Regular Board Meeting

001All right, good evening everyone. Let's go ahead and get started tonight. All right, so we do have a student with us this evening to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Dr. Simia, would you like to introduce your student for us and have them get us started? You both can come on up to the podium, that'd be great. Right over here. I'm very honored this evening to bring with me Jasleen Kaur, who is one of our finest. She represents well the students at the Eastern Area Middle School, grade six. And I invited her here this evening to lead us in the pledge. She has recently had an honor bestowed upon her. Do you want to describe what it is? I got accepted to NSLC, a National Student Leadership Conference in Washington. Wow. Good job. And

002we both went to the high school and we made it back here in time. I'm going to go play the lottery. My car automatically went there. All right, everyone, please rise. 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. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Congratulations. All right, Mrs. Ramirez, you have the roll call noted. And Mr. Piperato, we will turn it over to you for your superintendent's report this evening. Thank you, Mrs. Sayako. Dr. Simea, can you stop and turn around? We asked Dr. Simea to provide us a report this evening regarding the middle school, and I believe she put together a video. Is that right? Do you want to

003introduce the video? I couldn't bring all 626 here, so I'm bringing them to you. Okay. Via video. Via video. And this is 6th grade, Charlene? Yes. Thank you very much. Gentlemen, are we ready? Hola. Renaissance Rovers Center. As we take you on a tour and see all the wonderful 6th grade things we are doing. You may wonder why we are called Renaissance Rovers, because Renaissance means rebirth. You may have heard of an artist named Michelangelo, and just like him, we are ready to change the world. Jones and Dr. Simeon, is it true that there's no rules in sixth grade? Absolutely there are no rules in sixth grade. Rules would be easy to have. We have expectations. Expectations are harder to achieve than rules because expectations means that somebody believes in you and is counting on

004you to reach those high heights of achievement. So George, you go and tell everybody we don't have rules, but we have it much tougher. We have to meet those strong expectations that teachers are setting for us. You have to come see me, George. Our three main expectations are respect, treat others the way you want to be treated, responsibility, do what is expected of you, and equity. Everyone is our equal. Proud to be Renaissance Rovers. Give me a P. P! Patience and persistence. Give me a R. R! Respect and responsibility. Give me an O. Give me a U. U. Understanding. Give me a D. D. Determined. We take pride in our achievements, especially first-year math. We rock! We are the members of the Medici Leadership Senate. We are led by Mrs. Ketchum and Ms. Nemi. We

005are also led by Mr. Guerreri and Mr. Morazic. We recently did a Valentine's Day dance for the PBIS program. Medici! They're the ones who's coming up and the world is in their hands. When you teach the children, teach them the very best you can. If we just let it be, not all bad. We gotta change it now, just you and me. Wake up all the doctors, make the old people well. They're the ones who suffer and who catch all the hell. but they don't have so very long before their judgment day so won't you make them happy before they pass away mtss is a process that meets our students at their level and provides them with the opportunities to grow and further develop academic and behavioral skills All students are different and have various needs,

006so one of the advantages of MTSS allows us to connect each student with the support they need. All educators have a role to play in the MTSS process. Classroom teachers provide academic support at a Tier 1 whole group and a Tier 2 small group level. Our interventionists, learning support teachers, provide instruction to our neediest students through the Tier 3. level. Our students' social and behavioral needs are addressed through a similar manner with a whole building approach that includes our guidance counselors, administrators, and other community services. Even though we are in the first year of this journey, I am excited for the possibilities for our students that are involved in the MTSS process. PBIS Rewards is an innovative system that supports well the positive behavior support theory. It is a digitized system that allows teachers and

007staff to assign Rover Bucks to any student who demonstrates academic or behavioral performance that reflects any of the three grade six expectations of respect, responsibility, or equity. Each student has a virtual bank account and they may use their bucks in the PBIS virtual store that has small items and also experience. that they can purchase such as lunch with Dr. Simya, Mr. Jones, Mr. Pepperot or community members, the mayor or police chief. The most popular items are the ceiling tiles that you saw at the beginning of this movie. Students decorate tiles in order to leave a part of them in the school when they progress to the next grade. Hi, my name is Jay Valise from 6D and my favorite thing about the PBIS program is I like to be recognized for doing the right thing.

008PBIS Rewards Program offers children the opportunity to earn Rover Bucks in a number of different ways. All members of the school community have access to accounts and they reward Rover Bucks for good behavior, positive interactions, and meeting school-wide expectations. Hi, I'm Terrence. This is Angel and Josiah. And we're telling you guys what we like about the PBIS program. I like moves and how you can buy things and yeah how you can buy things. What I like about the PBIS store is that you can earn virtual money so you can buy new stuff. What I like about the PBIS store is buying snacks and stuff like cereal bars and lunch passes and stuff like that. Box are used to buy things from a teacher's individual store or the school store. Snack type food, games, gadgets, lunches

009with teachers, and Easton themed merchandise are just some of the popular items children enjoy purchasing. What do you love most about PBIS? I love when my students are doing a good job and doing what they're supposed to be doing and I can reward them for doing such a great job. Rewards us for doing the right thing. Teachers gift Rover bucks, but if you get a gold coin, you get 25 Rover bucks. Mr. Jones will make it rain. We are members of the Eastern Area Class of 2029, and we are on our way to leading ourselves to being the best EASD class in history. Rovers! Out of the tree of life, I just picked me a plum. You came along and everything started in to hum Still it's a real good bet the best is yet

010to come Best is yet to come and babe won't that be fine Best is yet to come come the day Thank You dr. Simi any parting words or the video speaks for itself Thank you. I understand. Thank you. Appreciate your work and I absolutely loved the lunch that we had with the students It was amazing to me that a student would spend his Rover bucks to eat lunch with me. I Know and he enjoyed it Ed just so you know They did oh Wow, that's 25 Rover bucks right there Well done Thank You. Dr. Simia Okay, next up we have representatives from the Colonial Intermediate Unit 20 for a budget presentation. Hi, Doc, how are you? I didn't see you back there. I was hoping you were here. I was hoping you'd keep it brief.

011I mean, I hope so. It's only an hour presentation with all the slides. You're good, Chris, you're good. But no, thank you for having me here. I should probably introduce you. My apologies. Dr. Wolfel, the executive director of RIU. Welcome, Chris. Thank you. Thank you. Well, last year I had to follow Mr. Hightower in Tracy Elementary. Now I have to follow him. This isn't fair. That's right. Pick your poison, brother. But congratulations to East Nary School District. Also with me, I have Dr. Jackie Bartek. She's our assistant to the executive director for student services. So I have a lot of handouts for you I have some one pagers from our various departments for you to read on your own time Yes, as well as I provide you with the slideshow. I will not go through

012everything in the slideshow I will highlight the slides because if I did go over through everything we would be here for an hour. Okay, so All right. Yeah, so our mission is all about relationships, responsiveness, and results. Those are the actions that IU20 staff are identified to do throughout their day. And if we do these things, we think we're going to provide great service to all of our stakeholders. Our vision is to be vibrant, vital, influential, and innovative, and certainly a child-centered organization, knowing that kids are our business. That's what we do. So the IU covers 1,200 square miles, 13 school districts, three career tech centers, five charter schools, 52 non-public schools. We have over 270 locations that we provide early intervention services. So that could be children's homes, that could be daycares, our early

