001Good evening. Welcome to the combined work session and regular inperson in virtual in virtual meeting for August 12th, 2025. The second item on the work session agenda is a is a presentation of the PSBA's honor role of school board service programs by board president Desire Lamar Murphy. This honor role board service uh school board service nominee or uh awardee is Deborah Williams. And this reads, "The governing bo board of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association proudly presents a certificate of appreciation to Deborah Williams of Darby School District in recogn recognition of ongoing schoolboard service and the long-term contributions of individuals who bring their energy, talent, and values to the guidance of youth and the public education in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Sign Allison Matthysse and Nathan Mains for five years of service. Can we please give
002Deborah a round of applause? I have communicated with board member um Glenn and uh Miss Kale who me that they both are out of are out of the area and unable to be in attendance this evening and they are excused from tonight's meeting. Roll call. Board President, Secretary um Rogers, please. >> Miss Gibbs, >> present. >> Miss Deborah Williams, >> present. >> Mr. Hane, >> present. >> Mr. Fields, >> present. >> Mr. War Savage, >> present. >> Miss Britney Williams, >> present. >> Miss Murphy Mercy, >> present. >> Thank you. The district posted this evening's agenda agenda to board docs at least 24 hours prior to the commencement of this meeting. Is there a motion to approve the previously posted agenda? >> So moved. >> Are there any amendments to offer? >> There are no
003amendments. >> The agenda has been has been moved and seconded. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> Those abstaining, please signify by saying I I oppose. I'm sorry, I post, please say I oppose. Those abstaining, please signify by saying I abstain. Motion carried. The minutes of the combined work session regular meeting for June 3rd and the voting meetings on June 17th and June 26 of 2025 are in hands of each board member and have been made available to the public. I move for their adoption. >> Second. Second. Are there any comments from the board? Any comments from the public? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Those opposed, please say I oppose. >> Those abstaining, please say I abstain. >> Motion carried. The report of the secretary is
004in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public and I move for it adoption. >> Second. >> Are there any comments from the board? Any comments from the public? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Those opposed, please say I oppose. Those abstaining, please say I abstain. Motion carried. Miss Brittney Williams. >> The report of the treasure is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public. I move for it adoption. >> Second. >> Are there any comments from the board? Are any comments from the public? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Those opposed, please say I oppose. Those abstaining, please say abstain. Motion carried. The budgeted personnel and enrollment reports have been made available to
005the public and the and are are part of the record. No vote is required. Good evening, board president Murphy Marsy, members of the board of school directors, administration, teachers, staff, students, parents, and members of the community of the Upper Army School District. We are getting ready to open another school year. As a district, we have remained very busy since the conclusion of the 2425 school year. We have been extremely busy managing facilities improvements, updating policy and procedures to meet new federal and state requirements, hiring new staff, and preparing our buildings for the first day of school. This evening, I'm going to provide an update on some of our summer projects, discuss our potential purchase of the Delaware County Memorial Hospital, federal and state budget update, a staffing update, and information regarding our focus for the
006school year this year. Let me begin my remarks this evening by providing an update on just a few of our capital improvements. This summer, we set out on an ambitious plan. Thanks to our leadership of our CFO, Craig Rogers, and our director of operations, Mr. Marvin Lee, and his and their team, we are renovating and improving Beverly Hills Middle School, a speestous abatement, floor, furniture, new furniture in the building, and improving the heating and ventilation systems. We'll have more pictures in the next month to come when we give an update there. Hillrest Elementary School asestous abatement throughout the summer. New furniture, new flooring, and a new gym floor. The pictures look awesome. We can't wait to show you what the new gym floor will look like at Hillrest Elementary School. Garford Elementary School also is
007getting an update with a new gym floor, new furniture, and asbesus abatement. West West Park Elementary School, new flooring, furniture, uh a new gym floor there, and asbesus abatement as well. Primus Elementary School has new HVAC ventilation systems have been updated. We hope to have that ready to go by the 19th of August. And then Clifton Heights Middle School, if you had had chance to drive by lately, the building is getting up out of the ground. We have steel erected there. Um, a lot of the progress is being made pretty quickly. Our hope is that we are still on pace to open Clifton in August of 26. We will be having public meetings with the community about Clifton Heights as well as redistricting that will take place. Please pay attention to those updates with your
008building principles and the district website. These are just a few of the larger projects that are taking place this summer. Since the administrative team has been in place, we have worked over the past several years to have a lot of very ambitious summer improvements. The district facilities are used pretty regularly by the community and we're doing our best to make muchneeded improvements so that the schools and campuses are seen as points of pride. I want to take this opportunity to thank the entire administrative team and the board for working together to pull all this off. Our school facilities are used for literally thousands of community events beyond what the school district holds. And it takes a tremendous amount of coordination, scheduling, and patience to complete largecale facilities improvements when our facilities are in constant use.
