001I'd like to call this meeting to order and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Kelly, can you please take the roll? Yes. Mr. Boroski? Yes. Mr. Koron? Present. Mrs. Drury? Here. Mr. Fiorelli? Here. Ms. Heen? Here. Mr. Montani? Here. Mrs. Sexton? Here. Mrs. Traynor? Here. And Dr. Mariano? Present. On to announcements and recognitions. Dr. Castagna. Yes, first and foremost, we want to congratulate our board member, Mrs. Lisa Traynor, on her appointment to the AIU board, effective July 1, for a three-year term. Congratulations, Mrs. Traynor. Yes, thank you. All right, I get the next few here. Congratulations to the Short Tiers Valley Intermediate School Positive
002Behavior Supports Team. They successfully completed Tier 1 of the PBIS framework with fidelity. This achievement reflects the team's strong commitment to creating a positive, supportive learning environment for all students. Through the collective efforts of the staff, the school has demonstrated consistent improvement. or implementation excuse me of pbis practices resulting in a meaningful progress towards improving student outcomes congratulations to mr shintz mrs beckett for their leadership and her pbis team of teachers and students for this achievement 2.3 is our primary school PBIS recognition. Congratulations to the primary school for achieving fidelity on all three tiers of the positive behavior support intervention framework. An accomplishment that reflects sustained commitment to fostering a positive support and structured learning environment for all students. This has been a key goal since 2022 for this school. The recognition highlights the dedication,
003collaboration, and consistency of the entire staff and support. supporting student success the board would like to extend special recognition to PBIS team members Bethany Ward Sierra Vogel Maya Vaughn Becky Fortner or Fortner excuse me Chelsea Rayner Allison Krem for their leadership and commitment in guiding this work The music department congratulations to the short tears Valley district or school district on being recognized as the 2026 best communities for music education by the National Association of music merchants Foundation this is a national honor and is awarded to school districts that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to providing high quality music education for all students this achievement reflects the dedication and collaboration of our students music educators administrators and families as well as the district's continued support of the music programs for elementary through high school short tears valley
004takes great pride in fostering a strong and vibrant music education program and this recognition highlights that positive impact within the arts in our school community and we would like to also reiterate some of the important dates coming up for our concerts The IS band is on May the 13th. The high school chorus is May 15th. The middle school choirs are the... May 18th. The High School Middle School Orchestra concert is May the 19th. The IS Chorus is May the 20th. And the Middle School Band is the 21st. So they got a busy couple weeks coming up. All events start in their respective auditoriums at 7 p.m. For the next one, I am going to go down to the floor. Hold on one second. First off. I share your excitement and enthusiasm and it's a well-deserved
005recognition and award. I have to say, you know, This is now the fifth school district I've worked in. And what a tremendous variety of music opportunities we have for children across the board, K-12. And I attended the showcase last week, and to see all those students on the stage at the end in so many different programs is just truly amazing, and it's something I think a lot of schools don't have. So it needs to be celebrated. So thank you for the work you do. Please continue to do it and know that this board and administration supports your work. Yeah. Do you want to say something about Mrs. Tobias? Is she here? Is that on? Check, check. All right, we'll do it again. Congratulations to Kelly Tobias on completing her doctorate in arts, a degree in
006English literature and pedagogy from Murray State University. As part of this accomplishment, Dr. Tobias... conducted doctoral research focused on the lack of professional development opportunities available to English educators regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom. Correct? All right. The research culminated in the design of a five module staff development course and website to provide meaningful training and support for educators integrated integrating AI into instruction. We congratulate Dr. Tobias on this outstanding academic achievement and commend her for her commitment to advancing education and supporting fellow educators. And I know as one that that was not an easy journey, especially to dissertation writing, one which I would never want to go through again. But as an English teacher, I'm sure you loved every piece of it. So congratulations. On behalf of the board, congratulations, Mrs.