013learning center, and even some of our programs are housed in school buildings. You can see there about $258 million in budgets. We do, through all the services we provide, really kind of support all the students in the region at that 73,000. But directly serving students in the classrooms, we provide services to about 8,000 students. So the operating budget, small budget, one of 48 budgets, 1.5% of the IU's overall budget, but it's the base budget that supports operations, supports the executive director, the business manager, human resources, as well as our curriculum and professional learning services. It is prepared in collaboration with the IU20 board. Mr. Snyder is your IU20 representative, as well as the superintendents that I review with them. And this is the only budget that requires your local support and approval for. So just

014a little bit about the IU Executive Director. We have responsibility to the IU programs and all of those programs that we serve and all of those classrooms, as well as responsibilities as doing some regional leadership. So being a liaison from our superintendents in the school districts to the Department of Ed, but also working with the Department of Ed to bring initiatives back to the IU20 region. There's also statewide leadership and you can see there's a number of statewide committees that I am part of as well as again really being that liaison to the Department of Ed, Department of Human Services and all those functions down at in Harrisburg. As far as our business office, you can see there they have the same responsibilities that your business manager has to support the IU programs. But in

015addition, on the next slide, they also have regional responsibilities. So again, they are a liaison bringing information back to the school districts. Also, oversight and management of your federal allocations and a bunch of different things there. As well as this department does support the oversight of network and technical services. So technology and things like cybersecurity and working with your tech directors to help protect all of your electronics, your internet, and all of your data. Human resources, again, same functions that your human resources office has for your employees. Same at the IU. But again, also on the next slide, you'll see that there is regional and statewide responsibilities, as well as other services that we provide on behalf of supporting your districts and your students, things like the driver's education and fingerprinting, just to name two

016small services there that we provide. And then we have our professional learning and curriculum. And Dr. Bozzini's office supports all the professional development of our IU 20 teachers, our staff, as well as the administration. Helps to support all the curriculum development. Helps create all the functions to support PSSA, Keystone, and alternate assessments. As well as making partnerships with universities to create career pathways. So things like our instructional assistants. working to have a career path to become special education teachers. And I think we all know of the challenges that we're faced right now with teachers and the shortage. So it's really important that we create these pathways for all of our staff. She also has regional and statewide initiatives. And the biggest is really kind of taking initiatives from the state and turning them around into

017professional development. And you can see there, you know, the number of different types of trainings and initiatives that Dr. Bozzini's team works with your school districts to either provide regional-wide training, district-wide training, or individual, however, you know, what you need customized to your individual school district. And then we have instructional material services, so our educational technology. One thing that I really want to point out here is our EdTech lending library. I don't know if a lot of people know about this resource, but we have built up our educational tech lending library, and in that library comes a lot of innovative activities, things like drones, things like how to do coding, all those new kind of... skills that kids are going to need to be future ready and career ready. You can lend those resources to

018try them in your classroom, but they also come with Dr. Candianus. So Dr. Candianus will come out and she will actually work with your teachers to show how to implement those into the classroom. And then if it's something that you grab onto as a district and say, hey, this is a direction we want to go, then you can use that kind of background information to work and create your own programs. So this year's general operating budget is a little bit under $4 million. The overall budget increase is just a little bit under 4%. Our increase to school district withholding, which is your only mandated payment to IU 20, is a 2.5% increase, and then an increase to receipts and other IU sources of 2.5%, and those are the indirect costs that come off of supporting

019our special education programs. You can see their cost drivers, PCERS obligations, Social Security, and health benefits. Our salaries are budgeted at 3.3 for Act 93, and medical benefits budgeted at 2.7%. You can see there our summary of revenue. One area, and I'll show this later in the slide, is that revenue that comes from administrative offset from the state. That is our state system-wide support money. That money over the last five years has pretty much doubled from the department. And that's because they keep asking the IU to support initiatives. That's a good thing because that extra money comes, and it comes to provide more services and at no cost to U.S. school districts. You can see on the next slide just that same summary of the expenditures. You can see where our increases are in each

020of the four areas and four departments. And then on the next slide, you'll see what is the 2.5% bottom line. That 2.5% equals a little bit over $1,500 increase to your GOB. I'll stop there at the GOB and ask if you have any questions about the general operating budget. Now I'll brag a little bit about our other IU20 services. So for 21-22 and 22-23, some of the things that our departments are really proud of. Right there is that amount of money, right? So relationships equals money equals increased services. You can see there in 18, 19, 19, 20, that state system of support money was just under $250,000. Where are we at today? Over 400,000 and anticipating more money for next school year. They keep asking us to help support initiatives. It's great stuff. The other

021thing is competitive grants. A lot of the staff at the IU, whether it's Dr. Bartek, Tom Kalinowski, our tech director, Dr. Bozzini from curriculum, we go after competitive grants. You can see there, there's almost close to $2 million in grants that we have secured for this year's school year. Those are just the big ones. We have a lot of little $8,000, $5,000 ones here and there. The biggest one... is through our curriculum and professional services. We got a grant for over a million dollars to support STEM, computer science, and career pathways. That all turns back to service and training back to the school districts. And then the partnerships, I say 100 plus. I can't count them all. But we do connect with a lot of people in the community. And a lot of community resources

022that helps, too, to put our students and your students in positions to get work experience. so that they are ready for competitive employment when they leave IU 20 and graduate from the Easton Area School District. Special education, you can see there the number of students that we're serving in each program this year. One thing that I know Dr. Bartek's really proud of is the work that we're doing in our life skills support program with a lot of support from the curriculum department revising that curriculum, making sure that it's rigorous for our students, as well as our partnership with Lehigh University and Project Rise. So really looking at how can we increase literacy. for students with disabilities. On the next slide. You can see there that this slide shows that how challenging at times and needy

023our students are that we provide support to. 775 students that we provide service to receive multiple services. So they not only receive support in the classroom from a special education teacher, but they get speech therapy, occupational therapy. orientation, orientational mobility, all those different services that makes it sometimes difficult and challenging to coordinate all those services through one full day. In addition, providing services even for your students that are in your district programs, 714 of those students throughout the region are getting multiple services as well. So that's even work on your special ed case managers to make sure all those services are being organized as well. Resolve behavioral health. I think many of you know IU20 has one of the largest behavioral health programs in the state. We have for a long time, but always continue

024to try to increase our partnerships, push a lot for trauma-informed care, and actually social-emotional wellness strategic planning, which Jim McDonald, our director of behavioral health and his team, I understand was working with your team to start looking at some strategic planning there. Colonial Academy, 398 students served last year overall throughout the whole year. We are really proud of our three students that participated in SkillsUSA this year. We have a culinary arts program and construction management. It's nowhere near as large as Career Institute of Technology, but we do have participants in SkillsUSA, and we had one of our students finish third place, which we're really proud of. Curriculum and professional learning, just a few things there. Dr. Bozzini is the lead on accelerated learning, as well as Dr. Heather Heimer is our STEM state lead in

025supporting our schools. We did do the summer administrative workshop last year. It was one of the highest attended workshops, and it provided a full day of training with some really excellent speakers for all of the administrators in our region. Technology support services. There's just so much going on and I'm sure your tech director is keeping you informed that and you can just see in the news story a couple days ago that Lehigh Valley Hospital got hit with a ransomware attack. So Dr. Kalinowski, our tech director, is working with your tech directors to make sure that your network is secure, the IU's network is secure, all the school's networks are secure. So things like firewalls, sensors. all those type of things. Actually, we are looking right now at the Infrastructure Investment Job Act, which is the

