects that are there happen or don't happen because I don't want to put all that money into sealing and lining and then um tear it up with a equipment here at this building Washington the nurse Suite access currently students all have to funnel through

105the main office to get to the nurses Suite with sick kids whatnot we'd like to make direct access into that nurses Suite so sick children are able to just get right into there which would involve putting a doorway from the hall into that space um it makes sense and I think it as a what Co taught us is that we want to be able to have way ways of getting kids in out it will be on this side of the security door so it there would be no access from the main lobby uh also at this building carpet replacement in the office that was actually slated for last year I kicked it to this year because it wasn't necessary and um I had higher priority things that took president so I I kicked it to

106this year New Hanover we foam roof restoration um that is the contract or the um agreement is with Mr sultanic attorney Al sultanic office right now overseeing that um at Gilbertsville gym floor tile replacement that's the entire space both cafeteria and the gym it's a large space the the tiles are starting to pop off the actual concrete um so we need to replace them so that we don't get anybody hurt uh access road repaving at Gilbertsville that's the road that goes back where the parent drop off is we never utilized it before now that the parents are driving on it daily it's starting to to beat on it so that needs to be Mill and overlaid uh over at cdale the curb is cracked and falling apart at many spaces so we're going to put

107new curbing in there so that students getting off the bus don't have to try to go ahead the thing that since I've been sitting in the in on the board and it seems to come out but it never gets discussed and it it shouldn't be a major project but our tennis courts the amount of cracks and stuff I mean has that been brought up at all I have a I have two contractors coming out to look at the tennis courts at East because those are the ones that have the cracks on it we've looked at M with multiple vendors on the ones at the high school and it's going to be very expensive to get rid of those little bit of divots that are in there when I looked at the the build sheet for

108those tennis courts they are within spec so they were supposed to have puddles it was like a it's just the way it was designed um no but the ones at East yes they're cracked and I do have individuals coming to give us quotes on that I that's more of a maintenance thing I wasn't going to do that on capital projects I was just going to do that out of the budget because it was just going to be filling cracks um not the level of crack that we're filling at the high school um so also we have same thing at the cafeteria at um CES the tiles are popping off I don't know if they were done at the same time if the VCT was replaced at the same time but it's very odd we have

109two gymnasiums having the exact same um condition so it's almost like the glue is Letting Go at Earl we have to replace a water softener that would normally not be a big deal but because it has it deals with the D that's a a larger item than just normally replacing a water softener the pine Forge I apologize that shouldn't be on here we did that through maintenance through my my budget currently so that's getting done the first week in April so that's not on here so when we represent this to you guys for a vote that will not be on there okay um we're looking to add 50 additional cameras to our system because we found a lot of blind spots and you really don't realize them until you start using the cameras where they

110are so now that we've been in this a couple years and you know we've had a lot of incidences where we were like oh we're fing the person and then all of a sudden they disappear um I went to each of the principles asked them their wish list on cameras and stoned that back a little bit and we came up with a nice round number of 50 additional ones should cover most of our blind spots do we have a print out or drawing of our cover camera coverage area I do I can I can provide that to you okay so you can so you can actually you have something you can actually use to walk around to judge your camera lenses and your well the drawings I have look like this but I actually went

111to each camera and I actually have a picture from each camera uh at some areas mostly that's exterior interior we really try not to do overlap just because you know the cameras are space yeah for the number of space um what was that um this is for Patty Patty the um cameras would they be coming out of our safety grant that we got or um at this point we'd have to evaluate what we're breaking out for security and for the mental health supports we evaluate that because supposedly there's money sitting there especially for safety so another thing that uh we're looking to get is a portable chair lift for our stages as you know our our all the stages in the district don't really have wheelchair access which has never become an issue but we

112want to prevent that so they sell portable chair lifts and that you know that we could bring them here we could take them to cdale we could take them to anywhere in the district same with graduation or or wherever we would need them or any kind of large event where we'd um it would allow us to provide everybody access so that's on there what that we should only need one because most activities are not on the same night like when we have concerts they're not all at the same night it's completely portable you can put it on the back of a pickup truck and we also have a box truck to move it so like like tonight we could put it here for your event and then tomorrow we could have it at cdale for

113an event and then you know we can utilize it that way and if if there is a larger need then we can always look at more than one but I think one to start is a good a good thing to have so now I'm going to turn this over to Chief bom to go over some of the security so just to be clear for Mr Shi and for the board um these capital projects are what we we have already proposed inside the budget and some of those projections for the 2526 calendar year um so we wanted to detail out those and give an explanation to the board as to what what what what's driving that $2.2 million Capital um project um line it and and such so and we're going to break the roofing project

