001Good evening, everyone. Sorry for the brief delay. Mrs. Hess is not able to be here this evening, so I am filling in on her behalf. I will ask everyone to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. All right. Thank you, Mrs. Ramirez. You have the roll call noted. Thank you. Okay, tonight's meeting. The purpose of tonight's meeting is for voting on resolutions and any other items properly presented. Is there any public comment in regards to the agenda items for our special voting meeting this evening? All right, seeing none, we will move on to Section 4, Personnel. We have A, B, and C. Item A, motion to elect the following support staff as presented, pending receipt of all forms and documents required by the
002district. Item B, motion to elect the following coach as presented, pending receipt of all forms and documents required by the district. And item C, motion to elect the following volunteer coaches as presented, pending receipt of all forms and documents required by the district. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, they carry item five academics. We have the 2627 school calendar I will take a motion and a second to approve the 2026 2027 school calendar as presented and before we vote mrs Piazza is there anything you wanted to point out or discuss about the calendar Sure, this calendar is a 2627 calendar. It really is a pretty typical calendar. Nothing extraordinary in this calendar compared to what we typically do other than we are going into our second year of conferences at our middle school level
003and so we intentionally broke the conferences into two separate weeks one for the elementary which is in October and one for the middle school which is in November if my memory serves me we did that intentionally so that we can support all families who need the support of our teachers meeting with them as well as English language support so That's the only difference that you will see compared to a traditional calendar that you've seen year over year. Other than that, it's pretty standard. Any questions or discussion from board members? All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Item 6, other business. We need a motion and a second to approve the resolutions as presented, which are for the middle school roof and the middle school HVAC. These are for the grant applications to be submitted. Any
004questions or discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motions carry. Are there any interested citizens regarding non-agenda items who would like to address the board this evening? All right. Seeing none, we will adjourn our special voting meeting at 6.11 p.m., and we will move directly into our standing committee meeting. Oh, do I need to motion to? Okay. Sorry. Motion to adjourn the special voting meeting. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, still 6-11. And moving into the standing committee meetings, we have already done the pledge. The roll call remains the same. So I will turn it over to Mrs. Piazza for her superintendent's report. Good evening everyone. Thank you very much. Today just a couple of shout outs and congratulations to some of our high school students and then we do have a presentation from
005Dr. Wolfel on their 26-27 budget. So starting with a couple of shout outs I want to congratulate our high school FBLA group which is our which is our future business leaders of America who have developed and presented a financial literacy initiative in which some of our high school students went to meet with our fifth graders across the district to teach them about financial literacy and the importance of understanding their money and how to save and spend wisely. Certainly a topic that many adults struggle with and so the earlier we can start prefacing the idea of saving with kids and responsibility with kids around money. the better off they are. This also is a topic that by state regulation is now going to be a required course at our secondary level as you heard I think
006a couple of weeks ago. And so, you know, the state is in congruence with that thought of people need to understand money sense and money savings for the betterment of their own livelihood. So we congratulate our FBLA kids for having the idea and the fortitude to go down and mentor our younger students in general but certainly around a topic that's a critical topic so thank you to them and congratulations for their efforts the second group I would like to highlight our is our high school robotics team our high school robotics team had a busy weekend last weekend competing they came across a couple of snafus that made them problem solve and reinvent some of their processes. I will say the kids spent tireless hours working on their craft of robotics. In this particular weekend, they
007spent 12 to 15 hours working towards creating their projects and demonstrating their projects. They had a successful run, even though they had some rebuilds and rethinks to go along with it. They made it through a second round into playoffs. And on top of the building and operating of the robotics, there are other marketing pieces that come into play, and they did win recognition for the imagery award, which has to do with some of their marketing pieces that they had around a Pac-Man. station stand they were working on. So congratulations to our robotics team. We are thrilled that they are continue to operate. They have been resourceful in finding the resources of manpower and monetary resources to continue that club. It was at slight jeopardy last year, if you recall, as we were closing out the
008year. And so kudos to them for being resilient and also working hard at a craft that they enjoy. Our third shout-out is to our girls, excuse me, varsity basketball team, who are probably center court right about now. They have tipped off about 15 minutes ago. They are on their second round into the state playoffs, and so we certainly wish them well. And if any of our phones ding, it may be an update to see how they're doing this evening, but certainly wish them well. They've had a phenomenal season. We're very proud of their coach and their girls for their playing. And with that, I will close out my remarks and invite Dr. Wolfel to the podium. If you care to listen to the presentation he has for the 26-27 operating budget for Colonial IU20. With