026Homeland Security Act that put together $1 billion over the next four years. Pennsylvania's share is about $500 million of that. Dr. Kalinowski is working with their tech director now to see how we can add some infrastructure and support through those dollars back here at the district at no cost. It would all be covered through those grant funds. School safety, certainly extremely important. And we just wanted to share what we're doing at IU20. So when you send students to our programs, whether it's in a district classroom or it's at the Colonial Academy, these are all the things that we're doing to make sure that your children are safe. All of our staff are trained in ALICE. We obviously use the Safe to Say program. Seem to be getting more of those lately. But things like threat

027assessment, crisis prevention, intervention, all those type of things that we do on a daily basis to keep your children safe. So what's next? We're really excited. We have a new program starting next year at Wing Creek Resorts. It's called Project Search. It's similar to the program that we have at Kalahari Resort, where students, their final year... special education or probably most of them around the age of 21 can go to Wind Creek and they can go through a rotational program to check jobs like hospitality they won't be working on the casino floor but they'll be pretty much everywhere else And then when they kind of find a match, then those students are working side by side with some of the other staff, building those skills. And what we've seen at Kalahari Resort is many of

028those students are then offered competitive employment before they graduate, which is fantastic, and we expect the same at Wing Creek. We do have a youth ambassador program, so two students that... where IU 20 students can come back as a youth ambassador. It's a funded program by Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. And then they can be there to support students and be there as role models and mentors. Our autistic support secondary, we know that we have to continue to increase their skills to be competitive. So when they can go out, they can be career ready. So we're looking at a mobile Pays Lab, which goes around and gives students the opportunity to kind of do some hands-on work and kind of investigate what would work for them as they graduate. As well as enhanced support, school safety

029and security. We're in the works right now of planning a legislative action committee for the region. Again, we all know that funding and all those things that they do in Harrisburg is really important to our public schools. So we're going to try to lead the way with doing some legislative action here in this region led by U20. We're also planning an IU20 foundation that we can raise funds that would help support creating more activities. for the disability community. And then just continue to do what we're doing, provide and enhance a safe, respectful, inclusionary, and supportive school climate. It wasn't an hour, was it? No. But it was over three minutes. A little bit. So I didn't have my timer, though, so I was off task. Well done. Do you have any questions? I don't think

030so. Thank you, Dr. Wolf. Thank you, Dr. Wolf. All right, thank you. Thank you all for having me here. Have a good evening. Thanks for being here tonight. Oh, very nice. Thank you. All right, we're going to move on to our next presentation and that is our mid-year data presentation and for that I will turn it over to Ms. Piazza. Thank you. Yes, actually I'm going to turn it right over to Mike. Mike and Andy who are going to give you a quick synopsis of our mid-year data. So what they will be talking about is where we were in the beginning of the year, where we are now at the middle of the year, and give you some quick highlights of some of the strategies that were implemented that have proven to be successful and

031some areas in which maybe they need to reconsider or consider to think about slightly differently. So I'll turn it over to you two gentlemen. Good evening, everybody. Our mid-year data report, so before I get started, I just wanted to emphasize the fact that the data you're about to see and the strides forward that we've made as a district are the result of a massive collaborative effort. So first and foremost, our students and their families and the work that they put in, in and out of school, our support staff, our faculty, and then our administration. So we have spent a lot of time with our data becoming more data literate as the year has gone. across our continuum and then being responsive to the data that we have. So with that being said, getting into next

032slide. The first assessment we'll cover with you would be our DIBELS assessment. Same format as we had in the fall. This is our dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills. And our students are assessed here in grades K to 2. And what we have is a series of assessments. They are one-on-one. They are not digital. And our students are asked to demonstrate a variety of skills, which really indicates their readiness to read at grade level. And our goal is that our students are all reading at grade level in the third grade year. So that would be the goal for our students here with their literacy. Our DIBELS assessments, it is one data point that we utilize in identifying students that need targeted focused intervention as a part of our MTSS process. Next slide. So at

033the beginning of the year we had our data points here. This was what you saw back in September or October I believe with our students in K-1 and 2 at and above benchmark, the percent of students as strategic and then intensive. The numbers in parentheses there are the number of students at each of those levels. And I wanted to provide this for you as a reference point. Next slide. So what you're seeing now is our winter screening data. So when you compare the winter screening data with our fall screening data, specifically in DIBELS, you will see at first grade and second grade a slight dip, but that is the result of a new assessment, a new set of skills introduced in the winter benchmark that, again, challenges students in a different skill set in terms

034of their basic early literacy skills. And I'll turn it over to Mr. Cook. All right. Thank you, Mr. Doster. So our other universal screener in the district that actually picks up in first grade for mathematics and second grade for literacy is the star reading and the star math. The universal screener now we've been using for five years. What we use this data for is to make determinations in terms of what students need intervention, whether that be a tier one or tier, excuse me, a tier two or tier three intervention. And it also gives us the ability to measure student growth. It's very unique in that fashion that it allows us to measure growth because what it does is it compares specific student, their grade level and their assessment scores to matching that growth to the

035similar students, same grade level, similar assessment scores. So it's very unique in that it's apples to apples, so to speak, in terms of its ability to measure student growth versus some of the other measurements that we have. So once again, the breakdown of this is a computer adaptive assessment. Students take it online. It takes anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes, depending on the student. They do have around three minutes or so to answer each of those questions. We do extend it for students who need that accommodation. But for the most part, it's around 20 minutes or so for the student to complete the battery. It's roughly 30, 34 questions. I say 30 to 34. Because depending on how the student progresses through that will depend on the types of questions that they are receiving So

036if we can go to the next slide we could take a look at our screening data So what you'll see on the left hand side is what was presented to you in October as mr. Doster mentioned that is where we were in the fall To the right is where we are right now as of late January And so you can see in reading from second to eighth grade, we are seeing increases. We saw a slight decline in fifth and sixth. As Mr. Doster mentioned, they're not introduced to new skills here, but the bar is always moving. right? So as students take that assessment, the 40th percentile is here in the beginning of the year. When students progress throughout the year, they need to be constantly improving. So it's not a stagnant metric that students have

037to meet at the beginning or the middle. It is constantly increasing throughout the course of the school year. But we are seeing some significant gains. 10% in grade two for the number of students that are above benchmark is significant. It is somewhat consistent with previous years growth in terms of number of students that are above benchmark, but there's still a lot of work to be done there. But we are seeing some progress in providing students with tiered interventions and core, right, quality core instruction that they're increasing the number of students at or above. To the right in mathematics, those numbers are a little bit higher. This is the trend typical of previous years, particularly at the middle level. Seventh and eighth grade, we see a lot of students starting off the year and then by

038time they meet mid-year, they're at or above that benchmark. And a lot of those students are making their growth progress. That tells us a little bit about the curriculum alignment, probably in what's going on in seventh grade in terms of the number of skills. that they're working on or progressing through at that particular grade level. At least that's what we recognize in the past. So once again, what we're looking for here is how do we target individual students? Right, so this is a screener. It's saying these students are at their typical grade level growth Which is 40th percentile or higher any student falling below that we take a deeper dive and use additional data points to make determinations on what sort of programming or intervention that we need to apply Or work with that student