007Tobias. I'm sure, or Dr. Tobias, I'm sure our students will definitely benefit from all the work and for your teaching. I know it's a long journey, but it's certainly a worthy one. And congratulations. Thank you. That concludes our announcements, Mr. President. Okay, on to public comments on agenda items. Mrs. Traynor. We would like to invite any resident or taxpayer of Shortridge Valley School District who wishes to address the board to please state your name and address when you approach the podium. We appreciate your interest. Please keep your comments to two to three minutes. Thank you. Kelly, do we have anyone signed up to speak on current agenda items? No, we have no comments. Thank you. Okay, now moving on. I'd like to announce that we had an executive session prior to this public meeting to
008discuss personnel, legal, and safety matters. Dr. Costagna, any superintendents report this evening? Yes, at this time I would like to present the preliminary budget to our public and our board. I'm going to do so from the podium only because my clicker isn't working from here. i'm clicking it uh so i would i hate to have my back to the audience but um so if you could follow along if there's any questions we will allow the public to ask but uh so i'm gonna move down there miss wayne do you wanna go okay no it's not there we go okay good evening and to the board of directors and the public that are here tonight i want to speak through uh what we are posting as our preliminary 26 27 school budget so I stood in
009front of you last April 2025 talking about a preliminary budget. And at that time, we talked about projections from April of 2024 when they knew that there was expenditure increases coming due to debt service, et cetera. And back in the April 2024 presentation, they talked about having to pull a recommended $3 million from the debt stabilization fund to make the 25-26 budget. Last year, there was a lot of conversations last spring about several items. Number one was the need to right-size expenditure and revenue, and there were significant cuts that were made. There were also significant investments that were made in both curriculum and data-driven instruction, and also safety and security because of the cuts, because of some of the aggressive... reductions that were made, the budget actually outperformed. So not only did we not pull
010$3 million from debt stabilization, the plan that was presented publicly last April was to pull $500,000 from a debt stabilization fund, and we're happy to present tonight a budget that will ultimately show you that we only had to pull $100,000 from that debt stabilization, mostly because of the work... of Ms. Wehner, our business manager, and her staff. They really are the ones that every day review every invoice that comes into this district and go through line by line by every expense. So it's always good to be able to stand in front of you a year later and say we actually performed better than we expected. So you'll see that tonight in this presentation. The second, this presentation will be available on the website tomorrow for the public view. So you'll be able to access that
011on our website. And our full preliminary budget will be on display in our business office for the state mandated 20 days. And then we will hopefully present a final budget to the board for approval at the June 9th board meeting. So let's get into our presentation. Every year we like to just give our overview of district facts, you know, our current student enrollment, current employees, and then our student athletes. We have 1,127 students that participate in after-school student athletic programs, 46 clubs and activities, 67 school buses, five outside partners currently, and then we have a food service partner with Nutrition, Inc. We have our own in-house 28 food service employees. Our current conditions, there's always uncertainty around federal funding. It's 1% of the federal budget. We have to rely on the politicians at that level
012to stay committed to funding Title I, II, III, and IV. We are hearing that that would be flat funded so we don't have the scare that we had last year at this time where there was talk of it being completely eliminated and ended up not being eliminated. So we feel pretty confident that they will be flat, but of course it's uncertain until its final. State allocations for basic and special education funding are relatively flat. The governor's proposed budget has a small increase for the Chartiers Valley School District for basic ed funding. But if you know what happened last year, schools have to have a budget passed by July 1st. The state doesn't. So you can't count on that money until that budget is approved. And there's a lot of last-minute negotiations that go into their
013numbers. So we did not include any increases in our presentation today. Our health care costs, this has been a 12-year trend. increases every year. We're part of ASIC and it's a consortium of Allegheny County Schools. They finalized a budget for next year that passed along an 8.3 percent increase in medical and a 3 percent dental. Then we have the following common level ratio. A lot of talk. I actually was educated a little bit more about this in the back room. It's even scarier than I thought. But that common level ratio, you hear a lot about it with Pittsburgh Public Schools, which means a lot of residents are winning appeals. and then lowering what they're paying to districts and municipalities. We obviously always have increased costs for supplies. It's just the times, as you know, I
014was telling the board in the back room, when you go fill up your gas tank, we all know it costs more to do everything right now. And then our special education and EL populations continue to increase. Special education especially, there's a lot of costs associated with that and laws and mandates associated with that. It's the largest unfunded mandate that every school district complains about because they don't support it with the funding attached. to what they require you to do. And then the last expenditure is already committed from the budget. We'll speak to debt service later. Salaries and benefits make up about 85% of our budget. So there's really a small sliver of room that we have to play with. And then our PISA's rate, again, this is another 10 year scale of increases. It's up