009that, you certainly have opportunity at the end to ask questions if you have them. But as always, this is more a listening and gathering session, and we'll come back on the 24th as the voting piece for this proposal. so dr all right well thank you thank you thank you and i have my friends over here that they're going to guide me through this and they said if i talk too long they're just going to keep pushing the slides so um so thank you for having me come out i also have dr jackie bartek our assistant to the executive director for student services joining me tonight some of these slides i'll go through very quickly our mission real simple positive relationships, being responsive to all those we serve, and then trying to demonstrate good results through
010all those programs and services. You can see there just the I've shared the slide every year just how big we are across the three counties continuing to grow and that is a big thank you to our school districts for their continued partnership and work entrusting us with your children for us to serve them as well as entrusting our team for professional development and all the different services that we provide. And you can keep going. There you go. So what you'll be voting on. Upcoming is our general operating budget. It's a small budget. It's one of 55 budget. It only comprises 1.6 of our total revenue, but it's the base budget that supports the core operations of the IU services. And this is prepared in collaboration with our IU20 board of directors. Brian serves as your
011IU20 board director, so he reviews this very closely. He asks very good questions and makes sure we're in line. as well as our superintendents and it's the only budget that requires board approval from all of our districts. All the other services that we provide are individual contracts and you agree to those through contracts through board approval. So our budget for next school year is for the general operating budget is about $4.6 million. It is a 5.99% increase or $265,000. We are asking for an increase this year from our districts of 3.5%. What's cost driving this budget is salaries that we have budgeted at 3.2% for our Act 93 employees. We do have a Act 93 agreement that is up at the end of this year. So we're not sure. What that percent is going to
012be, we're not forecasting that out yet. We'll see what happens, but that's around the range that we're going to be working for. Medical has been a massive increase. We're seeing that across the region. It's happening across the state. You're reading it everywhere. Every article you read about schools, health care costs are just on the rise. You can see there that salaries and benefits make up 87.7% of this budget. There's not a lot of fluff. It's mostly people. And that's pretty much it. You can see there are some pieces increase due to obligation, some social security. And then we did take non salary benefit items up 1.5% contract supplies. You know, the people that we work with, they're increasing their classes costs. So we had to increase those lines a little bit. Balancing the budget out,
013that's really where we're looking at how we can help to support that budget with the 3.5%. So looking at some receipts of other IU sources and some increases there, some interest that we're accruing, and then some revenue that we get back in Social Security retirement, and then our support from withholding. You can see there over the last several years what this general operating budget looked like as far as increases. An eight-year average is a little over 1% that we've been asking our school districts to help contribute towards this budget. This just shows the balance out of all the revenue by the different descriptions, where those increases are. And then on the next page, you'll see where the expenditures are, where those increases are by each description, and those balance themselves out. You do have a
014packet here that's bounded at your seat which has all of the detail of all the lines and certainly if there were any questions that you find after you review this, you certainly can forward those questions to Ms. Piazza and I'd be happy to get that information back to you if there are specific questions. So when you look at overall what the... The school district contributed to the IU 20. You can see there that your contribution is $67,000. That 3.5% represents $2,299 in increases. Next steps for our general operating budget is this is kind of our tour. So we go out, we go on the road, we go to all the school districts, we present this budget. We talk a little bit about the IU. The boards approve it and then we bring it back to
015our IU 20 board for final approval and then we have to send it out to Harrisburg by May 1st. So I'll pause right there before I get into just some highlights of the 25-26 school year to talk about all the good stuff, not so much budget stuff. Are there any specific questions on general operating budget? I'll share a couple quick slides and then play a video for you that kind of I think sums everything up that we do at IU 20. So a lot of information here in this about early intervention, but I did want to share that early intervention is a very, very important service that we provide on behalf of the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Office of Child Development and Early Learning. Your school district does not contribute any funding towards