039on the next slide you Now we're looking at the growth data and I mentioned this before it's it's something that as I said is very unique to star What the growth measurement here is 35 SGP What that means is it's a 35 student growth percentile What that means is our target is for all of our students to be performing better than 35 percent of their peers So if Mr. Doster starts off the year at a 720 scaled score in grade 6, Mr. Cook starts off the grade scale at a 726 in grade 6, our growth is being measured against each other. It's not a 6th grader measured to a 7th grader. It's not a 6th grader scoring a 480 measured to a 6th grader getting a 720. So what's unique about this system is students

040that have high achievement and low achievement still have a growth measurement. So it allows us to focus on all of our students. not necessarily ones who just aren't making that grade level gain. And as you can see, our target really is 70%. So we want to make sure that at each of our grade levels, we are getting at least 70% of our students to that growth target. So we do have some work to do in some of our grade levels between now and the end of the school year. What this looks like in a classroom is teachers are looking specifically at student data. So period two, let's say at the middle school or block two, three for ELA, that teacher is looking specifically at which of her or his students are high growth, high achievement,

041which of those might be low growth, high achievement, or which of those might be low growth, low achievement, and then what they can be doing with that student using small group differentiated instruction to try to support them in reaching their growth target. So there's a range, right, in every classroom of these students in these four quadrants in terms of their achievement and growth. And the teacher really is working with their colleagues and their administrative team and in sixth grade working with their interventionists as well as the elementary building to ensure those students are meeting their growth targets along the way. So we're looking forward to seeing additional data points. We measure then again from January to May, and we also have the ability to measure from the beginning of the school year, September, to May

042as well, to see if our students are meeting their growth targets of 35 SGP. All right. Mr. Doster, I excel. Thank you, Mr. Kopp. Our IXL is also a computer adaptive diagnostic tool. The difference with IXL would be that it is also a learning platform which personalizes learning to students based on their diagnostic level. So for IXL to be implemented effectively, it requires students to be within each content area for a minimum of 10 minutes a day. and our teachers have our kids re-diagnosing on a weekly basis on a platform that's called Stepping Back into the Arena. So it would depend on the students' work within IXL. They could be stepping back into the arena and re-diagnosing in one or two questions, while other students may have to re-diagnose in seven or eight questions. So

043if you remember our date at the beginning of the year with IXL, we were showing a steady backwards trend K through six and a significant deficit that we had as students progressed through our system in terms of being at or above grade level. So the goal instantly became and the messaging to our teachers, our administrators, and our students in the classroom is an emphasis on growth. So our students from the time we really implemented after the September diagnostic through the beginning of the winter diagnostic, which was January 9th, we set a growth target of five months or more for our students. That would be the equivalent of a half year's worth of growth and a little less than five months time. So in ELA you can see that from K to 6 we averaged across

044all of our buildings and the sixth grade center 8.55 months of growth. We had 2,683 students that hit that five-month growth target, which was 66% of our population. And a couple buildings, all of our buildings exceeded the average of five months' worth of growth significantly, but a couple buildings to point out, we had Tracy Elementary, their average in their building in ELA was 11.5 months' worth of growth for the first four and a half months of the year, and our sixth grade center did 10.7 months' worth of growth for the first part of the year. Next slide. Same information here, but in math. So beginning of the year to mid-year, we averaged 6.69 months worth of growth, K-6. We had almost 2,450 or 2,419, I'm sorry there, that hit our five-month growth target, 60% of

045our students. And again, some buildings that were far and above that, we had Tracy Elementary again getting 7.8 months worth of average growth in math. And then 7.6 months, we had our sixth grade center as well as Forks Elementary School. Next slide. So now you can see the fall and winter screening data for IXL for ELA and math. The columns highlighted in gray are the winter or our mid-year assessments. You can see that we are showing a significant jump there at each grade level from where they were at the start of the year. And then we're also seeing a reduction of the percentage of students that are below grade level as well from the beginning of the year to mid-year. Yeah. Sure. When we talk about then what we presented to you at the beginning

046of the year with, as we collaborated with administration, with our faculties across the district, we talked about what we were going to do in response to our beginning of the year data. So what we came up with was these are the things that we really put an emphasis on at the beginning of the year and through this point in the year. And I just want to say that we really try to move fluidly between any of these. or multiple of these given the point of the year that we are at and what the students are demonstrating as their needs and where we need to support them. There have been some things that have been very impactful. Just to pull a couple off that list, I would pull off the MTSS process that we have revised.

047We did have a system in place. We look to improve that system this year and we've shifted the conversations. from in K-6 right now to a very data-focused and skill-focused conversation amongst our faculty and administration, which allows us to really hone in on getting the students what exactly they need and injecting those supports at the right point in time in their learning. The other thing is that we had a conversation this morning where we really feel we have spent a great deal of time trying to leverage the strengths of our people and the systems within the district. So identifying the strengths of our teachers, our support staff, our administrators, and then deploying those strengths to try and address some of these problems as well. Yeah, some of those some of those examples are coming through

048and you're getting a 10,000 foot view right now the district But miss miss Piazza has organized these same data presentations for individual buildings Back in the fall and then we have our second round of mid-year data data meetings that are taking place thus far We've had one at Cheston. We've had one at Shawnee Today, Andy and I were meeting with the middle school team six through eight to have some conversations about our professional development from Friday, but also led into this same data responsiveness. So how are they improving their understanding and ability to work with their colleagues in terms of their teachers, and how are they utilizing the things that we're doing with instructional rounds to also coach? So those are very different conversations now than they were, let's say, last summer or they were

049last spring in terms of their ability and their knowledge and the types of questions that they're asking right now in terms of what their next steps are as a team. So, you know, it's good for Andy and I to be there to have those conversations with the administrative team and have them reflect on what they're doing with their teachers. It also shows their responsiveness and their strength building within their own. within their own schools. So a lot of good things taking place there, you know, in terms of their growth, but we also will see that in terms of their presentations, right? Their ability to speak to the data in their buildings and then make connections between what they're doing with their teachers has come a long way, and we're also seeing that quantitatively as well

050in the data that we presented earlier on. So a lot of good things there. Most important is just the word responsive and I heard Dr. Ruffell use it as well earlier on today and it's certainly what we are trying to do our best at. We don't always deploy a strategy and get it right the first time. Teachers, the same thing, but we are responsive to our student needs and we're certainly looking at other strategies and things that we can do to improve student achievement across the board with a big focus obviously on growth. That concludes kind of the presentation. If there are any questions, we'd be happy to answer them at this time. Turn your mic on. get a copy of this because i'm sure i would have questions but i'd like to be able

051to look at it yeah so we can make sure that you have a copy of this and ali will have that for you as well as the typical mid-year summaries for star screening and star growth which has building by building breakdowns as well so you can see both the 10 000 foot view and the kind of 2500 foot view at a building level as well Thank you, Mike. Thank you very much for your time, Steven. Thank you, gentlemen. Yeah, so as always, Allie will attach that presentation to the board docs and anyone who wants it in a hard copy, we can certainly provide that as well. But I do want to thank Mike and Andy for presenting today as they really have taken on the lion's share of that work in terms of in buildings

052with principals and with teachers. You heard Dr. Simeon mention the intervention or had their interventionist make say a couple lines in the video that she had shown tonight And that really, again, came through prompting of Andy and Mike in terms of the request for interventionists and the board's responsiveness to that request at the middle level. As you can imagine, they have two folks at this point whose job is solely to work with interventions and students at that level. And so we will be looking at the effectiveness of that and whether we can deploy some other folks in that realm as well. A couple points I just want to make. to the presentation that they made. I think Andy had mentioned about third grade reading being our point in which we want students reading on grade