015to 33.5%. That means the district's contribution. Okay, so if you're talking about an employee that makes $50,000 a year, that's $16,000, $5,000, $17,000 that the district has to pay over and above their salary into their P'sers, and that's for every full-time employee. Good. Yeah. So I stood in front of you back in January 20th, and we talked about a phase one construction project, which was not new money. It was no new debt. It was already worked into our amortization schedule, and it was referring back to the series 2021 general obligation construction bond. when we discuss the need for the enrollment from the primary school bleeding into the intermediate school and we need for space in classrooms and we talk about moving the administration, the business office, and the special education offices out of the intermediate
016school and then the gym renovation that was long been neglected and never finished as part of that high school project. At that time, we were talking about the current bond balance of $8.1 million. Ms. Wehner is going to speak now as to where we are. Thank you. All right, so at that time the bond balance was 8.1 million There were some expenses that had been board approved but not paid yet. So we did include those so Current day the bond balance is 8.5. If you take those board approved expenses it brings the with the construction expenses that were approved takes it to seven point six if you look at the far right column and then we have recently approved the construction projects with one being on the agenda tonight taking the 2.9 million of the
017construction projects that were approved brings our balance of construction funds down to just over $4.7 million. Now to get into the budget for 26-27, the proposed expenditures are up $2 million to the prior year. As you can see, 41.6% of those is salaries and a little over 29% is benefits. Along with debt service, those three first line items equal close to 80% of our budget. As Dr. Castagna mentioned, the increased cost in supplies and equipment, as well as special ed services and transportation, gives us slightly over $81 million in expenditures for the 26-27 preliminary budget. And just to talk a little bit more about the debt service, this is the summary of existing debt service. The far right column shows the net debt service payments. As you can see in 24-25, the total was close
018to $1.5 million. It increased in the current budget of 25-26 to $3.5 million. And in preparation of the 26-27 budget, it's going up another 1.8 million to 5.2 million dollars and as you can see the next 25 years is the same amount close to 5 million dollars now we'll get into the audited fund balances this was presented with the audit that was approved back in i believe march but the general fund audited fund balance June 30th 25 was 9.2 million Capital is close to 1.5 million The bond fund which is for the construction was at 9.3 million debt stabilization fund just slightly over 3.7 million and small amount in activity funds, which brings the total fund balance to $24 million. If you look at the balance without the bond, without the construction bond, it's been
019pretty steady over the past five years. And going to the next slide, this shows the different buckets of fund balances that we have. The non-spendable is for a prepayment of health care costs. The restricted is the construction. The 9.37 and then committed is total capital, debt stabilization, and non-major. The unassigned is the amount of our fund balance that we're able to use, and we like to keep that for timing of bills and emergency expenditures. So that is a total of 6% of our budget. Now we'll flip over to the revenue. So as you can see on the revenue sources, we rely heavily on our local revenue, which is 74% of our revenue, a little over 58 million. Our state revenue, 25%, which is close to 20 million. And then a small amount of federal revenue,
020which is only 1% of our budget. And in summary, if you look at the next slide for the 26-27 proposed budget, The revenues being at 78.7 million, expenditures just slightly over 81, gives us a negative deficit of 2.2 million, which we will utilize the debt stabilization fund balance to balance the budget. The debt stabilization balance as of June 30th, as I mentioned, was $3.7 million. We did add $401,000 to that, which brought the debt stabilization fund balance to just slightly over $4.1 million. And taking this $2.2 million out of the debt stabilization fund would still leave us $1.8 million in the debt stabilization fund. I'd just like to mention a few bullet points. The budget changes will continue until June of 26. We will continue to evaluate the final staffing needs and if there's any
021possible retirements. The capital budget will be presented in June and the final budget will be presented and adopted in June as well as the millage rate will be set and the homestead exclusion resolution will be presented as well. Any questions? Okay, back in that January meeting that I referred to earlier when I talked about phase one of our construction project, we talked about the need of the primary school classrooms that were eventually going to have to move into the intermediate school. You can see the fourth grade currently on the far left gray column at 10 classrooms is increasing. If you slide to the right to 12 classrooms this year. So I met with the principals there and we're going to talk about, okay, where are we going to add these two classrooms in? Another item
022you'll notice on our HR report tonight is... I'm sorry, it's not on there tonight, but we are adding, yes, the life skills there, sorry. We are adding a life skills classroom as well because of the enrollment that we have. And so we had to come up with three classroom spaces in the IAS, and it was very tight. We almost were going to move the administration offices out of there effective August 1. The principals were creative, and we talked about it, and we were able to survive one more year, but that's it. There's no more room in the IS. One of the things you will see that changed from the January presentation is that we are actually going from 13 first-grade classrooms down to 12, and our projections for kindergarten next year is also at 12.