114out separate to the other ones just because of the cost of it so that way that'll be a separate vote from the others correct Dr David eer yes we're going to want to do that right the other capital projects will will be captured inside if there is an affirmative on the budget when we do get to a final budget those will be affirm through the vote of the budget itself but we will certainly due to the the nature of that project and the cost of that we want to single that out in a in a separate motion okay good evening so when I took this position one of the first things that I needed to do was find a way that we can have a quicker more reliable access um way to communicate with our

115law enforcement um police departments that are responding to any kind of emergency situation or critical incident that can happen um with the help of uh Chief Leatherman from Eastern Burks he got me in contact with the Burks County uh Chief D deputy director of communications who then got me in contact with Montgomery County communications and with the support of all of our Chiefs of police and the police departments that are in our community and surrounding we now have and gotten permission to be on County radio so if an incident would happen my officers and I can communicate directly to a dispatcher that's on County radio and we can talk amongst other officers that are responding to give them live feedback information firsthand so with that we also have an increased number of your armed officers

116at your school district we now have four three are District employees and one is a contractor all three secondary schools have an officer assigned to them Middle School East West and the senior high I cover all elementary schools so our officers we are all duly sworn police officers we've all graduated the academy we have all been sworn in by the by the courts that we make traffic and not traffic arrests they are citations all are summary offenses and about it so in addition to this writing citations we also teach Internet safety cyber bullying and the dangers of vaping but we also look at it from a law enforcement aspect you know what are the crimes how what are the punishments what can you be arrested and charge for if you do these things now last

117school year our officers wrote the 2324 school year we had 66 arrests in Burks County and 47 in Montgomery County this year only from August to February 4th Burks County we have 72 arrests and there's about 10 that were undocked um so those were not counting right now but from August until March we had 72 in Burks and 10 in Mont Armory County so we're busy we're very busy of what we're doing and we're teaching classes we're also mentoring the you know the younger children we're helping them um some of our officers were coaches um and we're trying to build a connection with the kids and help them get through some of these tough times with them also part of our job is helping Scott with the physical assessment criteria which is right now we're

118looking at finishing the tier one um assessments through the state which is the tier one two and three year one is basically your Baseline for school safety um we look at a building and see what its vulnerabilities are and we go by the state regulations and what was required by us to have these things taken care of one of which is having parking lots numbered and signed so emergency Personnel coming they will know go to the parking lot one or two we're also going to have any building or any classroom that has Windows there's going to be exterior numbers need to be put on those so again emergency response coming they know it's classroom 22 and there's either victim in there or that is where the the subject is in Ballers Bowers are going to

119be put in place and barriers where uh a vehicle can access the building either by accident or intentionally those are all projects that are going to be put up in place um shortly in the near future we also started the school safe uh Community Council where we have local law enforcement our Chiefs sergeants anyone who can come and all of our district leaders working together we all have the inside of the building and the outside with the police departments we work together and we've come up with some fantastic ideas and that's all we got right now so I can't emphasize enough for the board uh officer bom's uh first bullet of two-way communication between the counties and the district that is a struggle between um that police departments themselves have they really don't connect um

120outside of one another absent of their own personal cell phones so our our ability to connect that for for Burks and mcgomery um has really been and and for Burks uh has has been really helpful we believe is going to be truly helpful in in just a smoother communication system to emergency responses so I really do uh want to highlight that and um you know in the era of which we are currently in in school safety our ability to have armed officers at at our four secondary buildings for officer bom to be able to assist in getting around to our six elementary schools um is fantastic um it I do believe and so a lot of the feedback I've heard um from our families from our students is that uh you know his visibility along

121with all of our other officers and security folks um does lead in a feeling of of of of it being safer um while arrests or citations are up can you outline what what are a majority of those citations um that you're seeing right now from a general sense just for Burks County last year's number one arrests were 21 disorderly conducts this year for Burks County disorderly conducts are down to four it is our tobacco use is up to 42 this year and that's only not even the whole year this was just from August to um the first week into March and Montgomery County last year disorderly conducts were up this year it's it's about they're down all their numbers are down this year in Montgomery County yeah so we have seen a significant in in

122rise in and there's an Evan flow often with Vapes and we have seen a significant increase on that and and a more Vigilant approach we have a number of security at the at the high school and with our spos um being there um have taken a hard line with regard to those so um does account for for some of those those those pieces as well so thank you officer bone officer bone excuse me real quick does that inside the buildings or is that outside the buildings of smoking um all these arrests have been inside the buildings um we do arrest outside but we have not had to so to follow up with that the ballards and barriers we got through the pccd grant so they are in process we're going to start June beginning of

123June starting to uh put some of those in install some uh we had half done for this year and half done for next year so that is going to be coming to completion hopefully over the summer if I can get them here like July and August for the next year portion I'm going to try so have you figured out where you wanted to place them yet yes yes we have and they're five and a half foot centers so that's smaller than a car can fit through we looked at all first story entranceways so anywhere that some of our buildings have steps going up to the the the front offices and whatnot so we didn't put them there we put them more more on the areas where car could come in uh btown L was the