009This summer was no small task and a lot of that responsibility and pressure rest with on the shoulders of our director of operations Marvin Lee, manager of facilities Chris Rosider, Craig Harnichek who oversees capital improvement projects, Brad Carrer who's an assistant manager of facilities, and I also want to thank the directors, Mrs. Simone, Dr. Mazakowski, and all of the principles in the district, and Dr. Kelly. I'm also again thankful to our board of school directors for providing us with the support to move forward to improve the district facilities. Before I move into the next topic for this evening, I would also like to acknowledge the fact that construction projects are always inconvenient and I want to thank you say thank you to the community for your patience and support. I know that the new middle
010school project in Clifton is a major project in that area and I am very appreciative of the community's patience and support. As I look around at all of the uncertainty we face in public education, I feel blessed to have the team we have here in the district leading all of this important and historical work. With respect to the team, I would like to acknowledge our efforts and progress to solidify staffing for the 2526 school year. There was an article in the Philadelphia Inquir on June 17, 2025 regarding the ongoing teacher shortage crisis in the country and here in Pennsylvania. The article points out that Delaware County is among the areas in the state with the highest rate of attrition and number of emergency certified teachers. I know that we continue to look for innovative ways
011to encourage our high school graduates to p pursue the field of education and I also know that Delaware County Community College continues to do their part to make the cost and process to become a teacher more realistic. With this in mind, I will continue to remind everyone that the the support is very real that's needed to provide the appropriate educational opportunities for all students. It requires a highly qualified teacher in key subject areas such as math, science, and reading as well as special education. And students also in need of English language support all require specific, highly trained teachers in their areas of concern where we have shortages. Public education is one of the most important professions in this country and I hope that the tone, respect, and support on a national level improves or the
012teacher shortage will only continue. For the past few years, I've made it a focus to recruit and retain staff. Here in Upper Derby, our principles, directors, and the office of recruitment, retention, and culture have been working non-stop, as well as our HR office to do their best to open the school year with all teaching positions, support staff positions, bus drivers, crossing guards, noon time assistants, and other vacancies filled. Right now, we have approximately 98% of our professional staff positions filled. We are still in need of specific teaching positions for special education, including autistic support, reading specialists, English language learners, and some secondary math and science positions. Crossing guards, bus drivers, and support staff, and noon time assistants are also always in great need. We will continue to keep vacant positions posted until they until they
013are filled. As I put this report together on August the 4th, we only had 13 unfilled positions out of 984 total professional teaching staff. Again, close to 98% of our staff has been met. Congratulations to the team for all of your hard work. For the past several years, I provided the following update on the um opening of our schools. We will be opening schools on time with appropriate staff as our highest priority. We are planning for a full opening of our schools with in-person instruction as well as other instructional models in order to compete with charter schools. Once again this year, we have asked teachers at the secondary level to consider teaching an additional course for additional compensation. I'm happy to report that any current secondary professional teacher teacher vacancy will be covered by a
014current Upper Derby teacher. I want to say thank you to our Upper Derby Education Association and their leadership team, Dr. Parkinson, the principal of the high school, Mr. Jane Finch, our supervisor K to2 guidance, who helped support scheduling at the high school with assistant principal Danielle Reno, Miss Kelly Simone, the director of secondary education, our district supervisors, Mr. Marshallac, our assistant superintendent of uh student services, for all continuing to do what you do best to provide as many educational opportunities as we can. We have a lot of intense meetings trying to figure out the best path forward throughout the summer. I want to say thank you for meet me working with me and meeting with me and for your patience and for finding solutions to educational opportunities for students. It takes months of forecasting to
015have a backup plan after backup plan. So again, thank you for understanding where I'm coming from and helping execute this plan for the school year. We sent out an electronic communication on on August the 1st to the community, the entire community, welcoming everyone back for the 2526 school year. I also met with the district home and school association on August the 4th and held a district-wide virtual all staff meeting on August the 6th. In our communications, I've shared our plan for instruction on days when we do not have enough bus drivers or there are a higher number higher than more than number of professional staff out without coverage. Each year, I provide the community with this information prior to the start of the school year. It is our goal to never have to implement a
016plan to move to a full day of virtual instruction. We will send out this information again prior to the first day of school. As I transition from our facilities improvements and staffing update, I wanted to provide an update on what we have experienced this summer regarding federal and state budgets. Earlier this summer, we were left scrambling to figure out how we would cover a cut to title funds that we did not originally anticipate for our 2526 budget. Thankfully, after a lot of uncertainty and back and forth at the state and federal level, those funds were released. This would have resulted in a loss of almost a million and a half dollars in funding. The district and the township hosted a state and federal budget update asking state representative Curry, state representative Boyd, Senator Carney, and