023So it will be 12 across the board in the primary school. That's a change from where we were in January. But that's part of our overall staffing plan for next year. And I'll show you on the next slide. We have several eliminations and retirements, replacements, and then, of course, we have additions. allowing us to create some of these, the dollars we need for these additions is that reduction in kindergarten and first grade. So we had met with the principals for months to talk about a plan for next year. And you'll see under additions at the intermediate school, the special ed life skills classroom that I was just referencing, but also at the primary school, the science elective K-2, and also the tech and innovation elective 3-5. Those last two are because of the positions that
024we moved out of the K-1. What that's going to allow them to do is lighten some of the load that the special teachers currently have at the primary and the intermediate school by adding another rotation into the schedule and also stay committed to our focus of K-12 STEM education for all and support. the STEM and coding program that we are doing with our early learners K-5. What they are doing, especially in the primary school, to watch kindergarten and first graders and the work that they are doing here, it's tremendous. I told the board in the back and I'll say it here, this is our first full year of implementation. I can't wait to see where we are next year at this time. So you'll see we have retirements and eliminations at the top. We have
025a replacement for our middle school science because that's a position that is a retirement, but we need to fill that job. And then these additions, you can see the net impact to the budget on the bottom right. So the retirement eliminations, there are five positions. We are replacing the one position at the middle school. And then I'm asking the board's approval to add these nine additional positions. So total impact to the budget. for 2627 is the additional $470,000. So when Ms. Wehner talks about a 2.2 expenditure outperforming revenue, it's A, your debt service payment that we'll talk about at 1.8 increase, and then these positions here. So that's how we get to the 2.2. So why? Why are we adding this job? Well, the fourth grade teacher at the intermediate school, we already talked about
026this, to accommodate the bigger class sizes that are coming up from the third graders moving to fourth. And again, that trend is going to continue as the primary students move up. The special ed life skills, current number in our life skills program and the upcoming students from second to third from the primary school there, we would be over capacity for our state requirements. Again, this is all mandates. You can't do anything about it. Once your full-time equivalencies hit max, you have to add classrooms. The ELL teacher, our high school and middle school master schedule is just pretty much impossible to make next year with the amount of students. We continue to increase with ELL. So you saw an elimination of a half-time high school, half-time middle school position, and then the creation of a full-time
027middle school and a full-time high school, which is a net plus one position for 26-27. This is a new position, Director of Sponsorships, Alumni Engagement, and Annual Giving. This will be an Act 93 leadership position responsible for developing, implementing, and managing comprehensive fundraising initiatives, corporate sponsorships, alumni engagement programs, and annual giving campaigns. This came out of conversations with two things. Number one, our attempt to have branding rights sold, like a lot of districts are doing for athletic complexes and facilities. But more importantly, I think the second piece, with the alumni engagement. Short Tears Valley School District has a tremendous alumni network that we have not tapped into for years. I cannot tell you the amount of people that I have known my whole life. that I never knew went to Short Tears Valley. And since
028I got this job, they'll say, oh, by the way, I went to Short Tears Valley High School. But you've got to be kidding me. So we really want to tap into that. I have a long-term dream here, and that's to hand a child a list of Short Tears Valley graduates in industries right along with their diploma as they walk away and say, this is what you're part of. That's a true gift and a benefit. We can provide students that no other school district around us is doing. That would be the main focus of this position. My opinion I'll stand in front of you next year and say this position paid for itself and I feel very confident about that The technology and innovation teacher this is for the intermediate school This is to add to
029the special rotation and again, it's the focus on our stem learning initiatives I already spoke to this primary science specialty. Again, this is going to be an additional rotation. All rotating teachers are pretty packed scheduling-wise now, and this is going to help alleviate some of that challenges with the master schedule and also some of the hallway transitions. Dr. Sable. When speaking with all these numbers, it's nice to hear a piece of the puzzle of what academic pieces this is impacting. As a focus, as the administrators put forth through this year, we were really working on these bullet points for this year. Growth mindsets in the sense of figuring out how we could overcome some challenges instead of saying hey this is how we always did it how can we do it differently this year how
030can we make different things happen we really focused on data instruction for reading and math specifically math because that was our first deficit that we focused on last year that we wanted to improve for this year focused instructional plans for all of our students. I'm using that data to make sure that we're instructing each student to the best of our abilities. We have increased math instructional time at the middle school. We gave them an extra period. We're hoping to see some good results from that. More focused instructional groups for the I&E time for the PS and IS where they're working on specific skills identified through instruction, through data to improve their performance. We want to continue the growth that was happening at the high school school on our keystone exams and all throughout that community
031of the high school and we wanted to provide stem robotics opportunities to all students i really want to focus in on our map now this is a little bit challenging to look at from a distance but that top run is a summary of our map tests for the whole district in math As you can see, there's a lot of red and a lot of orange on there. That top one was the first one we took in the fall. The second one, when we moved down, goes to a winter one. And then the third one to the right below that is the spring one, which we took in February, which was a little bit early. As a district, we went from 49% of our students being on grade level in math to 67%. to 65 and