124biggest because as you know that's all flat on the whole side of the parking lot can we get L absolutely I can give you that so next we want to cover District Vehicles we have 24 District owned vehicles that fall under uh the facilities Department we have eight maintenance trucks four passenger vans two security Vans two dump trucks box truck um multi-use van and it four grounds trucks so those are we replaced some in 2019 um mileage wise most of our trucks don't have a lot of mileage they it's the age of the vehicles that usually gets us so um Miss denola and myself are looking at an ongoing replacement plan for those vehicles and I'll present that once we finalize how we want to go about replacing them but that's the list of vehicles

125that we have um any questions on anything I went over I know it was a large variety of things yes which is the van that has been sitting back at the garage in new berlinville for at least three months now that was the old Courier van so that was the multi-use van Fel it has a fuel pump problem where the fuel filter broke off of the receiver the screw part and because of the age of the van he was unable to get it so we're going he's going to try to modify it and get it to work the van itself there is no issue it's just that fuel line rotted and the fuel filter portion broke and there was one in Germany or something he told me but wasn't able to get it it's sitting

126at monero's service center but that's one of those vans we use for the grounds like if we have to move paint or if we use have it for the paint crew as well it's a m that's the multi-use van it's not for student use at all go ahead and your assistant what does he do during the day the supervisor he goes job site to job site and makes sure that they have what they need they're doing what they're supposed to and gives a hand where once again we have six people which does not give if we're running lines somebody has to feed lines so either I'll be at a job site he'll be a job site trying to help our guys with whatever the job is he's also ing parts so our guys don't have

127to take the time to try to find best price because we're always trying to find best price any thoughts on possibly marking one of those security vehicles we have two of them marked with school police okay and lights they do not have light lights at the so just my thoughts for officer bom who covering all the elementary schools it's it's impossible for him to to react to a critical incident in a timely fashion if he right doesn't have light so at least his vehicle to have lights that's just my opinion but we we were going to look we looked at some okay actual police vehic light packages are not that expensive yeah well if we can fit his van we can look at that to fit his his van with lights let's said I was

128going to give him an 18 van and he didn't want it so he's happy with the minivan so any other questions all right well thank you very much thank you Mr she and I I'll tell you what while you're you're still at the podium why don't you make our next introduction and we're going to invite Mr Lynch up just to talk a little bit about some of the the proposed services for um design and construction that are here in front of the board this evening um Scott maybe you want to highlight some of those but certainly invite Mr Lynch up to the podium with you sure so the board had instructed uh the administration to look at multiple Avenues so how to repair Bordertown L's heating system it's a very unique system because each room

129has its own heating package and cooling package so they're basically almost like a hotel he like it does everything in the wall which is very unusual in a building buildings of our size because usually have a centralized heating system which all the other buildings do so we partnered with cha to give you guys that study on the best ways to proceed they've given us a study we given we we presented the results and now we would like to move forward onto the next step so he's going to give you a proposal of services that they're willing to do uh for the district for your guys' approval okay and without further Ado Mr Lynch thank you Mr Lynch not to put you on the spot but just to go over some of the highlights of of

130the proposed services that you have here uh good evening thank you very much for the invitation um I do not have a 75 slide PowerPoint presentation for you this evening you'll be happy to hear uh we did that last month when um I had my uh staff here and we went through the various options that were looked at as part of the uh the study and um the long and short is that a vrf system is proposed something that the district has familiarity with we have added the large box spaces in the elementary school as requested we're also replacing pneumatics with a fully automated uh ATC system and then we have also replaced the gear the S the electrical switch gear and the emergency generator also as a part of the package the roof is

131going to be replaced so this would be a project that would be designed between now and about the end of the year then we would bid it publicly um and the construction is proposed to be um accomplished over the course of two summers so it would only be done when the building is vacant of uh students and uh we think that we have more than adequate time to do it during uh the two summers so that's the long and short of it the uh proposal um has been in your hands I've worked with Mr sultanic office on uh the scope and I believe that we're ready to proceed with your blessing any questions from the board with regard to scope of services when I read this I'm seeing 11.2 million on the proposal here but

132I saw 15 million on the original proposal which I'm just trying to dis distinguish what the difference is are so I think we're talking about the cost estimate for the project right so the total project cost is estimated with construction cost and soft cost soft costs are permit fees Etc the design cost is estimated about $15 million and that was up from 12 million when we added the big box spaces so total project cost I think $15 million our proposal is roughly 7% for the design and construction administration of the project and one note that the solicitor's office brought up is they wanted to know how much time would we spend on site during construction and that's for full-time observation on your behalf have to manage the contractors during that time frame both Summers will