016early intervention. This is strictly coming from the state. You could see probably if you watch the governor's budget last year he put a nice increase into early intervention. He's proposing another big increase in early intervention again primarily because the services that our children need with disabilities in that ages three to five has been growing. Their needs have been more complex across the Commonwealth. And just the numbers keep skyrocketing. So in order for us to provide those services, to try to build up some of those skills for the kids so they come kindergarten ready or they come with less barriers, less challenges, we need to continue funding to keep up with this program. So you can see there how much we keep growing in this program. So we service about 2,500 kids annually in our early
017intervention program. School-based partial hospitalization program, another very important program. This is a program that really deters. Having children have to go to very, very expensive services to get their mental health needs met. If we didn't have this program, your students would probably be going to a day program at like St. Luke's or Lehigh Valley Health Network or other type of programs. They might have to go to residential treatment facilities. And those are pretty heavy costs, as well as we're pulling our kids. out of their home schools, out of their communities to get those services. Our school-based partial program, which is a medical program, allows us to provide these services right in the school, provide their behavioral health and mental health that's overseen by a licensed psychiatrist, as well as provide their academics. We get the
018kids in, build up their skills, and we get them back into the least restrictive environment as quickly as possible. We've been doing this program. longer than any other IU. We were the first IU to put this program together many, many years ago. And it continues to grow and a very stable program. And we just did a very long presentation with our IU20 board about the importance and the need for our psychiatrists. We spent a lot of time talking about this. So we thought it was a good time to just share a little bit with all of our boards about this really important program. We have been doing a lot of professional learning and development, not just for the staff, but also for your children. So at the IU, you could see there, we've been doing
019a lot of work around technology and building those skills to get kids ready for the future. And you can see all the different activities that we have at the IU. Invention convention, the junior technology leaders, chief science officers, the media and design competition. We serve about 600 students annually in these programs. They come over to the IU or we go to different places around the community and do these events. And you can see there the impact. We have had students present annually at the Junior Technology Leader Showcase, which is a regional showcase in the region. We've had students present at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Conference and Expo, which is a state conference. And two times our students have gone out from the junior tech leaders and they have presented at the ISTE conference, which ISTE
020is like an international think tank for the top educational technology. So you can see how the kids are learning, but also then teaching those skills and presenting those at big level conferences. And then local task force. Local task force this past summer has gone under a little bit of a revamp and a recharge. So local task force is partnered with all of the IUs throughout Pennsylvania. And what we do is we bring families together of children with special needs, and at those meetings, they talk about some of the challenges that might be happening out across the region, system issues that we might need to help support or gather together and network together. What I will say is probably years ago, what happened with the local task force, it kind of turned into families come in
021when they had a... maybe a service that wasn't working out or maybe they didn't get something that they wanted in a school district and they would kind of come there to air their concerns and it kind of started to take kind of a negative kind of feel to it instead of actually working collaboratively with families, school districts, the IU, other community resources to really kind of dig in on where those system issues we have to work. So Dr. Clancy from the Bureau of Special Ed wanted to recharge this group and over the summer we had what was called the Local Task Force Capacity Building Institute. I actually presented at that about the power of relationships and working together. So we're actually now starting to kind of rework local task force, encouraging families to come, encouraging
022community providers, and again keeping the focus on what are those system issues that then we can work with the Bureau of Special Ed to kind of work together to fix those. There's all kinds of other mechanisms if you want to work one-on-one with your school district if there's a challenge. We have parent support groups like the IE20 parent support group and also, you know, really trying to encourage our families to work collaboratively with their district in those tough times and then we have this video that i'm going to let play and you can kind of see a little bit more about the scope of iu20 so enjoy the video probably i shared i can talk forever about iu20 so i figured this year we just summarize in a video it'll keep my comments short so
023um any questions all right well thank you for having us come out tonight thank you Okay, thank you, and that concludes the superintendent's report. Okay, we will move on then to committee reports, starting with academics and Dr. Draper. Thank you, Ms. Iago. Good evening, everyone. This evening we have a few items that we'd like to present for board approval and provide a few updates on some key instructional initiatives, professional development highlights, and some community partnerships. So action items for board approval for this evening, as presented in the agenda, we have a host of field trips listed there that we're going to be seeking, we're seeking board approval for on the upcoming March 24th board meeting. And also the ELD, English Language Development Professional Development Contract, for the remainder of this school year. So in partnership