017Congresswoman Congresswoman Scanland for updates. I want to thank our elected officials for meeting on a Friday evening at Beverly Hills Middle School to answer questions from the public on these topics. At this time, however, we still do not have a state budget. I know that our local elected officials will continue to do their best to advocate for the fair and appropriate funding of public schools in Pennsylvania. We were left with the impression after the Pennsylvania support court ruling that Pennsylvania would increase funding and the plan was to do it over the next several years. Here we are again waiting to see what happens. As soon as we have more information on the state budget, I will provide an update. Our focus in upper Derby has been opportunity, unity, and excellence. For this school year, my
018opening remarks will continue to build on my comments from last year as we concentrate on celebrating every success we have as a district through making it a point to appreciate the individual efforts everyone makes in this organization. In June, we held our annual administrative retreat and I shared with the administration our plan for the year to focus on incremental improvements. improved just 1% every day. I will share more about in September after opening day kickoff with staff on August 19th. This year, we're going to continue to look to improve on the following areas. Recruiting and developing and retaining staff. Continue to improve communication internally and externally. Continue to work on developing strong social emotional learning opportunities for our students. implement new systems and structures to better support and promote student growth in our elementary and
019middle schools with a strong focus on literacy and numeracy skills at the elementary level and encourage partnerships between home and school so that students can practice skill development outside of the classroom. Also looking to continue to promote reinforce safe and inclusive learning environments for all students and we'll continue to provide improvements to our facilities. I am thankful to our board of school directors and my team for their support for the opportunity to be the superintendent of this district. Members of the board of school directors, this concludes my report for this evenings. If there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Thank you. >> We will now have an update on the June 17th, 2025 education and services committee meeting by Miss Williams. >> Um she will read the summary. A detailed summary of the
020meeting, including public comments, can be found on boards. Thank you. The education and people service committee meeting took place on June 17th. Um the first agenda item was the fed federally designated um and title one school level plans that did that will require board action tonight. Dr. Ashwina Mazakowski, director of elementary education, and Miss Kelly Simone, director of secondary education, providing an overview of the school level plans for the district. Um, and again, they will be up for board action tonight. The next agenda item is the professional development plan 2025 2026 school year. Um, this required board action at the special uh voting meeting on June 17th and that presentation was given by Dr. Christine Kelly, director of curriculum. Um, the next agenda item was the wellness committee annual update that was anformational session by
021Dr. Brian um director of pupil services and it reviewed the highlights from the meeting throughout the year and any recommendations were considered. Um the fourth agenda item was the elementary English and language arts program pilot program. Um that required board action as well and that was done at the special voting meeting on June 17th. That was given by Dr. Christine Kelly and Miss Kristen O'Neal. They provided a proposal for the pilot of two elementary ELA programs during the first trimester. Agenda item number five was the NWA MAP reading fluency. Also required board action and it was done at the June 17th meeting that was also given by Dr. Christine Kelly and Miss Kristen O'Neal. They presented an online reading benchmark and pro and progress monitoring assessment. And then agenda item number six was Upper Derby's
022uh school district policy that required board action. 103 discrimination title 9 sexual harassment affecting students. 104 discrimination title 9 sexual harassment harassment affecting staff. 317 Conduct Disciplinary Procedures, 317.1 Educator Misconduct, 320 Freedom of Speech in Non-School Settings, and 8:15.1 use of general artificial intelligence in education. Um, there was one public comment made for agenda item number five, the speaker encouraged the administration to share the reading data with parents in an attempt to help the students at home. That concludes the review. I will now give an update on the June 17th, 2025 education and pupil ser I'm sorry finance and operations committee meeting. Um on Tuesday, June 17th, there was a meeting at 6 p.m. All members except of the board except Mr. War Savage were in attendance. Um there are two items that were discussed
023under this topic. There was the 2025 2026 budget uh final budget update which requires board approval. There also was the uh solar for school grant update which also requires board approval. Um for number one the final budget update in compliance with the act one timeline district admin district administration presented the 2025 2026 final general fund balance budget. The final general fund budget had taken all available and rel relevant information into consideration and was presented with a 2.5% tax increase. As far as the solar for school grant update, um, which does require board approval, district administration provided an update on the solar for schools grant program. The discussion points included the the operational and financial feasibility evaluation currently underway as well as the proposed plan of action for moving forward um if the evaluation supports it.