133be relatively intense um as far as getting work in but the purpose is to get it designed early get it bid early give the contractors time for procurement for equipment because you've heard all of the stories about switch gear and and generators and be on time for delivery while the students aren't in in those two summers so that's the game plan constru man full cont correct but like say I still I see 11.2 where's the difference come in I'm sorry I'm not exactly sure where the 11.2 million section one General the approximate construction cost of this project is estimated the 11.2 million oh I apologize so the the um image that's shown is the original uh proposal that was uh provided back in February and I've since revised the proposal based on the addition of

134the big box bases okay so that should be 15 so that should be 15 um the solicitor's office has asked me for a revised proposal which we put together and I'll make sure that that number is corrected in accordance with your question okay thank you and I'll make sure I get that updated proposal number uh to to the board as well so with regard to this uh these this is is the proposed Services what we uh would like to bring to the board at the March 25th is an agreement um that's one other question Dr yeah uh you're going to be the project manager and you're going to be everything we're going to do do the design and provide the construction Administration yes we had that in the past and that didn't work very well

135okay so I'm against that part of it Mr nman can you share a little bit of what what is what your experience was I guess so that maybe Mr uh Lynch can speak to that as to what their services provide I believe it was by De huy if I'm correct am I Mr roofy that was de huy you did everything and that's where we had issues which over at the high school which project the High School a high school renovation designed by kcba and we were the construction manager and that's where the tennis courts fell apart and we complained about those tennis courts from day one mhm that they were not right and yet here we are we still have water on them and we're stuck with them got you got that yeah so I

136researched that because I've heard it uh so it was brought to the board's attention at that time that the tennis courts were not done correctly and they accepted a $33,000 cut in the price of the project to compensate for that instead of correcting it so that was the choice of the board at that time it was neither de huie's problem or decision to do that nor stuer that was a something between once again I wasn't here so I'm I'm telling you what was on the paperwork that I had well I would prefer two separate so we don't have this issue ever again yeah think would if I could just add from what Mr sheal has um researched it was a former um employee of the district that made a recommendation to the board that the

137board followed um it was not Dewey's recommendation it was um an individual employees recommendation I don't know if that helps explain what might have occurred that is that's correct Mrs Miss denle is correct no that's that's not what I'm look usually like you as the the construction company which is what you are you're designing would deal with someone from the district who would be the the project manager for the district it would act as the interface between you and the district and I I don't see that I I don't know if you're going to act as the project M the district project Pro manager or and if if so that we we hired fed davia for the past project well that's I don't see that anywhere that we're going to have a district project manager

138because that's that's that's the process and I saw design a design team District design team and I didn't know who that referred to when I read it you you would meet with the district design team for for well as far as executing the design yeah I don't I don't know who that means that's so we would report to Scott okay right as the district contact so all of the design meetings would be Scott with but that would make him the district project manager is that is that is that the direction we're going I'm just I don't I mean just asking the question so I I don't know that we have a district uh project manager they would report as the facili Director um through this proposal the services are provided that that Dewey is providing

139is the design right they did the study they've completed the study so from that this proposal um allows cha dwey to uh design then the needs and as such then becomes the contract manager on site so they prepare the bid documents right for the projects to go out and then have oversight of the project throughout its entirety reporting to the director of facilities so so that's what I'm getting at are we going to have the director of facilities who's going to act as like our project manager for it because this isn't you guys I mean you're you have your own chain of command and organization but you're responsible to DUI as as you report to and who employs you as far as the who's who's in responsible for the district side that would be the

140director of facilities that but but I'm saying as you know as far as project management experience do Scott have that or or should we be looking at somehow to help him or some or to look outside for a project manager that would work for the district specifically as aison between the contract companies and the district I'm only saying that because I really still don't know how we managed to 60 million in 2014 2015 when we we spent all that for all the and you you were I don't think you were even here how we managed all that through because I don't even know if we had anybody on the district side it was working that way so I'm just I just want an accounting of how the dollars are going to go from someone that's

141responsible for it on the district side and I also at the same time don't want to hang Scott out to dry on yeah seen Roofing projects in this in the district um and the HC portion yeah is is similar to what we did in 2019 2020 um that's but you're doing a 15 million project manager for $15 million project it's a little bit different so Dewey works on behalf of the school district right so they they right they're their own entity but they're they're working on behalf as a client service so um they're working in conjunction with our facilities department and our business office uh in relatable Billings in in all the the the the payroll status as as a prevailing wages and working through all the components to it um you know and I

142can speak from experience from Dewey and just recently working on a former project at a former School District on a $70 million they were the design and construction management company that worked directly with our director of facilities and worked with our business business manager and and managing that I have great confidence in a project of this size that between dwey and um our director of facilities Mr shial that that can be managed and Mrs Den Cole that that that can be managed appropriately okay I'm just looking for we have a point of contact Scott's going to be because I don't think that was pointed out in our last big our last big project that there was ever a point of contact that really designated Y and if we have if Scott is going to be