024with Support Ed, we will be providing... specialized training for our K-12 ESL teachers and our K-5 homeroom teachers at Cheston and Pax Sonosa Elementary Schools. The purpose of this training and this partnership with Support Ed is to increase the capacity to support our multilingual learners within a general education classroom. and also for our ESL teachers to receive additional role-specific training to better serve as instructional coaches for their content area peers within the buildings. And so this training that we're seeking approval for will be funded using our Title III carryover funds from the 24-25 school year. So we have additional funding from last year that we want to certainly make sure that we use this year. And the Title III funding that we have this year is being used to support our families as well as
025instructional practices within the classroom. So for this evening, for the two items of board approval that we are seeking is our field trips and support ed. Any questions on those two items before we move on? Great. So for our curriculum instruction updates, this evening I'm going to ask Mr. Cook to update us on the building principal capacity in mathematics and teacher in-service, and Ms. Hilton, if she can provide an update on our early childhood readiness initiatives. Good evening. Thank you, Dr. Draper. As Dr. Draper mentioned, this is the fourth. We just finished up our fourth session with Jason Adair from SREB. And each time we get out, it's great to have the K-12 principals. It's very practical trainings. So we're out in classrooms watching instruction, talking about instruction. So on the 5th, our K-12 principals
026participated in PD. with Jason focused on strengthening instructional leadership in math. This was our fourth session in an ongoing series designed to support principals in identifying high-quality math instruction during classroom walkthroughs. This session emphasized strategies that help make student thinking visible, deepening cognitive engagement, and strengthening classroom culture through reasoning, discourse, and writing. So our focus this time as we went out into classrooms, we were looking... for how students were making their learning visible. So they were writing problems on the board, they were conversing with one another, they were trying new problems, they were sharing strategies with one another. And we were very impressed with the work that we saw. And again, this is really for our professional development for our principals in terms of how do we continue to facilitate this at a building level.
027And our work this time around was anchored around an article called Making Thinking Visible. So there was a pre-reading. We went out into classrooms. It's a great opportunity that we get to put learning as the focus of what we do. Looking ahead to March with our continuation of professional development, this will be another differentiated professional development day for all of our staff members. There are two must-dos for the day and two may-dos. So they have a whole host of opportunities. to select. Right now, Ms. Hilton and I, with our colleagues from the other departments, are putting this schedule, final touches or beginning touches or somewhere around there, of the schedule. It's quite interesting to schedule over 500 to 600 teachers into four independent sessions, but it's definitely worth it in the end. In addition to
028those required sessions that we have that align to our comprehensive goals and structured literacy, our departments also have a variety of optional sessions. Specialty areas, student services have put a host of opportunities for our teachers, and special ed has some special training that day as well. This structure allows our teachers to select learning opportunities that best support their professional growth, while at the same time strengthening our instruction for all students. Jennifer? Thank you, Mr. Cook. Good evening, everyone. One special presenter that we have on Monday for March 16th is our continued partnership with Kiker Learning. Kiker will be providing two presenters over all four sessions with four different topics. Gemini level up for K-5 and also a differentiated session for our 6-12 teachers. We have Notebook LM, which is really... an amazing tool and teachers
029will learn how to use that almost like a teacher assistant to really build efficiency in their planning and their ability to differentiate for their students and make learning more engaging. We have a session for the secondary teachers on rethinking plagiarism, really talking about ethical, responsible use of AI in the classroom. And we also have... I'm forgetting. I think that's it. So that's four. So we're looking forward to the continued work with Kiker. They've been really helpful and willing to be flexible with the topics that we need based on the survey that we send out to our staff. We're excited to provide those opportunities for our teachers. Also a highlight on our board brief this week is our upcoming Ready Rover event on Thursday the 12th. Mr. Bonilla has been busy building the partnerships with our
030pre-K providers, our community members, and all the stakeholders, including the IU20, to make sure that our students come into kindergarten ready to learn and ready for school. So we kick off the spring and a very busy summer for our pre-K. into K students with a pre-K kindergarten meet and greet Thursday. So this will bring together our kindergarten teachers with their administrators and our pre-K teachers and also our support from St. Luke's who will provide a presentation to talk about what families can do to make sure their students, their children are ready for kindergarten. So that will kick off an event our ready Rover transition. We are looking to plan an event in May at Crayola So we just heard from Crayola today. So we're hoping to kind of Kick off our summer pre-k Summer programming