053level. For most of you, you know this, but I do want to reiterate to those of you who may not that that is a national goal as well. The trend for... where our students reading on grade level and effective as learners is third grade. It is also the goal of our Lehigh Valley Reads Consortium through the United Way. And so it's a nice in tandem picture that's happening there along all of our partners within the region. Mike also mentioned about, and Andy for that matter, mentioned about the high achieving and high growth. So tonight you heard a little bit about achievement and a little bit about growth. And if we had to choose one or the other, we want to make sure that we're seeing our students grow. One of the things that we know

054is that students come into school at all various entry points in terms of their innate abilities or their learned abilities through preschool and so on and so forth. And so what we want to know is, are they growing while they're here under our care? For some students, the growth to be achieving on grade level might mean they need to grow two or three grade levels. And that's a hard task for students to do and certainly a hard task for our teachers to accomplish. with students it takes a lot of very individualized and differentiated instruction and that's why we continue to look at these numbers one of the things you know again that they pointed out that's super important is you have this quadrant of learning you have some students who are low achieving and low

055low growth and that's certainly something we do not want to see you have a group of students who are low achieving but high growth and that's promising because we know that they are acquiring skills that will help them achieve later in life or later in their academic career. We have the students who are high achieving and high growth and that obviously is our ultimate picture where we'd like to see every student. And then we have our students who are high achieving but low growth and that is actually a very common trend not only here in Easton but again nationally where our highest achieving students sometimes portray a picture of the lowest growth and that is often because it is harder to make growth when you are already excelling in a grade level it takes a

056lot of differentiation on our teachers part to make sure that their educational experience is new and interesting and so sometimes our students who come in and do well with little assistance often don't make the growth that we might hope because we have to attend to them a little bit differently. And so I just wanted to give you that perspective. And then the last thing I'll touch on that I was pleased that they touched upon as well was a couple comments there about skills. We have really transitioned over the last couple of years in this district to have a significant focus on the skills that children are taught and are acquiring as opposed to that global picture. The global picture is the end game that we want, but it's down to the minute skill that we're

057looking at when we're talking about teasing out those gaps for students and helping them acquire what they need to be successful in that next set of competencies. And so again, I just want to congratulate our teachers and principals for the work they're doing and certainly thank Mr. Doster and Mr. Cuck for all that they do for us and certainly around these presentations each year. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Piazza, and thank you, gentlemen, for the presentation. We appreciate it. Oftentimes when we look at numbers, I think we lose focus or lose sight of all the work that happens at the classroom level and up through our curriculum department and through Ms. Piazza's leadership. So just wanted to echo what Ms. Piazza said and what was on the presentation. Jody, I appreciate you asking for a

058copy. So you all of you can go back and look at all the points of focus right now across all of our buildings. There's just a great deal of work that's happening, focused work that's happening regarding instruction. And the numbers will obviously show some positive results as we stay focused and keep doing it. So thank you everybody for that hard work. And then finally tonight, I would like to acknowledge some of our CIT students. who recently competed in the SkillsUSA competition. You can see that to the right hand side of the slide. Thank you, Allie, for putting this slide together for me. You can see we had two of our Easton Area School District students who took first place. We had two who took second place and one who took third place. And then there

059are also all the names of the students who competed. absolutely wonderful competition. It's a great experience for all the students who participate and so congratulations to all of them for taking that risk and participating and especially congratulations to our students who meddled. And on the left hand side of that slide you can see this year's new inductees to the National Technical Honor Society from Easton High School at CIT and we had five students inducted. So, congratulations to all of them. Cole Cuck, who's Mike's son, did a wonderful job as the president of the National Technical Honor Society in presenting that afternoon. He's a chip off the old block, I'll tell you that. Did a great job. So, I said to Mike, you should be very proud, and I know he is. And that concludes my

060report. All right. Thank you, Mr. Piperato. All right. We will move on to other reports this evening, starting with IU20. Mr. Snyder, if you have anything to add. Yeah, just one quick thing. I just want to note here that the Matrix Behavioral Solutions did donate $1,500 to the CIU20 for the students for their prom, and this is a second year that this... Studio Solutions has given to the prom. So it's good to see the community at large coming together to support the children for their prom this year. And the only other thing is, of course, Dr. Wolf will present at the budget with some information about the IU and the great things that we do over there, they do over there. And the budget will be on for our approval, I believe, at the March

061meeting, correct? I believe so, yes. Yes. Okay. Yep. That concludes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Snyder. And the Eastern Area Public Library, do we have anyone who is here this evening to deliver the report? Yes. Great. Come on up. Thank you. Good evening. John Thomas for the Easton Library. Library was very pleased to host the Tracy Elementary fourth graders for a visit to the library last month. They got a tour of the Marks Room to see all the historical artifacts. They took them through the Youth Services Department. And then probably the best part for the kids was they all got to eat lunch downstairs in the Drake Room. Through the help of some IT geniuses, we have changed a portion of the online library catalog. For those people who would like to search for things

062that are available in the Marks Room to do their genealogy studies or whatever, that's now been segregated out as a separate part of the online catalog. So you don't have to go through 30,000 books to try to find something that would be in the Marks Room. It's now its own category on the website. Also on the website, beginning in March, there will be a new calendar for people to see what sort of activities are going on. It's a much more user-friendly calendar than the typical Google calendar that we're all used to. It will be more dynamic and interactive. Also beginning in March, the library hours will be changing. The library effective March the 1st will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays and

0639 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. This gets the library back to a total of 65 operating hours, which is what the state asks all libraries to do. Those requirements were waived during the pandemic, but the library has been inching its way back towards the 65-hour mark, and we will be there on March 1st. Also on March the 1st, we're continuing with an ongoing strategic study that is underway for the library to plan for the future, look at mission, vision, goals, those sorts of things. On March 1st, we will post on the library website a survey that members of the public can participate in so that we can get community input both for the consultant that is helping us with the study and the steering committee within the library. So there will be announcements on

064the website. for folks to participate in that. The Friends of the Library voted recently to authorize a contribution of up to $20,000 to redecorate and renovate the Drake Room down on the lower level of the library. The staff in the library and members of the Friends are meeting now to talk about the kinds of things that they hope to do there. If any of those things involve structural changes like flooring or something like that, we certainly will coordinate those with the school district. And finally, the friends have announced the dates for the next semi-annual book sale. This will be our second one since the pandemic. They will be holding that on April 26th through May 1st, and there will be additional details coming out on that in the very near future. Are there any questions

065about any of those items? If not, thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. All right, CIT, Mrs. Hess, Ms. Price, or Ms. Wellington? I don't have anything. Mr. Piperotta stole everything. My apologies. That's quite all right. All right. Thank you. Go ahead, Dionne. For me, they had the Kickstart Your Heart program, and it was featured on TV. And young people being more aware of that heart attack. can be at any age because Dylan spoke because he had a heart attack and all of that so learning CPR was was the Main issue make sure that you know it so it was pretty cool. Yeah Terrific. Thank you All right, mr. Fane all You don't have anything for us tonight. Okay. Thank you. All right, so foundation the Restricted fund report is available for board members.