143the point the point of contct then that's that answers that question but I still don't who's the design committee is that would that be Scott and would be Scott uh that would be Scott the building administration at Boyertown um Elementary it would involve uh various components from Personnel at the district office as well Mrs Denna colum myself Mr Stout and such we should identify that though somewhere in the organization to chart of this of this building of this you know this this project I'm happy to do that and ultimately I'm I'm reporting to you the board and to the community so you'll see me I'm the business practice leader for cha in Pennsylvania yeah um and I have and I have my team if you invite me back I'll present as often as you like

144on the status of the project especially as we get ready ready for each of these Summers of construction and I'm just looking for the organizational portion of it uh because it the your side of the of the organization seems to be clearly defined I think our side of the organization also has to be clearly defined so that we know who's working with who and if I have a question at some time I wouldn't go to you I would go to I'm I'm happy to help with the team in order to do that you don't want you don't want me to be coming to you but believe me you don't want me to comeing to you with questions so I would who would I go to on our our side with the question to get the

145answer and I just I don't want to cross those lines because I think I don't think it's appropriate for me to do that so I'm just looking for an organizational chart of this of the construction project on the Bordertown side the same as you have on your side absolutely yeah we can and we can list we can list that out in in in an updated proposal for that makes sense I mean I'm not I'm not being too obtuse with this nope okay every question can come to me and if I don't have the answer we're going to go to Mr sheal and and we'll work down that chart absolutely do work with Jamie team well yeah you would continue that doesn't stop all just it just means I don't go there I go there or

146there where wherever I'm designed on this side so what I would ask is is uh Mr Lynch Mr Shi if you can get an updated this updated proposal and also outlines both of those teams inside of it um so I can get that to the board what we will plan to do for the 25th is uh work with Mr Sultan's office on an finalized agreement this is just a proposal we need an agreement in place um in order for the board to approve any movement forward um in regards to the uh the proposal as such not question I guess I'm still going back to you Mr sheeld are you going to be comfortable making decisions like this because it's going to be your neck on the shopping block well I would think that any decisions

147that would be any decisions would be brought back to the board and I will I'm happy to answer to you guys and I've done that and those decisions would ultimately be done as by you guys change orders and whatnot come to you guys first no not minimal ones hopefully we don't have too many that's what I'd like I want none okay well we will plan on bringing that back uh if you can get updated proposal to me and I'll get it to the board and then we'll bring up an agreement in a couple of weeks thank you all right thank you Mr Lynch Mr broy deduct change orders are sometimes helpful to see yeah but I don't see too many we did I'm sorry we did get one we got what 200,000 on bring Mr

148D Dan if you can go through item f for the board the 2425 Ida agreement with the bciu and just explain some of the Dynamics of this oh I I'm sorry I I did skip skip this sorry about that so Mr flight welcome you our director of technology to talk a little bit about some it capital projects as well hello everybody how are you I have uh just four projects that are being uh proposed for the 2526 school year two of those projects revolve around the replenishment of student devices both at the high school and the Chromebook devices at our fifth grade level these projects are factored into my yearly budget from an accounting standpoint in full on the Windows devices and from the Chromebook perspective I did allocate the finance charge after speaking with

149Mrs denola she did make the recommendation that we go forward with a proposal where we outright purchased the Chromebooks and continued with the fair market lease value on the Windows laptops the advantages of that are that after we get our four years of service out of the Dell laptops for our 9 through 12th grades we will then be able to dispose of the items back to the financing company not only will that save us money in the overall cost because the overall four years of the lease is less than the outright Purchase cost it also saves us from disposal fees at the end of that 4year time period the Chromebooks would be served at a minimum of five years of of service and this is part of the replenishment plan that we have developed after

150we went to one:1 devices back in 2019 the original Windows proposal was back in 2023 the second project that you see on your screen there is for our data center uh replenishment our data center has now the hardware inside of our data center has been marked end of support end of life by the manufacturer it is over five years old it is time for replenishment when you replenish new servers you are able to streamline your architectural processes and you're also able to ensure the latest insecurity and um update features that project would would be uh totaled and I I I apolog olizee I don't have this slide and I am I can't read that far um but um that that would be financed through a um technology fund purchase the last item on the agenda

151or did I just go backwards I apologize can someone tell me what's the thir is that the third our third uh project is a uh switching project which is eate eligible eate is a fund uh Federal program that allows us to to utilize federal dollars uh in determining infrastructure needs through networking that would be the total replenishment of all of our switching devices in all of our buildings that would be uh behind the scenes uh infrastructure that allows us to deliver Wireless and connected network connectivity throughout the entire building that is an e-rate funded purchase so the figures there would be uh 50% federally funded 50% District funded does anyone have any questions regarding those projects so just to recap the financial impact the um Dell Latitude laptops um The Proposal would be that we