031with an event at Crayola some more to come on that word when we solidify those plans. So, thank you Thank You. Mr. Cook and Thank You. Miss Hilton any questions for them? Just one quick question. When principals or administrators do a walkthrough, are they recorded and there's a conference and everything with that? Thank you. Yes, the principals, we have goals for our walkthroughs, so they're doing learning walks almost on a daily basis, and we talk a lot about closing the feedback loop to make sure that the teachers know what we are looking for as far as instructional strategies, and then they get that feedback as quickly as possible to make sure that we have that continuous feedback loop going and continuous professional development. So, yes. Thank you. Does the... Does the district use an observation
032platform, Madeline Hunter or something like that? Yes, we use PAETEP, and so the goal is for them to have 20 classroom visits within a specific time period, and that they are to record that in PAETEP. And so it was for myself, Ms. Sukuk, and Ms. Hilton to take a look at those, look at that feedback, and we use that information to provide additional professional development for our principals as well as for our teachers. And that's based on the Charlene Danielson model? Yes. And just like to close out with sharing a few community partnerships, student highlights. So we have, we're expanding our partnership with Lafayette College. And so we want to create a more comprehensive volunteer program with the college. And so this aims to place volunteers not just in a couple of schools, but in
033every school within our district. And the focus of areas of support will be academic intervention, mentoring, and enrichment. So for academic intervention, we're looking for tutors. to go into our classrooms, maybe to do small group, one-to-one tutoring for literacy and math, and possibly to do some morning study buddies at our middle and high schools. For mentoring, we're looking for volunteers to come in to do one-on-one social-emotional support for our students who may need an additional caring adult or person to encourage or inspire them to make it through their day-to-day routines. And finally, for enrichment, looking for volunteers who can provide after-school club leadership and coaching. For example, we've been very successful with the Girls on the Run program, and so we would like to expand the number of girls who participate in that program, but
034in order to do so, we need some more volunteers in the after-school to serve as coaches. And so that's an opportunity that we're looking to expand through this program. Another partnership highlight, our English language development department, they shared some news, the Cozy Project. So through a partnership with the Twisted Threads, our middle school ESL students received handmade chunky knit blankets, and this community effort was led by Stacey Eli and Zabrina Negron. And by doing so, we were able to provide tangible comfort and warmth to our students this winter, and we know it was a... pretty brutal winter with the temperatures and wind chill factors taking us well into the single digits and below zero temperatures so we'd like to give a special thank you to miss eli miss negron and also twisted threads for making
035this opportunity possible for our students And lastly, I want to ask everyone to save the date for our district-wide art show. Our students' creativity will be on full display at the Palmer Park Mall from April 26th through May 6th. And so we are encouraging all board members and community to attend and celebrate our visual arts program. So more to come on that, but just wanted to make sure that we mention it this evening so people can put it on their calendar. And that concludes the report for curriculum instruction. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Draper. If there's no questions from board members, is there anyone from the public who would like to comment on academics agenda items? Seeing none, we have two items that we will be voting on in two weeks at the
036March 24th meeting, the field trip request and the updated ELD contract. All right. Thank you. Athletics, Dr. Zyadik, will you be covering? For us this evening. I shall dr Balt is currently at Reading High School at the the girls basketball game And he just let me know that we are down 17 14 at the half So just just wanted to relay that so plenty of time left Not many things for athletics for approval. We have a very routine item every other year that we bring to the board for their support. It's a baseball trip to Cooperstown for our baseball program. They get an opportunity to play against Westchester, all levels, and on a really great field and have an opportunity to go to spend some time together up in Cooperstown. you know, just a great
037opportunity for our kids. So that's the only item that we're going to bring to the board for approval. And I'm happy to answer any questions on that if there are any, but pretty routine item. Seeing none. Anything else, Dr. Zadig? No. Okay. Any questions from board members? Any comments from the public? All right. Seeing none, we just have the one voting item then in March. All right, personnel and negotiations. Ms. Dufour. Thank you so much and good evening. On the agenda for tonight is an updated job description for our subject or department coordinators. So this is a position that is open to EAEA bargaining unit members. And you will see in that job description, we have removed some outdated language and then also updated the job description really with an emphasis on collaboration and planning