066I do want to point out that The third annual golf tournament has been scheduled for Wednesday, June 28th. I hope that many of you will be participating. And also a new fundraiser that the foundation is doing this year is going to be a district-wide pizza night. We have a tentative date scheduled for March 29th, but I will definitely get you the final date. The idea here is that there will be a number of pizza places around the Easton Area School District that you will be able to order your pizza from, and a portion of the proceeds will come back to the foundation. So it should be... spread out among the district we hope to make it a big you know Easton Easton area school district pizza night so look for more information to come about

067that all right that's it for me anything from the Charles Shrin science and technology initiative this month nope okay and student Anthony D'Angelo you are here yes great Sorry I couldn't make the last meeting. I was really sick actually, but I'm all good now. Good. But there's been a ton of things going on at the high school. We have AAG coming up in the spring. That's where teachers beat us every year, but we're going to try to change that this year, hopefully. But our National Art Society will be doing face painting at the Special Olympics, which is taking place, I'm pretty sure, next week. So that's awesome. It gives a chance of all the special needs kids to come have a fun day. and it's really fun because Easton gets to host it and create

068that awesome opportunity. The junior class is doing a little spring fling dance, so they're in the early stages of that. Then seniors, we're planning prom, graduation, all those good things. Senior class is going to do their one last fundraiser, their bunny trail, so if you have any young kids, bring them. And that's pretty much all I have to report on, but just thank you for all you guys do. Thank you. All right, association reports. We do have PTA here. Ms. Viscomi, would you like to go ahead and get started? Hello. So I just wanted to say, in relation to the scores that they were reporting, one of the big things that we talked about at our last roundtable meeting was social skills and how we have a three-year deficit. And it's really important that we

069start bringing those programs in. And the cool thing about it was we all seem to be on the same page. It's just that maybe Things aren't moving as fast as I would like them to. So hopefully, we keep moving in that direction with that, because I think that'll have a tremendous impact on some of these scores as well. The first thing I want to bring to your attention is not on my written report, because when I was looking through the agenda today, it reminded me about it, because I saw something about field trips, which we are waiting to hear on some tentative dates so that we can maybe hopefully flesh out this whole common field trip thing. But. Our field trip request forms, the bus information is entirely wrong. And this came up because when

070I got some transportation bills back for field trips that we had already approved in the fall, the numbers were... grossly higher than what we anticipated and what we had approved. So rather than just send them a check for what we had approved and said too bad, I called them up and we had a conversation and realized that the numbers on the sheets are not the right numbers. So if we could somehow make that happen, because that was back in, I don't know, October, November, and they said they were going to look into it and I haven't heard anything and I noticed the the sheets that were turned into you for the field trips that are on the agenda tonight have the wrong numbers on them too. Okay. Yeah, thank you. We will be sure. And

071I have those numbers if you need them. But yeah, because if we budget for those and we approve them, then technically that's all we should be paying. That's all you guys are approving as well. So that kind of created an issue. Thank you for letting us know. No problem. So I'm going to start with Cheston Elementary. They just hosted Founders Day last Thursday and appreciate all of the support. Earlier this month, they held a movie night and they are currently running their Gertrude Hawk fundraiser and have a book fair coming up. I think. All of us are running Gertrude Hawk sales right now. So if you want your Easter candy, hit up any of our students in the district. They're probably all due by Monday with delivery dates in or around the weeks before Easter.

072The middle school is excited to share that the eighth graders are going to go on a field trip to the Iron Pigs game this spring for the first time in several years. The PTA will be helping to pay for the trip and will provide the kids with shirts to wear to the game. They are experiencing a hard time getting information out to parents still. It's not entirely clear whether it's a means of getting the information to the parents or the parents not actually paying attention to the information. I think it's probably the latter. But that is an issue that a lot of us have, especially when we have these big fundraisers like Gertrude Hawk and the Cherrydale sales coming in. Just getting parents to come and pick up their stuff is such a chore. And

073they are currently trying out a new fundraiser and selling discounted Hershey Park tickets. So if you want some discounted Hershey Park tickets, hit up our middle school kids. And the only other one that I have is from Tracy Elementary. So we are excited. We're doing some fun activities coming up for our students. We're having a skate dance on February 24th at Bushkill Park and a movie night in April. AAA is running their movie night thing again, so they'll be providing the snacks and everything, and the movie will be in Canto. We are having... our local author, Nicoline Evans, come for a visit on March 2nd. She's coming in for the whole day. The students will get to come in during their lamp classes. And what they will do is, I believe she's going to be

074doing some presentations with some of her books. She writes books about being kind and things like that. They were talking about doing like sort of a craft or activity for the K through two and then for the older kids, possibly writing workshops with them when they come in. So it'll be a really fun day and interactive. Our Gertrude Hawk sale does end on Monday and then we have our last book fair for the year on the week of March 20th. We also have two safety concerns that have come up. Stop you for a minute because you're. you're releasing information that's putting our students in danger. So there's a process that you can follow at the roundtable to talk to us about these things, but you're giving very specific information that if somebody is watching this

075meeting... And by the way, it may or may not be true what you're stating. You're putting our kids in jeopardy. So I would appreciate it if you would stop with the specifics. I'm aware of both issues, by the way, and we'll continue to work on them. But I don't think at a public meeting you should continue giving out specific information about our security. Well, and here's the issue. It's been brought up. Not by me, it's been brought up by others. I understand. These things have been brought up continually. I get it. And they're not getting fixed. I get it. So if you want to say that somebody's putting our children in danger, we can say it's you for not paying attention and not doing something about these in a routine manner. forcing me to come

076here and bring them to light in a more public manner so that maybe we can get some resolution. Yeah, I'm not sure anybody forced you to come here, but we are aware of them and we'll continue to work on it. I'm just asking you to be very careful about the specific information you're releasing to the community that puts your children and our children at risk. That's all. I'm not saying you don't have a right to be up here. I'm not saying you don't have a right to be upset. But if you had fixed them already, we wouldn't be in this position. I think you've made that point. Thank you. Because I actually had a parent that was going and contemplating coming here tonight to speak of a specific instance in which, unfortunately, she felt that

077it was not okay for her to do that, not because she didn't want to raise the issues. She feared retaliation if she did bring them up. I'm bringing them up for her. Who do you think she feared retaliation from? Administration. Who in administration retaliates? I'm not going to give specifics regarding this parent's particular experiences. Okay, well then I'd ask that you not accuse us of retaliation. But she has had some issues in addition. I'm just simply telling you what she told me. I understand. I'm asking you to stay away from the personal attacks, stay away from the specific information. We're aware of both issues. They're in process and we'll get to them and we'll fix them. But that's all I can tell you right now. Well, we appreciate if you could actually fix them because

078that would make our parents feel a whole lot better. Understood. Can I make a suggestion since we, I'm on both buildings and grounds and safety, that this is something that gets put on for our next discussion? Okay. That would be very helpful. Thank you. If anybody has any questions. Otherwise, that was all of my report. All right, Mr. Dealey. Good evening. Happy February. On Friday, we participated in the first ever remote in-service day for the staff. Well, for my bargaining unit anyway. I'm not sure if you recall that that was a thing. But it's in our current new contract. But I am pretty sure it was the most well-attended professional development day we have had as long as I've been here. And that's been a minute. Also, happy Black History Month. I am so glad

079I can actually say that. I had the privilege of attending the NEA Board of Directors meeting a couple weeks ago in Washington, D.C. And it hit me about how fortunate we are to live in a state and in a community that supports the recognition and the importance of teaching black history to our students. Yes, black history is American history. But in many places, it's illegal to talk about the perpetual struggles that are faced by black Americans due to institutional racism. If we don't learn our history, we are doomed to repeat it. So thank you for supporting our students and staff and for encouraging us all to look for curricular materials that highlight the accomplishments of those who are frequently overlooked. My friends from Florida, when I'm at NEA. They're really suffering right now. Since their