152would lease those at a cost of $5,750 per year that would be as part of the um it Department's general fund budget the Chromebooks would be purchased outright that would be um purchased through the technology Reserve fund um and that would be a total of $158,400 the server refresh again would be technology reserve and that would be $149,100 1,436 188 but we anticipate $343,500 would be funded by rate as it is an rate eligible project and the total cost to the district then would be $ 357,96 EV we would not move forward with that project until we've received our approval for the e- rate funding the Chromebooks what do we do with them after the five years after the five years they're basically outdated and unusable so we would get the most life out of

153them and then we we would replenish them um with how do we get rid of them we would C their electronic resp uh disposal there's various fees that are in line with that but they are minimal that would be figured in as part of the um it operating budget each year and what these purchases do is helps sustain this the um technology within the district and make sure we have an established replenishment cycle during the pandemic a lot of Technology was put in place in the district um with and with all the you know changes within Administration there was no real plan for um how do we replenish this and what kind of cycle we've replenish all of this technology so teacher teachers and students have the um best tools that they need so this

154really is a step forward in making sure that we're doing that continual planning that we have established these replenishment cycles and that we're following that replenishment cycle and can you refresh my memory because I'm not 100% sure is there about 8 million in that capital projects for it yes thanks thank you thanks Mr White okay jumping down to item F Mr Dan can you just give a quick review of the Ida agreement with BCU so annually we we receive Ida 611 funds those are funds to support special special education of our students um for 20242 our um allotment is 1,417 244 um this allotment is established um by state formula based upon um poverty levels and um identified students within our district um that's a decrease of about $38,000 from the prior year These funds

155um are utilized to um fund mostly um our special education teachers and other special education needs of our students so this would be placed on the March 25th agenda for the board's approval and acceptance that says 2425 it would be 2425 okay yeah and under item H just our solicitor appointment you can see they're listed and you have that contract in front of you um some of the specifics and the annual appointment for the fiscal year for for Fox rosch child and I did skip over jumping around a little bit here all right so we'll go back so that was item H uh we will go back to item G and uh again this is an annual uh contract that Bordertown school district and the YMCA have have had for a number of years this

156contract does include a 3% increase from uh last year there are four buildings that you see inside of that contract Boyertown Gilberts New Hanover and Washington that do provide both morning and afternoon um before and after care so just a reminder to the board some of the Partnerships that we do have with the why um our high school swim team does utilize the Boyertown y for team practices and home meets at no cost um our youth and government engages approximately 60 middle and high school youths involved in our model governments um the uh the YMCA does also host lifeguarding courses for students seeking PE credit and uh they do partner with us around safety around water and serves the district's entire third grade class so we we do encourage this partnership with the YMCA and

157um this is a contract that involves before and after care for next year okay item H we already reviewed that our solicitor appointment we do have three trips for your consideration those three trips in include our youth and government as I just shared um in addition to that we also have our um senior class trip for 2026 in fact we had a successful trip that just returned last week and uh our math counts state competition ition for our Middle School West students and you can see there are some of the specifics and descriptions for each of those so we do recommend your consideration of those and we'll bring forward that at our March 25th for your your vote item J uh Washington Elementary School donation uh Mrs dorenzo if Mr dorenzo is still present here

158if you want to step forward and just speak for a moment to the Washington uh donation and its minig grant program so um Mrs Sartor who you met earlier um took the initiative to write a grant to provide some literature that goes with all of the math standards um students have the opportunity to dig deeper into texts with math Focus um teachers use the the um text as a mentor text as they introdu math lessons um and it really Sparks interest in the kids um we' we have a wonderful book room here so Mrs saror worked to kind of tag the books by grade level um teachers can take them into their classrooms put them in a center so that kids can enjoy them and and really you know expand their um inquiry their math

159inquiry through you know through the use of literature so um we're really excited to be able to um you know take advantage of of the grant that that Tara wrote for us so does anybody have any questions okay thank you thank you Mrs dorenzo in item K I'm going to invite Mr mayori Middle School East principal to speak about the bear donation thank you very much much thank you very much we have the description in the board agenda the purpose of this bear to add to our parade of bears that's around Boer toown unfortunately uh the district lost a valued member a few weeks ago um Robin sour passed away she touched the lives of many both at bash and at Junior High East Middle School East so in honor for memory family friends uh