038rather than having these individuals serve like as a... As a messenger, as a liaison, as you read through that, if you do have any questions, please let me know. I will interject here to say this was on the agenda back in the fall, and we tabled it, the board tabled it at that time, which was a wise thing because we were already in October and people were doing the work. prior to revisiting this job description. There was also some input and comments from our teachers union group and so that input was taken under consideration in this revised agreement as well. Certainly not every piece of that information was incorporated but it was all considered and what could be incorporated was and so this is the document that the executive team, the cabinet team and the
039union collaborated on to come up with this new job description. So we are looking for a board to review that and consider it and it will be on for a vote for next board meeting. The purpose of the timing is that once this is approved within the new CBA for our EAEA, there's also the opportunity for the first time in quite some time, if ever, to then... have some say into who those coordinators are and so our building administration along with cabinet and executive team will have a process in place for people to express interest in the job description and then be elected or selected into that position. And we'd like to have that solidified by late May, early June if possible, so they go into the summer knowing that they have been accepted to
040that role and perhaps get their feet wet in some of the summer work alongside of their principal. So that is the timing. Certainly, if there are additional questions as it comes up throughout the next two weeks, please reach out and ask them. And as it comes up next week. next time we're here to vote if there are questions we'll certainly answer them at that point too but our timing is for the reasons just explained and if possible that would be our preferred preferred timing but if there's a delay you certainly understand that as well Thank you. Kara, I just have one question. At the top of page two, the bullet point that says assist daily substitute teachers, write lesson plans, complete grading for teachers who are out on leave until a district long-term substitute is
041in place as needed. Is it possible to add something in there that says essentially as needed and as appropriate? You know, I'm a little concerned about... Some departments like world language, some of our sciences, some other specialized areas where the subject coordinator is maybe not going to be the best choice for who to do that, and we might need to look at paying someone else in the department to take care of that work. So I don't want it to just default on that person without there being a discussion as to if that's the most appropriate person to do that. Absolutely. We'll take a look at that. Anybody else have any questions, comments about the changed job description? Okay, seeing none. Anyone from the public to be heard on personnel and negotiation agenda items? Okay, in
042summary, we will ideally look to vote on that job description then on March 24th. Okay, moving on to budget and finance. Mr. Trent. Thank you. We are bringing forward two items for approval at the next meeting. The first is to establish... a student activity club which is the SEEK Student Association and the other item is the Woodson's Cornering Group food renewal that's a year-to-year renewal as a reminder in Pennsylvania food contracts are awarded for a maximum of five years with year-to-year renewals so we are entering year four since this was approved in 2023 and that's what we have I just have one question. I did bring this up before, but can we possibly move this student club form to a digital format to make it a little bit easier to read what is trying to
043be conveyed on that form? Yes, that was already brought up to me by another board member. Okay, great. And my admin professional is creating a fillable form for student activities. That was brought up to me yesterday. Great, thank you. So again, I'm going to interject just for a second for the board. We talked about it a little bit, but also for the public that there will be a board workshop on Tuesday, March 31st. um largest conversation in that workshop will be around our budget and our audit we are still in wait waiting for our 23 24 audit and are hopeful that we will have that in hand in time to present it on the 24th board meeting but also really dig deep into our financial situation as well as the 24 25 audit and the
04425 26 audit 26 27 budget so there's quite an extensive conversation that is going to happen at that workshop So we encourage our board members to attend that workshop. that will be a workshop open to the public as all workshops are. And so again, that will be an important one because Mr. Trent's intention, if all things go well, based on all the conversation and data collection that happens between now and then is to present a final proposed budget in April for board approval, hopefully in May. We are giving a grace period there. So if needed, we have June to still make corrections. as as needed but we are on track to have a balanced budget as promised and a little bit of work yet to do from our internal team to to make that happen
045um you know to balance this year's budget and and move forward but that'll be a critical pivotal time for the board and the public to hear and learn about where we truly are in our finances and what our plan is moving forward So again, I encourage the board and any interested public to come out to that meeting on the 31st, which will be held here in the boardroom from 6 to 8, and then subsequent meetings during our scheduled standing committees and board meetings. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from board members? And do we, I'm sorry, did you say when the attachment will be ready? for the Whitson. Oh, I apologize for that. Yes. We just received it back from the state today. Okay. So we had some corrections, so we returned it, and