024There was one p public comment for number two. The speaker inquired as to the funding from both state and federal grants for the solar for schools project. And that concludes that report. Next we will have the instruction um and curriculum report by Mr. who say >> um the instructional curriculum report is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public. I move for it adoption >> second. >> Thank you. Are there any comments from the board? Are there any comments from the public? All those in favor please say I. >> I. I. >> All those opposed, please please say I oppose. Those abstaining, please say I abstain. Motion carried. The personnel report, Miss Williams. >> The personnel report is in the hands of each board member and has been
025made available to the public. And before I move for its adoption, I just want to make a comment here. Um, first of all, I just want to uh say congratulations to our um all of our retirees this month. I saw Miss uh Anthony on there, so I was a little bit surprised, but I want to say congratulations. I know it's a just a little bit away, but congratulations anyway. I mean, congratulations to the rest of the retirees on there. I see some of them were um some long ter long-term serving employees in the Upper Derby School District. So, congratulations. Um the next thing um I want to do is just um say congratulations to some of our new um employees and one I know was already employed here in the district but has um a
026new title here as assistant principal and so I know we have three here that are sitting in the audience. So I want to say congratulations to you and welcome. And if you don't mind I want to announce who you are um publicly. So we have um Miss Ariel and your last name is Calette, correct? So Mrs. Calette here um is serving as the new assistant principal at Charles Kelly. And we have Miss Jacqueline Schlaggel and she's serving as the assistant principal over at Beverly Hills Middle School. And then Mr. Casm, did I say her name correctly? Okay, great. And he is serving as the assistant principal at the kindergarten center. So can we just give them a hand? Thank you. Um, and if you don't mind, we'd like to get a picture of you as
027soon as we get this personnel um, report um, approved here. Thank you. And so now I'd like to ask if we could move for its adoption. >> Second. >> Are there any comments from the board? Any other comments? Any comments from the public? >> All those in favor, please say I. I. >> Those who are opposed, please say I app. I oppose. Those obstaining, please say I abstain. Motion carries. >> Congratulations again. >> I'll start with the policy report. >> Okay. >> Um just a quick review of the uh uh there's uh three policies we're revising. uh 208, policy 237, and policy 113.3. This is for the first reading. And then uh we're retiring a policy 103.2. We actually roll it complied with the 2024 Title 9 requirements. We rolled that back to for it
028to comply with the 2020 version of Title 9 requirements. And so those are the uh policy updates for the first reading for this month. The supplies report is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public. I move for its adoption. >> Second. >> Are there any comments from the board? Any comments from the public? >> All those in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> Those opposed, please say I oppose. >> Those abstain, please say abstain. Motion carried. The facilities report. Miss Williams. The facilities report, the use of facil facilities report and the donation report are in the hands of each board member and have been made available to the public. I move for their adoption. Second, >> are there any comments from the board? >> I'd
029just like to make a brief comment. Just wanted to thank um there was a donation for our STEM program and so I just wanted to say thank you for the donation to the district. >> Thank you. Any other comments? Are there any comments from the public? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Those opposed, please say I oppose. >> Those abstaining, please say I abstain. Motion carried. The food services report. Miss Deborah Williams. The food services report is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public. I move for its adoption. >> Second. >> Are there any comments from the board? >> Any comments from the public? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> I. >> Those opposed, please say I oppose.