160local community members have been putting together and acknowledging a commitment to purchasing a large siiz bear um that would be placed in our library in honor of her uh we think this is a fitting recognition and memorial for her and her service it would come at again all expenses coming from the donations there would be little to no upkeep needed this would be indoors uh in housed in our library so we hope when it comes up for a vote next uh the meeting you'll you'll approve that thank you thank you Mr mayori any question questions so just to recap real quick and I do appreciate the uh board's U patience as we work through a lot of a lot of uh items here a lot of good things uh a lot of things that we

161wanted to inform you of as well so item a planetarium we will bring some information back to you um as we meet again with Miss town and an itemized list of some things for your consideration as we move forward both the Steals and the um the Steels Mystery Science presentation will BR be bringing a motion forward at our March 25th uh meeting for your consideration of approval uh item C the facilities overview and item D the it capital projects both of those are going to be captured inside of the budget of for 2526 so all of those items are really going to be inside for your consideration inside the budget um The Proposal for design as as stated we will bring an agreement forward for our next meeting the Ida agreement with the IU um

162will be at be formed into a motion at the 25th meeting the Boyertown YMCA will be brought forward as a motion as well as the solicitor appointment the three overnight trips as well as the two donations will all be formed into motions for the March 25th meeting for your consideration so that takes us down down to reports Mr broy BCI your report coule things here I think Dr David already has which is the an solvent Awards you're aware of that so should be set for that one do that okay good and also the camp connect you're aware of the camp connect it's a bereavement Camp that's run each year and there's two different dates for it uh it's a pretty good program I think you have all the we just received that uh this morning

163and we'll be getting that out to our director of student services for her to share with with families that she cannect good program something worthwhile to go through the next thing I have is is the federal news and the state news and I am not going to read you all 100 uh State uh state news and state bills that are going out but just to try and give you a flavor the federal news there's only 20 there's really only one that that I would think that would bring to your attention which would be the enforcement of the 2020 Title 9 rule which could possibly affect us that moves things back from the 2023 or 2022 2024 back to the 2020 so that could have an effect there's a like a hundred State ones I'm just

164going to go over a couple that I think might affect us or might show us some things that are coming our way we need to think about uh they they usually open up applications for dual credit Innovation grants I know we have a dual credit program I don't know uh you know they open they opened the applications on January 13th there's like $14 million out there this year it's February 10th it was over so if we didn't get anything out there we missed it but something to keep our our eyes open for next year that's uh that's the Dual the Dual dual credit program is a real good program it helps it helps kids get through helps them get uh Daylight Saving Time become a big issue I think you might be aware of that

165there's one to prohibit it and one to permanent so I'm not sure which of those two laws is going to go through but just are you aware that that's that is moving forward so daylight saving time is Once Again becoming a a Hut button issue which which affects the schools because it's our kids will be coming in school or leaving in you know Darkness or light whatever uh the vaccine consent for miners rules coming out that's something also could could affect us and we start the sports we got the fairness and wom women's act that's coming out that could have you know in could have some effect on us with our Sports programs uh for board members there's increasing signature requirements for school board candidates that's not coming out for this one but it's out

166there they want to go from 10 to 100 for for the school boards uh yeah corros filing for Schoolboard petition circulation or some so there's more coming out the point is there's things happening with Schoolboard elections that you need to know about I don't know about the hearing a for hearing a test for school bus drivers I think that might be to try and help them keep their sanity so I'm not going to go over that one too much uh there's a lot of things around taxes optional tax optional property tax frees uh Homestead and Farm Act property tax relief school property tax tax elimination Constitutional Amendment senior property tax freeze uh just so you guys are aware that there may be some upheaval over the last couple next couple years uh here's one we

167just we did we did have the discussions that moved our starting date back on our school days well here's the next thing requireed school years begin after Labor Day that's being pushed forward House Bill 370 like I say these are only bills that are out there there's nothing says that any going to p it's just that they're they're in in process and they have sponsors uh nothing oh also requiring background checks for school board member candidate for school board candidates so they're they're definitely doing a lot on school on School Board elections let's see what else once again women's fairness fairness and women's sports acts that's coming there senior property tax free so another another another bill on that so I guess what I'm trying to say I think that's all what I'm trying to

168say is there's a lot of bills and a lot of things moving through Congress right now either sponsored or actually moving there it could have large effects on us moving forward so we have to be aware of that especially as as we move forward think of how that's going to affect us that's it I have a question Mr broy where can you get that summary on the bciu or is there a link for that we yeah so we we we will be it's now been introduced uh to to the board members it was introduced to superintendent this morning so it'll be shared as a file in the weekly report to the board so you'll be receiving that it's an interesting document it's much less than it's much less than the other one I get that's

169about that I'm sure you had that Mr up BCTC the only thing I have is the fact that we're still working on our budget at the BCTC that's it okay so it does take us down to the committee work presentation so as as as we had discussed at um one of our special meetings back in February was an update to our 006 policy with regard to meetings you can see that attached if you take your uh your attention to page 10 of that document that's where the changes were made they're bolded inside of that and it's under the heading of committee meetings in which the paragraph now changes to standing committee meetings will be schedule 1 hour before each Committee of the whole and voting meeting with the four committees rotating every other month committee