032there was that little bit of a dip because we took that spring test in February to help us prepare and guide our instruction for our state assessment so next year we're going to give that a little bit later to have a little bit cleaner data. Two grade levels below there are third grade or the next two lines and a fifth grade. Our third grade started out at 46 percent of the students at grade level are on grade level their second test they jumped to 70 and they stayed at 70 which is a huge accomplishment because of again that test was given quickly but what we're really focusing on is making those red and orange lines go down it went from 22 percent red to six percent red and 21 to 22 in that first one
033and then it continued to stay pretty low which we were very happy with our fifth grade also had a nice jump with 50 three percent of students on level they went to 71 and they actually increased which was pretty rare to 72 the next one while making those red and light orange decrease as well so that's happened they took their PSSA tests and we're excited to see from that data how it correlates up and we're expecting big things Mr. Shintz and I For next year with this budget being passed we want to expand that growth mindset. We're asking people to give us ideas on how they think that we can improve instruction from teachers to students to parents. We take that all into consideration to figure out we don't want to stay in the same
034spot. We want to get better every single year. We want to use the data that we've collected this year to highly data-driven instruction for reading and math. We want to continue that math focus with the new series that we were board approved at our last meeting that we're excited to start next year. That'll be K-12. We're going to put a pretty high focus on writing instruction in the primary school and intermediate school. We want to really work on sentence structure, paragraph writing at that level to get them ready for the rigors of the middle school and high school. We want to start a multi-tiered system of support. We talked a lot the past few meetings about the RTI. Every one of our schools has reached a fidelity. This is a bigger umbrella where RTI sits
035under and all the different supports that we can give to our students to make them as successful as possible. And the final one is we want to create a STEM robotics competition team at all schools. We have one in our high school. We hope to build more. Our middle school did a nice job in some competitions. Our IS and PS has a lot of interest. Specifically, our PS had over 250 students that are interested in competing on robotics teams next year. We're going to have to figure out a way to make them all have that opportunity. But that's how we plan on using some of this money for next year. Thank you, Dr. Sayle. Just in closing, I want to speak to the board for a second directly. Where our focus goes, our energy flows,
036right? And we focused last year on several initiatives. Number one, safety and security. Number two, data-driven instruction. And number three, being fiscally sound. I'm very proud to stand in front of you and say I believe we honor those commitments and those challenges that we all took upon ourselves, the board included. We were able to work within the budget and exceed the expectation of the budget. to where we can refund our debt service consolidated fund balance, right? So we were able to refund that. We had our challenges with safety and security. We all know it. We stood here and did a Parents Act 45 training about the weapons law, and we ran into issues in March. But we never closed school. You know, when I got here, there was an incident with a threat where we
037did not have the capabilities in place to ensure that we could open up the doors and everyone would be safe. That was never a concern. And because of the technology we had in place, we were able to handle those situations quickly. So while they were challenges and we had to work through them, the systems you allowed us to build allowed us to keep school going. And last is the data-driven instruction piece. The reason these MAP scores are increasing is because you're giving teachers the data they need to adjust instruction in between those tests. Those MAP scores don't go up on their own. They're getting the data and the information to say what is working, what do my students need help with, and how do I adjust what I'm doing. So that's continuing to be our
038focus this next school year. I thank you for the support in allowing us to put these initiatives in place. And I think the future looks bright for the Chartier Valley School District. Any questions from the board? And did I miss anything? No, but thank you for your leadership. Thank you. Thank you all. And while Dr. Castagna and Ms. Welter come up here, the lacrosse team won against Swickley Academy 10 to 5. So they'll move on. That's the boys. The girls also play. Yeah. Girls play at Hampton. Okay, thank you. Dr. Castagna on to this elusive report anything this evening. Mr. Rucuna's all of my updates were provided to the board in executive session this evening. Thank you Okay. Thank you. We have a motion to approve the board meeting minutes for April 14th 2026 So
039move motion made by mr. Chura may have a second second by mace heen any discussion on this item All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the waterfront learning contract addendum to the service agreement with the Allegheny Intermediate Unit for the 2026-2027 school year as presented, including associated pricing and program offerings. So moved. Motion made by Mr. Chura, second by Mr. Broski. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. The superintendent recommends an ISO move to approve the transition services agreement between the Church's Valley School District and Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania for the UPMC project search for the 2026-2027 school year at a cost of $140.29 per program day for services to be provided beginning August 24th, 2026 through May
04028th, 2027. Motion made by Ms. Heen. Second by Mr. Montani. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the 2026-2027 Allegheny Intermediate Unit Comprehensive Services Agreement effective July 1st, 2026? So moved. Motion made by Mrs. Treanor. Second. Second by Mr. Chura. Any discussion on this item? all in favor aye anybody opposed the motion passes the superintendent recommends an iso move to approve the addendum to the school-based access program support services addendum agreement for 2026-2027 school-based access program support services so moved motion made by mrs trainer second by miss heen Any discussion on this item? Just a point that this is an addendum to the previously approved AIU program, correct? Yes. All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. The superintendent recommends
041an ISO move to approve the 2026-2027 Educational Service Agreement with Intermediate Unit 1. So move motion made by Mr. Chura second by Mr. Obroski any discussion on this item all in favor aye anybody opposed the motion passes the superintendent recommends an ISO move to approve the library the Bridgeville library student card memorandum of understanding second motion made by Mr. Montani second by Mr. Chura any discussion on this item I'd like to thank Bridgeville for doing this. Is this the second year or the third year that they've done this? Do you know? Second year. So that's great. All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the Human Resources Report for April 28, 2026? So moved. Motion made by Mr. Chura. May I have a second? Second by Mr.