046we'll be looking at it and signing it tomorrow and attaching it tomorrow. Okay. So we can attach it here, but we can also send it out to the board in a BO in your email group so you don't have to hunt it down. all right in summary then we have two voting items for budget and finance as well as the upcoming board workshop is there anyone from the public to be heard no All right. Buildings and grounds, safety and security. Dr. Ziadak. Sure. Thank you, Ms. Sayago. This evening, we are recommending one item for approval. It is our lawn care bid. And the reason why it states update is because we did receive the bids in at the end of last week, and we are currently in the process of reviewing all the bids. You
047can see the bid tabulation there of everyone that did submit a bid. So we are reviewing to make sure that they have all of their paperwork and information and necessary requirements. be doing some background checks some reference checks on them so we will have that recommendation for the board meeting mr. case anything that you want to add to that no nothing good and then I have one other item miss IO just for just to kind of share but I want to if you want to take a break and just if there's any questions on the lawn care bit I'm happy to answer I'm just curious are we surprised or is this typical for the number of bids that we would get for this project it seems like particularly for the high school it's kind of
048low In terms of how many people actually bid. Yeah, I mean, I would say it's typical of what we've seen in the past. You know, we're kind of an odd size. We're bigger than the local resident, you know, grass-cutting contractors. And, you know, we're a little too small for, like, the bigger commercial. We only put it as a two-year this year just because of the high school construction that's going to be coming up. But in the future, I'd be interested in just putting it at one contract for the whole district, and then maybe we can entice the bigger contractors and get some different pricing. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions on the bid? And then the that's the voting item and then the other item I just want to share this evening with the board is
049we received We're an honoree from the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission We are an honoree for the Lehigh Valley Transportation Award presented to our district for exemplary vision and achievement in contributing toward the development of the 2025 Palmer Township Active Transportation Plan, promoting mobility, sustainability, and community well-being. And just want to kind of share a little bit about that. It's the Palmer Township Active Transportation Plan. It outlines Palmer Township's vision for improving walking, biking, and transit usage for all road users of all ages and abilities. Their plan actually has six goals that they outline in the vision that can be found online. But the plan contains several key recommendations for installing new facilities for walking and biking, as well as for updating township policies and recommendations for collaboration on programming activities such as safe routes to
050schools and educational opportunities. The Easton Area School District was a member of the steering committee for the project. I do want to give a pretty great shout out to Mr. Hector Bonilla. If you recall, Hector was in transportation maybe two years ago, and he was a critical contributor on that steering committee for at least a year, year and a half during this process. He attended the sessions. He and I both went to those sessions at times and provided some guidance on behalf of the district on improving the walking, biking, and transit conditions for students. So just wanted to... say you know that we're an honoree for that and we're happy to have worked with them and contribute to an ongoing positive relationship with Palmer Township so um just want to share with everybody thank you
051and that's all we have then for that section okay terrific any questions or comments from board members any members of the public to be heard on those agenda items and seeing none we will be voting on the 24th on the lawn care bid awards All right. And Dr. Zayadik, if you'd like to continue with educational technology and student supports. Sure. We only have one item that we will be recommending for approval as two components to it. I'm going to ask Ms. Arntz to kind of explain some of what the actual pieces are, but I'm also going to ask you, Jamie, if you can just give a really quick summary of what E-Rate is, especially for some of our new members, and what it means to us. Thank you. So E-Rate is a federal program that
052provides Internet connectivity to public government facilities such as schools and libraries. Within that program you are assigned an apportionment of 20% to 90% depending on the free for schools your free and reduced lunch rate and some other considerations. Our district receives 80% of funding so any project that we do related to internet connectivity the district pays out and then we get an 80% refund on that payment. There are two components to the program. The first component is your internet connectivity. So the bill that we pay monthly to get internet access for the district. And the second component is for equipment and internal connections. And all of those pieces must be internal to the district. We cannot provide that service to anyone outside of the district. And there are also some regulations that require us to
053use certain vendors that have been vetted by the state and it also provides that we have of course it's escaping my mind right now digital citizenship components in our in our education program throughout the the k-12 curriculum so with all those components in place we then put together bids every year we send those out we bring in the bids that are offered and we evaluate them for cost. In some cases we can evaluate on some other pieces too. So there's a matrix we can set up. So we can use bids that are from vendors we've worked with before or vendors that are more local to our community rather than going for the lowest bid that may be coming from like Philadelphia or Harrisburg. So we piece through all those things and we create a project.