030>> Those abstaining, please say I abstain. >> Motion carried. The finance and budget report, Miss Deborah Williams. The finance and budget report is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public. I move for its adoption. >> Second. >> Are any comments from the board. >> Any comments from the public? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. Those opposed, please say I oppose. >> Those abstaining, please say I abstain. Motion carried. Now it's time for um collateral reports. Um, Delaware Community College. Miss Gibbs, do you have a report at this time? An update? >> I do not have an update at this time. Thank you. Miss Deborah Williams, do you have any updates? >> I do. Um, I am the leazison for the DCIU. Um, we had
031our regular meeting on August 6, 2025. I just wanted to give a facility update. Our Aston campus uh is doing some cosmetology updates. It should be complete by mid August. Our Fulcroft campus is beginning construction late June. Our TCA campus is just beginning um some of that um preliminary work. And we've had lots of personnel changes. Um we're always hiring and we just congratulated five retirees as well, two with more than 24 years of service. Um, and we had a very comprehensive uh legislative uh report which I know Miss Glenn is usually responsible for, but if anyone is interested, I can send that legislative um report um off to you. Our next meeting um is our committee meeting which is uh tomorrow evening. That concludes my report. Thank you. >> Thank you. um PSBA. Um
032I don't have any other um announcements at this time, but I would like to say that um at the conclusion of this portion of the meeting, I would like to take a picture with um board member Williams with her award. So you can have it for your record and we can have it for ours. um policy leaison >> just said uh we'll be we'll be coming to the board with different proposals for other policies that are going to be updated and things like that so your feedback is very important thank you >> thank you communications >> there's no update at this time >> thank you Arts and Education Foundation >> no update at this time >> thank you technology ies. >> Uh, no update this time. >> Thank you. Wellness committee. >> Uh, no update
033at this time. >> Thank you everyone. Summer's over now. Time to get some updates for the next meeting. Um, I'm just going to pause so we can take a picture. Is there any old business from any board members? >> Thank members of the board for being responsive over our break time and filling out surveys that I asked of you. So, I appreciate you guys. >> Yes. Uh this I think falls more so under communication, but I want to thank uh director Ronda Buford and her team for the amazing looking new district website. Um I've personally found that information is much more easily accessible now. Things are easy to easy to click. Things load up really really easily. Um, and if anyone has any feedback in terms of the website or the functionality of the app
034as well, uh, definitely reach out to our team or reach out to a board member and we'll be sure to bring that those messages back to the team. Thank you. >> Is there any new business? >> It's good to be back. >> Yeah. >> You know, I go away for a few weeks. There's a new president. There's someone new on the board. We bought a hospital. Like, I just I can't leave at all. And all this all this happens. Um it's good to see all of you uh and all you folks here um on uh so I'm going to take some privilege here and just share my thoughts on uh personal on some of the personal events that uh happened to me earlier in the summer on May 19th. I went in for a surgery
035that should have been outpatient. I should have been home later in that day. Uh but I was in some pain and so I was allowed to stay overnight. Uh the next day my blood pressure dropped. Uh my heart rate was elevated. Uh everyone was waiting for me to show a fever so that they could send me to the uh ICU which is like a lot expecting from an outpatient surgery. It's kind kind of a turnaround. Uh, everyone was waiting for that fever except my nurse uh and my wife who were looking at my blood pressure of 68 over 48 and my heart rate of 120 beats per minute and the fact that no amount of fluids was making a difference. Now, it just so happened my nurse who was on my floor that day, she
036also worked in the ICU. So, she's what's considered a float nurse. Uh, I think we have some teachers that are familiar with the idea of floating between uh different rooms. uh this nurse, she was the one that argued with the physician's assistant about what to do next. And it was it was my nurse that pulled the cord and had the ICU ICU team uh rapid response is what they're called, uh come up and get me. Uh, and as the ICU, the trauma nurses and the PAs and the nurse practitioners, nurse practitioners were uh, circling me and attaching IVs and asking me if I knew where I was and telling me what they were going to do next and getting consent from me. I just hoped that everyone was good enough at their job so that
037I got to go home. Uh afterwards thinking about it, I realized what I really cared about was that they were using their education and their experience to provide the best evidence-based care possible. I cared that their education was rigorous. I wanted them to be at the top of the class, but I hoped it was a struggle. I hope they had to study for every test that they had, and I hope that AI was nowhere near any classes they took. Right? And you know what I didn't care about? I didn't care who they voted for. I didn't care where they got their news from. I didn't care how they felt about the latest social media outrage. I cared that they were experts. There is a divide in this country. It's a divide between expertise and the