042Broski. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. The superintendent recommends an ISO move to approve the proposed final budget for the 2026-2027 school year as presented with a real estate tax rate of 20.1909 mils which represents no tax increase. The secretary of the board is hereby directed to make copies of such proposed budget available for public inspection in accordance with the requirements of the school code. at least 20 days prior to the adoption of the budget wait and the board secretary is hereby further directed to give not less than 10 days notice to the public of the meeting at which the final budget shall be adopted such meeting is set for june 9th 2026 at 6 30 p.m motion made by miss heen may have a second
043second by miss drury any discussion on this item Yeah, it needs to be a roll call. Yes. Yeah, this needs to be a roll call Yes before I vote this is a really good thing I think this board has done So many Tonships in the areas have been raising taxes and Charters Valley's taking care of our taxpayers this year save them a little bit of money So I think it's a good thing. Yes Mr. Montiany? No. Mrs. Sexton? No. Mrs. Traynor? Yes. Dr. Mariano? Yes. The motion passes. The superintendent recommends an ISO move to approve the April 2026 payments for the 2025-2026 annual budget, including charter school payments. Second. So motion made by Mr. Chura, second by Ms. Heen. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. The superintendent
044recommends an ISO move to approve the payments of the construction invoices as presented. So moved. Motion made by Mr. Chura. May I have a second? Second. Second by Mr. Friarelli. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May have a motion to approve the package number seven electrical and low voltage award-based bid for central administration area to arrow electric LLC for a value of seven hundred ninety seven thousand two hundred forty five dollars per attached Motion made by mr. Montani may have a second second by miss heen any discussion on this item all in favor anybody opposed the motion passes the superintendent recommends an iso move to approve student forecast services with mgt impact solutions llc per attached this is a feasibility study to project future enrollment for
045the church's valley school district motion made by mr montani second by miss heen any discussion on this item yes i'd like to add something so we are requesting the board to authorize this study more so for phase two of the construction project as explained at the january board meeting where we would possibly looking into a remodel of the intermediate school which lot of people feel is long overdue so we don't want to go into a project without solid projections about enrollment classroom needs etc what this would be is a one-time cost of the district of the 19-5 it would it would give us projected enrollment numbers district-wide and for every building throughout the 21-31 school year they're looking at a tentative completion date of december which a preliminary report they expect to have to us
046in early fall but this goes along with a bigger discussion about our bond financing capabilities and some of our long-term planning associated with that building before we enter into any discussion around construction so they'll just to make it clear they'll project out Five to ten years so 20 years I between executive in here I went into the report again just to refresh my memory and it's through 2031 they will give enrollment projections for every single building with the current projects community needs etc I did ask them for more of a 10-year projection they don't want to put that in writing but they will give recommendations to the board in writing to the board would be through 2031 I just think the board needs to understand where the community is headed given the housing plans that
047have been approved and then plan accordingly. But you say not until December we'll get the final report. But we will have an update and you'll present a report at a board meeting of the feasibility study sometime in September. Yes. Okay, that's the goal. Okay, anybody else have any questions? Yes, so we, Ms. Wehner and I, met with our business office and we interviewed several companies to do this work. We were impressed by this company. First, they came highly recommended for several districts, not only Ganey County, but secondly, because they had so much data already to present to us, we actually learned some things. from their presentation about our community, some of the housing permits, some of the building permits, some of the long-term plans that were already approved by local councils. They educated us, and