080governor signed this anti-woke bill last year, there are videos you can look up on YouTube of librarians and classroom teachers going through stacks of books that they have to make sure whether or not they're appropriate to be read by students and we're talking about normal books that are in the libraries that may not have been on an approved list you should look it up and and it's chilling they're not allowed to talk about sensitive topics like slavery and its racist aftermath. They're also not allowed to talk about gender identity and they're certainly not permitted to discuss LGBTQIA issues even if a student has two same-sex parents. If my colleagues in Florida don't follow these guidelines they risk losing their teaching certification. So that's problematic. It's very important that we continue to permit open discourse in

081our schools and that our children are taught the history of our country, even the uncomfortable parts, and not a version of American history that is whitewashed and mythologized. It's vital that our children are able to see themselves represented in the text that we read in our libraries and in our classrooms. My own oldest child is transgender. To think that there are people out there who truly believe that educators are, quote, making children trans is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. As one of my colleagues said, we can't even make our students bring in a pencil or a charged iPad to school. So how is it possible that we can make them reconsider their gender identity? However, It's important to make sure that our kids can see themselves in our history and in

082the books that we read. While we don't currently have a governor who would sign such a bill, we do face the danger of school boards being taken over by well-funded candidates who share the same anti-honesty and education agenda. I know that's not happening here right now. But we are aware of it and I just want to make sure that we, you understand, we support you and we will continue to make sure that we are fighting the same fight for our kids and the best education that they can get. So thank you very much. Thank you, Kevin. All right, I think that's it for reports this evening. So moving on to public to be heard on agenda items. If there's anyone from the public who would like to be heard on agenda items only, you can

083come forward to the podium, state your name. All right, seeing none. Okay, executive session report. The Eastern Area School District held executive sessions on January 24th to discuss personnel matters and on February 7th to discuss security, student matters, negotiations, and legal matters. All right, item 6A, approval of minutes. I will take a motion to approve the minutes of the following meetings, academics, educational technology, and student supports committee meeting from January 10th, athletic committee meeting from January 10, budget and finance from January 10, buildings and grounds from January 10, and the regular board meeting from January 24th. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Item 7, personnel. 7A, motion with regrets to approve the following retirements as presented. Item B, motion to approve the following resignations as presented. And item C, motion to approve the

084following leaves of absence as presented. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. We will take, let's see, item D, motion to approve the following contractual salary increments as presented. Item E, motion to approve the following administrative transfer as presented. Item F, motion to award a professional contract to the following employee as presented. Item G, motion to elect the following long-term substitutes as presented pending receipt of all forms and documents required by the district. Item H, motion to elect the following support staff as presented pending receipt of all forms and documents required by the district. All right, so that is items E through H. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. We will take item I, motion to elect the following coaches as presented, pending receipt of all forms and documents required by the

085district. Item J, motion to elect the following volunteer coaches as presented, pending receipt of all forms and documents required by the district. Item K, motion to approve the following changes to the contractual EPFED stipends as presented. I salute. Item L, motion to elect the following after school program employees as presented. And then item M, motion to elect the following support staff substitutes as presented pending receipt of all forms and documents required by the district. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motions carry. Mr. Piperotto? Thank you, Mrs. Sayago. I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate our new football coach who's here with us this evening, Matt Seneca. As you all know, we reported that it was a very competitive process. We were very pleased with the number and the quality of the applicants. that

086did apply for the job. And throughout that process, Coach Seneca emerged as our top candidate, and we're feeling very fortunate to have him as our new football coach. So, Matt, welcome. I'm glad we were able to drag you out of retirement. I know it was a short retirement. Sorry, Mrs. We look forward to seeing the Rovers under your direction. Thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you. Number eight, academics, educational technology, and student reports. Item A, motion to approve the health and safety plan as presented. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, item B, motion to approve field trip requests as presented. Item C, motion to approve the Palmer Mall art show contract as presented. Item D, motion to approve the agreement between the Eastern Area School District and ASSE International Student Exchange Program

087to permit one exchange student to enroll at EAHS for the 2023-2024 school year under EASD policy 239 as presented. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I have a question. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Just with B, since they were just pointed out that there were some discrepancies with the funding, can we vote on that and then do we have to re-vote on that if they're whatever, like an audit or whatever has to be done to get the funds corrected? I'd hate to vote. eye on something if I know that the money there's a discrepancy between PTA says and what what we're billing I think these are not PTA specific these are I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought she had said there was something in there that was we were voting on now that had

088a discrepancy. So, OK, I'm OK with that. OK. I'm sorry. So Mr. Snyder, I think what we would ask is if it comes up that the form is not corrected prior to another field trip being requested, that you approve the location of the trip. And then we will make sure that the expenditures are accurate. But we'll look into it tomorrow. OK, thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. That's OK. That's OK. Thank you. OK, so we have a motion and a second for items B, C, and D. Let's just vote again to be sure here. All in favor? Aye. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Any opposed? OK, thank you. All right, so item E, motion to approve the ISTE Educational Technology Conference Request as presented. And item F, motion to approve the purchase of zSpace Technology as presented. Second.

089CHRISTIE WOODARD- All in favor? Aye. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Any opposed? All right, and then item G, motion to approve the IDEA fund contract as presented. Item H, motion to approve Colonial Intermediate Unit 20 contract as presented. And item I, motion to approve the letter of agreement with the Meadows Psychiatric Center as presented. All in favor? Any opposed? All right, moving on to item nine, athletics. We have two items. Item A, motion to approve a huddle focus indoor camera for EAHS at a cost of $3,000 to be paid for with St. Luke's funds as per attached. And item B, motion to approve lacrosse nets at a total cost of $439.98 to be paid for with St. Luke's funds as per attached. All in favor? Sorry. Mrs. Hess. Do we have a total right now of what we've

090spent with the St. Luke's money? Well, underneath it, yeah. I don't have the actual general work you've been tracking back to the board. OK, thank you. Joe, are you referring to the $10,000 a year? No, it's $75,000. OK, all in favor of items A and B? Aye. Any opposed? OK. All right, moving on to 10, budget and finance. All right, motion to approve financial matters as presented, including treasurer's report, general fund January revenue and expenditure reports, monthly student activity statements for EAMS and EAHS, bill register for check numbers 154819 through 154942, and ACH numbers 222301418 through 222-30-1583, general funds, special activities, capital projects, and food service. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, we'll take items B and C. Item B, motion to approve the renewal contract for Keystone Realty Advisors for property tax

091assessment services until September 1, 2026 as presented. And item C, motion to approve the sale of a repository property located on South Delaware Drive in the city of Easton, parcel L9SE2C52310C in the amount of $150 as presented. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Item D, motion to approve the 2023 to 2024 Northampton Community College budget as presented. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, 11, buildings and grounds. We have one item, motion to approve the Shawnee boiler and heating pump replacement project to ASL Mechanical at a total cost of $95,600 as per attached proposal to be paid for with ESSER funds. All in favor? Any opposed? Okay, item 12A is informational second reading of policies. Let's see, policy 010, policy 414.1, 416, 417, 418, 419, 421, 422, 424, 425, 426, and

092428. And we did review these at the policy committee meeting. I need a motion. Just informational. We don't have to vote on it. Okay. Is there any comment on any of these policies? So, yes. Yes. Go ahead. So, question for 010, and we already have 011, and they're very similar, so I'm just wondering what the difference is that we were bringing in 010, or whether it's better to look at 011 and see what changes might need to be made to that. And then 426, I still, I understand that. COMMENT THAT DR. BURRUS GAVE AS TO WHY I GUESS I'M JUST CONCERNED THAT EVEN THOUGH IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE KNOWN AS TO WHAT THE PROCEDURE IS, I STILL HAVE CONCERNS THAT WE'RE NOT PUTTING IT IN THE POLICY FOR THOSE THAT WOULD BE HAVING A COMPLAINT.