054or whatever projects we need for the year, submit them to USAC, which is the organization that provides the funding. They approve or deny, or they work with the school to work through those approvals and get as much of the funding as we can, and then we do the project. So the typical timeline is we will start in October the process of E-rate. for the following fiscal year. So right now we've accepted our bids and what we have on the agenda for you are the bids for two projects that we'll be doing. We need to replace the access points at Cheston Elementary and we do that as a life cycle replacement. So every five years we work through our buildings and we replace those units so that we have the most up-to-date equipment for connectivity in
055those buildings. And the second piece is for a large UPS unit, which is a power supply unit that controls. In this case, it's in our main hub at the middle school coming into the district, which then serves all internet out into the rest of the district. So those are the two projects we have on. We are seeking approval so that we can sign the contract with the vendor and we can get the equipment ordered. The funding actually comes from our 26-27 fiscal year funding. Any questions? Thank you. That's all. Any questions, comments from board members? Anyone from the public? All right. Seeing none, we will just have the one voting item on the E-rate proposals. All right. Policy, again, Mrs. Dufour. Thank you very much. We have four policies up for their second reading this
056evening. So all of these policies also appeared on the February 24th board agenda and there haven't been any changes since. Policy 204 is for attendance and that was amended in order to be in compliance with Act 47. We have policy 218.1 which was amended in order to be in compliance with Act 44. We have a policy 808, which is food services. And if it looks familiar, it should, because we just recently had that board approved, and then we received a new procurement chart from the state right after it was approved. So the only change to that is the new chart that is attached. And then lastly, we have policy 918, Title I, parent and family engagement. This needs to be reviewed annually and updated as needed. Last year, there weren't any updates. This year, it
057was amended to include an expansion of the definition of parent and family or family member. So those will be on the March 24th board agenda for approval. Any questions on those? Yes. Does the district use a service to send updates on policies? Or how do you get your updates for policies to make sure we're in compliance? The PNN Plus, the PSBA PNN Plus document that's sent out. So that is in Board Docs. I can send that to the board, the most recent copy. Is that what you're referring to, Dr. Keegan? I was wondering because there's so many policies and when the changes take place, it's just... One of the things I worry about all the time is staying in compliance because there's so many policies that the district has. I was wondering if the district
058uses a policy service to help make sure that we stay compliant on all policies. Yes, that service that Kara mentioned through PSBA is pretty standard here in our local region and across Pennsylvania. And then we also consult with King Spry to review those policies and make recommendations as well. Any other questions? Thank you. And so Kara, we'll be on March 24th, we will vote on these and that is the final approval then for those four policies. Okay. Any questions, comments from board members on those individual policies? If not, we will be looking to finalize them in two weeks. All right. Anyone from the public? All right. Seeing none, again, four policies for final approval in two weeks. Is there any other business from board members this evening? Okay. Seeing none, is there anyone from the
059public to be heard on non-agenda items? I'll take a motion to adjourn. All in favor? Any opposed? Good work.