048so we were impressed by how much data they had already pulled and their path to get to the final numbers. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the administration to issue an RFP for the district's electricity utility rates prepared by the district solicitor? So moved. Motion made by Mr. Chura. May I have a second? I'll second. Second by Mr. Montani. excuse me any discussion on this item yes this might be a dumb question how can we issue an RFP for utility isn't it Duquesne light do we have a choice there so we actually have a we have a utility broker right now we go through the AIU which has a consortium a lot of districts are putting this out to RFP because then the brokers
049basically compete and they give you their best offer and then we'll just see are we getting the best utility rate yeah It's the same supplier, I think is what you're getting at. It's the same supplier, but there is a fee that they add. All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the Allegheny Intermediate Unit Use of Funds Agreement for the 2026-2027 school year? So moved. Motion made by Mr. Treanor. May I have a second? Second. Second by Mr. Chura. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the agreement addendum with Substitute Teacher Services Incorporated effective July 1st, 2026 per attached due to a clerical error to the original contract. So moved. Motion made
050by Mr. Montani. Second by Ms. Heen. Any discussion on this item? Just to ask Joan, is this where it's supposed to be now? Yes, they have corrected the issue. So this is correct. Thank you Thank you all in favor. Aye. Aye anybody opposed the motion passes May have a motion to approve the PSBA 2026 2027 membership renewal and Keystone agenda management tool effective July 1st 2026 per attached so move motion made by mr. Tura may have a second Second. Second from Mr. Fiorelli. Any discussion on this item? Go ahead. Dr. Castagna, can you explain to the public, because recently within the past year, we've changed from IC board that the public receives the minutes in the agenda item to board docs, which now has been not renewed by PSBA. and PSBA now is utilizing Keystone
051Agenda Management Tool, which we are possibly approving in this motion. Yes, and basically we're following the recommendation of the School Boards Association. We are a member of PSBA. We follow their recommendations when it comes to policy, updates, et cetera, because they are recommending the move to Keystone, and we did our own internal analysis of the program. We like the pricing, and we like the capabilities of it, and we are recommending that we follow the recommendation from the PSBA. Okay. Anybody else have any questions? Yes. So we'll have to let you know the public know and and have a link to a link to a link Yeah, yes, but you'll keep those two other links available, right? Yeah, we for the warehouse of the former information. Yes. Sure. Okay. Thank you all in favor aye aye
052Anybody opposed the motion passes? May have a motion to approve the policy review surfaces with PSBA for the attached contract pending solicitor review. So moved. Motion made by Mr. Chura. Second. Second by Mrs. Treanor. Any discussion on this item? Do you want to give the public just a little bit? about this. Yeah, and this came from a recommendation from our board president. Our policies are, many of them are outdated. There really hasn't been a complete overhaul of all of district policies in years. Some of them are from the 80s. And so what the PSBA does is they come in and audit all of them and give us recommendations to get them up to date and in compliance with. whatever has happened since 1984 some of them have updated again you know the policy guides what
053the district does and it's important to keep these up to date it's first time that i think the district has ever done a complete overhaul yeah all in favor aye anybody opposed the motion passes May I have a motion to approve the AIU Services Guide for the 2026-2027 school year? So moved. Motion made by Mrs. Treanor. May I have a second? Second by Mrs. Sexton. Any discussion on this item? Do you want to just explain what this is, just real quick? Just the pricing that the AIU offers the school district? There's multiple motions tonight about the AIU, but this is their services guide. We use them. It's basically their a la carte menu of services they provide all the districts in Allegheny County. And they ask to have these board approved so everyone is aware
054that if we use that service any time throughout the school year, what is the price attached to that? Sure, thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. we have a motion to approve the 2026-2027 administrative budget of the pathfinder school per attached motion made by mr montani second by mr broski any discussion on this item all in favor aye aye anybody opposed the motion passes May have a motion to approve a grant for $20,000 from the Grable Foundation to support the AI regional innovation project as outlined in the attached correspondence Motion made by mr. Montana second Second by miss heen any discussion on this item. Yes. Thank you all in favor. Aye Anybody opposed the motion passes May I have a motion to approve the $1,000 mini grant awarded to Ms.