093AND SO SINCE THIS IS THE SECOND READING, IT'S CONCERNED INFORMATIONAL. IS THIS SAYING THAT WE'RE GOING TO BE APPROVING OR ARE WE APPROVING AT THE NEXT MEETING? I BELIEVE UNDER YOUR POLICY IT'S THE NEXT MEETING. DO YOU HAVE ANOTHER POLICY COMMITTEE MEETING BETWEEN NOW AND THEN? MONDAY. OKAY. YEAH. CHRISTIE WOOD. Monday. Yeah. CHRIS JERRAM. Got it. Excellent. I'm sure we'll be able to get you answers, Judy. CHRISTIE WOOD. Yeah. Mr. Schneider, did you make a note of those two questions to talk about? CHRIS JERRAM. I have it. CHRISTIE WOOD. You have it. OK. OK. All right. OK. All right. So we do not need to vote on that item as it is informational only. All right. Item 13, motion to approve the memorandum of understanding with local police departments and Eastern Area School District as

094presented. CHRIS JERRAM. Second. CHRISTIE WOOD. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. And then item 14A, motion to approve a settlement agreement number 47004 as presented. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. Motion carries. Okay. Item 15, public to be heard on non-agenda items. If there's any member of the public who would like to address the board on non-agenda items, you may come forward to the podium. Mr. Fainal. I think you know the rules, right? Yes. I had to wait. I can't be presumptuous on anything. So I just wanted to thank you on behalf of the community college and the board of trustees for the approval of our budget this evening. That's greatly appreciated. And obviously, we always look forward to having the students there as well. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fainal. Anyone

095else from the public? All right. Is there any other business from board members this evening? Yeah, I was going to. I always jump in front of you. You know what? No. Oh, no. Now we're going to have a... So I was just going to ask Mr. Ziadik to provide the board some information based on Mrs. Piscomi's concerns, which are very legitimate. And as he presents what we perceive as a solution to this problem, I understand that the timing may not be what was hoped for, but there is a plan in place, and I'd like for him to share how we are approaching those two areas of concern at Tracy. Sure. So for the benefit of the board and the public here tonight, I wanted to kind of do this in two pieces. Comment regarding the

096security cameras. If you remember, probably back in August or September, we did present to you the possibility of utilizing the PCCD grants in regard to cameras at the middle school, high school. That's the majority of the project, but we also included bus busing garage as well as Tracy Elementary School in that project. We have been checking with the state probably on a weekly basis since then. We even brought back to the board probably a month or two ago a request to provide us a written letter signed by the board, which is what they were requesting from the state in order to reconsider that. I will let you know that within the past week and a half, we did receive notification from the state and PCCD that they did approve that. for the full $235,000 that

097we requested. So that is something that is in the works right now. Mr. Case actually will be meeting with them tomorrow. It's kind of one of the conversations that we've had this week. So I did want to share that with the board. So that is certainly a priority since the beginning of the year. The other piece regarding the PA system. So if you look back at the capital projects plan presented to the public and the board, and I think it was July, you'll see the mass communication as a top priority in the district. i think it was like one below the pool by the way um so that is something that was public knowledge i mean you know we certainly shared that uh but wanted to also share with the board that that is a

098project that we did not want to be short-sighted on and we wanted to look beyond just one building because we are aware of other buildings with the same concern and as we look to do a project that is going to be system and and district wide we are aware of what that project cost would be and i can tell you that that's probably can't me if I remember, but I remember it's probably close to 3 million district-wide, maybe a little bit less, but we wanted to look at ESSERs for that in order to approach that for all buildings. And I don't want to get too in-depth for the reasons you've shared, Dave, but that is something that we have submitted to be considered by ESSERs. That was originally denied the first time. We have since

099revised that, I would say maybe a month ago, Tracy, and resubmitted for it. consideration and we have not heard back in regard to that process and that purchase. And that's for all mass communication district-wide regarding PA systems. The other piece is we are checking back in on a weekly basis with the state. Haven't heard anything. If that is not, I'll say... approvable or allowable underneath the other ESSERs that we submitted, then we will need to look at a different way of funding that, and that would most likely come from the cap reserve or general fund, whichever we would determine with a recommendation. So we are currently awaiting the results for the past few, quite honestly, the past few months from ESSERs, and once we do, we'll have a different, we'll have a decision on how

100we can proceed. So I want to share that for the board and the public's knowledge, and, you know, we'll keep everyone, you know, apprised of it. Thank you, Mr. Zyadik, and also for the board's education. We do meet, members of the administration do meet with PTA leaders at a roundtable, and we would have been happy to provide that information at that time. So I appreciate the opportunity to share that with everybody. That's why we meet at the roundtable quarterly. So if you want to present that information at the roundtable, members of the administration are there ready to speak to you. Mr. Zyadik knows a lot more about it than I do. Mrs. Hess. Thank you. So I would like maybe a little bit lighter. No, I'm not sure, depending because it is Eastern football. So

101just wanted to congratulate you and say welcome. As you can see, even in this room alone, Easton football, our mascot, how important this tradition is. And I know there are some people who maybe don't feel that coaches are as important, but I definitely think being a coach's wife, that coaches are definitely an extended arm from their regular school day. So I am excited to see the positive influences for our student athletes and wish you the best. Thank you, Mrs. Hess. Any other business from board members? Dr. Keegan. I don't want to pile on this, but trying to run security drills without the PA system is... It's dangerous. And no matter what happens, I know you guys, you had this under control and you've spoken about it. I don't know what the problem is. If it's

102hit or miss, it sounds. And some of these PA systems are old and the parts are bad and everything else. But I think it's very important, especially for a... when parents are coming into a building that's under lockdown or whatever, that everybody knows what they're doing. But thank you very much for that update, and thank you for bringing that up for us to know tonight so that we can keep everybody safe. I know you guys are on the ball. So let's just make it happen for the school. Thank you. We'll bring it to you either way. All right. And there is a PA system. Hit or miss. It's old. And there's also different pieces to different PA systems throughout the different schools in the district that connect to the phone system as opposed to not

103connecting to the phone system. I think we have two buildings like that. Certainly need to look at the servers and upgrade the servers. So it's not like we're looking to replace a speaker, right? There's a lot more that goes into that infrastructure-wise. So that's why the project cost ends up being so much. So that's something if we can get funded by the state ed. no we'd much rather have that fun through the state than try to go to a cap reserve and and go that route so thank you you got it anything else from board members yes okay uh before we adjourn tonight the students who are with us tonight who need signatures please feel free to come up after we adjourn to get those signatures all right so you can get credit for your

104almost two hours this evening all right so motion to adjourn the meeting at 8 42 p.m All in favor? Aye. All right. Good night, everyone.