170meeting may be called at any time and then the rest of that language is the same along with the the bolded um in consultation um with um superintendent or his or her design and consultation with committee chair prepare all agendas for the meetings so it was something we had discussed at uh that special meeting and updating that uh language with regard to that we wanted to bring this draft back to you for your consideration and if so move it to a first read at our March 25th legislative meeting and then also 85.1 Mrs Landis and her team had and Mr fight had presented at that same special meeting in regard to to the use of generative artificial intelligence and all of the components that we had discussed and the discussion that we had there those

171uh changes were made throughout the document that you can see there in its draft form um whether not they're they're they're crossed out or bolded are all the changes to what we were directed to make with inside that document as we discussed at that meeting so it ask for your consideration to look through that again what we're looking to do is bring both of these policies back to the March 25th meeting for a first [Music] read that's all I have Mr Pano that brings us to public commment period number one no one has signed up so right now I'll be looking for the approval of the February 25th 2025 Board of School director meeting minutes Z moves I'll second Mrs Scott yes Mr Brad up to Grove yes Mr Roger igrov Mr Zada yes Mr

172broy yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman no Mr penello yes motion carries that takes us to our superintendent itemized agenda we have one one one item for your consideration and vote this evening that is our um Personnel so we're looking for a motion this evening to approve parel boo Miss diamond yeah this gets confusing because we have somebody res in that just took it for the payroll what is going on there can you explain the individual that we offered to position to was supposed to come in and do pre-employment paperwork sent a text saying that she was not going to accept the job she accepted a job at another employer I'd like to just take a a minute I don't know how many of you oh let the let the vote go through let the

173V go sure Mr Scott yes Mr Brad upov yes Mr Roger upov yes Mr Zada yes Mr broy yes Mrs Katz yes Miss nyman yes Mr panello yes motion carries thank you um I don't know how many of you are aware but the um Boyertown Community lost a member of the um High School staff staff on Friday um Kate to blasi kelchner um who had been with the district since 2023 um she lost her battle to cancer on Friday um so her services are Thursday evening um at alond funeral home in um reading you like to make another introduction yes absolutely and you know Dr David Heiser already had spoken about Jen Joy um Jen was with the district for 19 years um we are sad to see her go but know that uh she

174has a wonderful opportunity in front of her um and we have an attendance this evening a very patient um individual um Jacqueline balanka um is here she will be our new uh K to8 curriculum supervisor um Jacqueline has 25 years in public Ed so uh through the interview process uh through two interviews um she was able to obviously uh rise to the top and was a clear candidate uh for this role so we are extremely happy uh to have her joining um our team great welcome no one signed up for Public public comment period number two so this time we'll go to board comment Mr up Grove I want to thank the uh people here that put this presentation on and uh it was very good and thank you nman m Katz Scott I'll make

175it brief I know we're tired um I just wanted to thank Dr David Heiser and Mr Stout for the tour last week it was really a wonderful uh time I would recommend that if school board members don't get the chance to get into the classroom and if you're available I know work schedules and things like that get in the way I would recommend it it was great interacting with the kids and engaging with them and they're working on their projects and um they were very welcoming you know I thought they might be a little shy with board members and things oh no no no no no if you need a hug go to prek and you will get as many hugs as you want and um I just the project for Shark Tank I hope

176that at some point we know who won because they they insist that each group insisted they talked to everyone to find out which logo do you like what do you what do you think about this what do you think about so the kids were really en engaged with that too so it was a lot of fun and it was a long day I was exhausted but it was well worth it so I I appreciate the opportunity Mr broy Quick want to thank uh Washington Elementary School for the presentation um it is amazing with the kids do um I did the the book reading last week and blew me away so we do have a lot of positives going on um as I would like to thank Mr dve or Dr David Heiser the surveys that

177we're starting to put out and the responses we're getting is really opening a lot of people's eyes and you know my four years on the board we never did stuff like that so I hope we keep it going and even share more of some of the the answers that people have given um and just to show the rest of the school district that we are starting to head on the right track so again thank you with the meeting this short I wouldn't dream of adding more comments to it so I'll be giving it to Dr David Heiser for the upcoming announcements okay thank you um in two weeks we will be hosting the March 25th legislative meeting meeting that will be back at the education center and speaking about a number of those motions that

178I mentioned earlier um on April 8th we will have our uh next Committee of the whole in which we already have a uh pretty full agenda already building so again uh pack a snack for April 8th we have lots of things to talk about including a lot of Finance motion to adjourn media jour [Music] [Applause] [Music]