055Christy Schmidt by Future Driven Schools and Parents as allies in support of a family school engagement initiative. Motion made by Mrs. Sexton. May I have a second? Second. Second by Mr. Chura. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding with the Collier Township Police Department as part of Safe Schools? Second. Motion made by Mrs. Heen. Second by Mr. Chura. Any discussion on this item? Dr. Kostacka, can you just... briefly go over this one and the next one, which is with Scott Township. Yes, and the comments will apply to 1015 and 1016. So every year the school district has to gather data to create a safe schools report, but we cannot sign off on the final report to
056submit it to the Department of Education. Your local police department has to. And so any school buildings you have within local jurisdictions, you have to sign an MOU with that. to then sign off on your Safe Schools report and that's what is reflected on those two motions. Okay thank you. All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding with the Scott Township Police Department as part of Safe Schools? Motion made by Mr. Montani, second by Mr. Chura. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. May I have a motion to approve the Charters Valley Dance Troops Travel Request to attend the UDA summer camp from July 13th through July 16th, 2026 for the purpose of earning a bid
057to Nationals. So moved. Motion made by Mrs. Treanor. Second by Ms. Heen. Any discussion on this item? All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? The motion passes. On to public comments on agenda items. Mrs. Treanor. We would like to invite any resident or taxpayer of Chartres Valley School District who wishes to address the board to please state your name and address when you approach the podium. We appreciate your interest. Please keep your comments to two to three minutes. Kelly, did anyone sign up to speak on current non-agenda items? Yes. Kayla Hutton. hi good evening my name is kayla hutton address is 245 station street bridgeville i have three kids in the district and i am concerned about the chronic transportation tardiness as well as trans transparency within the district concerning the transportation and the budget since
058the board approved outsourcing some routes to first student in february and march i'm curious how many of you Know that specifically bus 484 is chronically late during the a.m. And p.m. Routes the latest I've seen is 924 arriving to school at 924 My child is protect projected to get home around 440 recently I received an email at 457 Stating that the bus would be 20 to 25 minutes late and that's well past 5 o'clock When students arrive to school 15 to 20 minutes late on a recurring basis, they are missing meaningful instructional time and already starting the day behind their peers. While I've adjusted and now drive my child to school, there are other families that might not be able to do so. Not every family has the ability to compensate for the transportation failures
059by driving their children to school. That creates inequitable access to education. The fact that schedule adjustments were made during PSSAs to prioritize children arriving on time reinforces that the district understands how important consistent attendance and instructional time is. So I have some questions. Has the district tracked chronic transportation tardiness by school and grade level? How many instructional minutes have been lost to transportation delays? And what threshold does the district consider educationally unacceptable for reoccurring late arrivals? I've also reviewed some of the district's financial documents, namely June 30th, 2025. I guess it was the audit. which shows that the district continued financing and purchasing buses between 2018 to 2023. Taxpayers deserve to understand why major transportation investments were made so recently if the district is now considering moving away from the fleet ownership because of transportation
060costs. Before permanent decisions are made, the public should see a transparent comparison showing the remaining transportation debt obligations, projected outsourcing costs versus in-house, And what is the accountability to the contractors when they are failing to pick up our children and drop them off at the stated times? While outsourcing may look cheaper initially, what happens when districts no longer own our buses and lose bargaining power? What leverage will we as taxpayers have if the vendor costs raise in the future? Accountability as a board means more than identifying a line item. And I'm almost done. It means owning the impact that this board's decisions have on students, families, and taxpayers every single day. I just don't think that the kids should continue to be affected by this. And I'm just curious if any of the board is
061aware how late these children are getting to school, how late they are being dropped off. I would like to put that in an email, and I would like responses, please. Thank you. No more comments? That's great. You're more than welcome to meet Dr. Castagna any day during the school day. So you should please set up a meeting with him, you know to address your questions And again at the end when you said it was gonna put an email I didn't know if you meant that you want some of it, but just to answer some of those Yes, the district was in a lease purchase agreement for buses for those years They were because they had a purchase buses because if the buses don't pass inspection You can't run them. And so There were lease agreements.
062I believe that there isn't any more debt payments on the lease right? No how much? $300,000, $400,000? Okay. It's down about $300,000 left in lease payments on those purchases. And again, that was a decision that was made at that time instead of them buying them out. using bond money or fund balance. This district and this board is very well aware of the late arrivals. It is all-consuming, I have to be honest. It is every day. It is my first phone call and my last phone call every day. update the board constantly on concerns we have and when we're canceling runs or runs are going to be really late those are separate communications to the board it's a nightmare it really is and i i share your frustrations with it um something has to give and
063we have to make some changes there's no doubt about it everybody's accountable outside companies internal you know problems we have our problems in house as well you know and again we don't speak to those but there are problems there's problems with our busing across the board But again, I promise you it is all consuming. The adjustments that were made to the PSSA schedule had to be made because we have to allow students extended time. There was no way we could pull it off being short the number of runs we have every day. So I just want to, you know, I don't want to speak for the board, but I just want to say we talk about it daily. And we agree with you. And there are... There are accountability measures for everyone. We have five
064outsourced companies right now we're working with to bus special education students, homeless students, private school students, charter school students, and then a lot of our internal runs just because we didn't have drivers. So it is probably the most. bus contracts this district has ever had in place at one time and Every day I'm on the phone trying to get more drivers and talking to people I I was on the phone last night 8 o'clock at night and I got a message of 730 that we have a driver Locally that's gonna start tomorrow That's how it is. It's day to day and it's all day You're not wrong and what you're saying, but I do want to say they are aware and we talk about it constantly I'd like to announce our next school board meeting
065will be May 26, 2026. May I have a motion to adjourn? Second. Motion made by Ms. Heen, second by Mr. Montani. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Have a good night.