038people that refuse to listen to them. I have to tell you whether someone is working on my blood pressure or my household water pressure, I want that person to be an expert. If someone is taking my temperature, I want I want that to be the kind of person that says febrile instead of fever. Right? If you're working on my furnace, I want you to be the kind of person that corrects me and tells me it's a boiler, not a furnace. I want service providers that are super enthusiastic. That's going for nerd, right? Super enthusiastic about their chosen fields. Expertise is under attack in this country, right? And once the experts are removed, then education is next. Because where does expertise start? In our schools. We here and me personally, so I say we here and
039me personally are committed to doing what is needed to build an environment that creates the future experts that this community will need. It is important that we know when to listen to the experts and that we protect them when the time comes because they will tell the truth and they will come under attack for that. Uh, I want to thank the b the board for the words of support and the food while I was out. Uh, it means a lot. And I want to thank the experts that took such good care of me that allowed me to be here with you tonight. Thank you. That's all. >> Thank you. >> Um, uh, any more other new business? I have new business. School's opening in a few days. Not to burst anybody's bubble, but um just
040um want to say that we wish you all a wonderful healthy healthy physically healthy emotionally new school year. You guys have some really really hard jobs. We know because some of us do them. Um but you do it with such um enthusiasm and such strength and such grace. So, we just wish you as a board a healthy, happy new year of doing new wonderful things with new wonderful little humans, most of them. Um, but happy new year. Other new business. We are now at the time for public hearing. We will call on Upper Derby School District residents who signed in to address the board in the order in which they signed in, followed by emailed and phone comments. We would ask that you will come forward, give your name and your address and present and
041present your comments in the 3inut limit. In accordance with policy 9003, the time allocated for general public general comments, both in person and submitted comments will not exceed 1 hour. So I have two um in-person comments. The first one is Carl Hempill. It's Carl Hempill, 27 Pilgrim Lane, Upper Derby resident for over 35 years. I'm a taxpayer, resident, business owner, and investor. And I'm seeing the perfect storm brewing. I'm very concerned about there's EIT coming, uh, the IT tax. I'm not sure what position the town the school districts is going to get at that 1% if any. I don't know. There's not a lot of information. And a lot of people I'm talking to out there have no idea what's coming. And then our taxes are we have the highest millage rates in the entire
042county. I'm getting concerned and now we're buying a hospital, right? We where's all this money coming from? It's coming from guys like me. Like and right now I'm the can I'm the I'm we're the canaries in the mind. My customers are are talking about going bankrupt right now. They're not I just sent out 100 truckloads of mulch to a woman. I'm not going to disclose where and she's telling me I may have to go out of business. I might not be able to pay it. It's a lot of money. That's that's just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of people are paying me 60 90 days and now we're talking about buying a hospital for 600 grand. I'm in favor of buying a hospital. Maybe if we flip it and try to make a
043little money and pay down some debt. We got to be fiscally conservative right now, guys. And I I respect all your jobs. And I really want education be primary as well. And I wish we were like Singapore where we had a very high budget for education. It's a super advanced society and a low criminal justice budget because they don't take any nonsense over there. No disrespect to law enforcement. I come from a law enforcement family, but we don't need this many cops here. We need a zero tolerance on a lot of quality of life issues. And we could use that money that we save given to lawyers and educating our kids. You know, like I I honestly think if you ever go to Singapore and you land at the airport and you see death to
044traffickers, they mean it. There's no drug trafficking in Singapore. None. And there's no ancillary problems. The families are intact. No, nobody's using Nobody's committing crimes to break in your house. But they put all that money in education. We could have the best society on the planet if we did something like that. But I know the lawyer lobby would never let us do that. They like making money off of chaos. It's a different issue. But guys, the canary in the mind is people are going bankrupt. Like our customers can't pay us, right? And I'm I'm now looking at EIT. I'm looking at buying a hospital and I don't know what we're going to do with the hospital. Are we going to flip it or what are we going to do at some point? Something's got to
045be done. You got to look at the taxpayers, the people. We're bearing the brunt. I'm I'm I have a lot of employees on my payroll. They're going to be paying it. Uh I'm paying it. Uh anybody we do business with, but Arby's going to be paying it. And now I don't know what the future's going to look like if we keep if you keep asking the residents to pay more and more and more. It's going to be a breaking point. We got to figure out a happy medium. You know, maybe with EIT we start at 0.25 and move up, but why go to one, then it could go to two, three. Next thing you know, you're going to see a lot of for sale signs everywhere. You know, people can't afford it. High taxes, high
046ET. Where are we going? You know, but if we do the Singaporean model, I'm all in. If we really do take it serious, zero zero tolerance on on crime. We probably need two cops reperid army if we went that way. We could take all that money we're giving to the police, no disrespect to police, and give it to the educators, which we want. We want educators. We want you guys. We need this. But this deal paying $80 million for police is crazy. I mean, because like stuff like littering is another problem. Why are why aren't the cops citing people for littering? We got to look at that stuff, >> you know, just quality of life issues. So, I'm just trying to figure out from a businessman's perspective. And I'm >> I'm on the front lines
047every day. I got to make my own money every day. I'm Nobody's giving me money. I'm not in the public finance world. I'm not in the public education world. But I have to go out and get this money. >> Mr. Carl, >> find it. >> Your time limit's up, but I'm sure the administration can get back to you with some more questions if you send an email. >> Okay. Who Who's going to get back to me? >> Administration. >> I would love to figure out Let's work together. I'm ready to work. Put me to work. But how do we do it? I don't know how to do it. >> But maybe we take the law enforcement money and put in education. But we got to start somewhere, you know. >> Thank you. and take a
048trip to Singapore and check it out. You'll see it. Super clean, very smart people. Great people. Four languages they speak. All right. Thank you guys. >> Thank you. >> I'll be as quick as I can. And I uh do want to thank Don Fields especially and also Diamond Gibbs for their comments. Uh and I want to draw out a little more of that. Uh there are two things I want to address which are really dire threats to the children of this school district and really every school district in the state and the country and to the country at large and of the school district uh from this craziness coming from this administration and uh the first of them as Don Fields was indirectly alluding to is the assault on medical expertise to the point where
049we are threatened with having our children especially those of lower incomes denied the right to have vaccines against what were formerly deadly childhood diseases. Now, some people and a lot of people think, well, this is this crazy Kennedy and these idologues. And what I found is, and I'm not the only one to say this, that behind this, you have a group of right-wing ultra extremist billionaires who were very influential in this administration. The notable ones, uh, most notable are Peter Teal and his sidekick David Saxs, who both came and were raised in the racist dictatorship of apartheid South Africa. That's their tradition. And there are many people in the key positions in the health department who are actually running it and running this war against vaccines who owe millions of dollars to Peter Teal directly
050from having worked for or with him and and other divisions that are banning the uh uh the help that we used to give until very recently to countries in Africa and other poor countries to stop diseases from becoming epidemics or pandemics here. And so I would ask the board to really seriously think about taking a stand on the right of every child to have these vaccines without any charge as has been our tradition for decades. It personally makes my blood boil because I'm a survivor of polio. To see this Cuke Kennedy saying that uh more children have died from polio than from the polio vaccine than from polio. Well, that's right because no child has died in this country from wild polio in the wild since 1979 because we eradicated it. Kennedy has now banned
051as a frontman for these billionaires. Uh, one of the two vaccines that stopped this epidemic. I was a lucky one. You know, I didn't I didn't have to spend my life in an iron lung or I was able to walk and run without crutches. I didn't have my polio keep going up to my heart. Thousands of kids a year were killed and hundreds of thousands crippled. And this man and his criminals want to bring this back. Secondly, uh in terms of the other craziness of the administration, which our superintendent very mildly referred to, he was less mild at the community meeting when he didn't know if there was any money forthcoming. Uh this administration cannot be relied on for any money or anything for education. We all know that. You know, you don't know what
052they're they don't know what they're going to do tomorrow, much less do we know. and you know maybe they'll have the curriculum designs come from Wrestlemania who knows but the way they're going so I would say there there's I I know I don't have time to go through this in any proponent of a uh movement which is gaining a lot of steam nationally to get the US Congress to set up a separate national infrastructure bank to fund things including schools and every other kind of infrastructure need that we have which would create millions of jobs and great hope for our children including many many opportunities for training as apprentices which this school district and every other could take part in. So I'll try to address that at our next meeting. >> Thank you for your
053comment. >> You're fine. You're fine. Thank you. >> Thank you. Are there any online comments? >> There are no online comments. >> Thank you. Is there a motion for the adjournment of this meeting? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Meeting adjourned. >> Thank you. >> Have a good night. >> Good night.