Regular Board Meeting

001Thank you. We'll be calling the meeting to order. Let me get my agenda so I'm prepared here. So we'll be starting off with the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Killen. Mrs. Ramirez, you have roll call taken. Okay, thank you. Okay, next we have Superintendent's Report. Mr. Piperato. Thank you, Mrs. Hess. First of all, thank you to the boys and girls who are here from Shawnee that led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Killen, I'd like to call you up now. I know you have a presentation for us. Andy, were you handing them certificates? Was that for the Pledge or was that for something else? Oh, great. Okay. You're going to do that now? Thank you, Mr. Doster. I'm Sean Killen. I'm the principal of Shawnee Elementary School. I'm happy to be here tonight. Before we

002get started with our Shawnee presentation, I wanted to sort of highlight our five amazing sharks we have here tonight. One of our Shawnee traditions since the first year we opened was an outstanding shark award at the end of the year. And our first principal, newly retired Mrs. Galloway, it was something that was very important to her. So we had her retirement party on Friday. We had a really nice time. And we renamed the award the Josephine Galloway Integrity Award. So moving forward, the award will be in honor of Mrs. Galloway. So we have our five first nominees of the Josephine Galloway Integrity Award, all fifth graders at Shawnee. And these five students personify what it means to be a shark. I've only been there five, six months now, but hardworking, leaders in the building, good

003friends, good classmates. They're involved in so many activities. K-kids, band, orchestra, newspaper. These five sort of do it all. So I thought it would be nice for them to lead the pledge today as a little extra honor for all of their hard work. So we have our five, our Rosabelle Yesia, Madison Falkowski, And Jace Marquez. And Evangelia Angelias. And Cassidy Goyack. So I just wanted to thank them for being here. Also, Tracy Wartman, she's our fourth grade teacher and our lead teacher at Shawnee and does an outstanding job, so helpful as well. So thank you for everybody. Congratulations. Parents, you should be so proud. You've got five amazing sharks here. So thanks, guys. Congratulations. So for my portion of the presentation, I wanted to highlight a little bit about the work we've been doing at

004Shawnee since I got there in December. So we have an initiative right now that we're working on called Who Do We Want to Be at Shawnee? And it sort of started in December as I was, you know. I want to thank you all because my very first head principal job was starting two weeks before Christmas in the biggest pandemic surge of the pandemic. So one day I'll sort of think about what that meant. But very quickly, I thought about where do we want to go? What do we want to be? So we started off with a lot of talking, calling courageous conversations, I like to call them. And I really wanted to gain a better understanding of the climate and culture, how the building was feeling in the pandemic. Like I said, it was a

005surge at that point. So just want to get a pulse of the building and start working towards a new normal. When I was at Cheston, we worked a lot with Dr. Liang out of Lehigh University in trauma-informed, and he said something to me once that was really profound, I felt, in terms of post-COVID. He said, the new normal is what we make it. And I love that. Out of all of this, everything that's happened, we still have the opportunity to create something new and amazing. So working toward our new normal and identifying areas where we needed to grow and being honest about that. and then helping us identify what items we need to advocate for. So out of those conversations came a staff climate survey. And the survey identified very clearly four big areas. The

006first was social-emotional learning. My teachers want to know more, they want more training, they want to find ways to meet our kids' needs. The second was they really felt like we were missing a school-wide system of support. The third was addressing the changing academic needs at Shawnee, especially because of the pandemic. And then finally, improving our culture and climate in the building. Those were the four areas that we worked on. that we said we needed to work on. So before we did that, as you're going to notice a lot of, I hope, building upon the other principal presentations that have happened over the past few months, and especially the presentation that the principal group did together. So I was absolutely impacted by that work in many, many ways. You know, Mr. Yanders and I at

007Cheston did a lot of work that you'll see. is transferring over to Shawnee. But the big thing out of a lot of conversations with Mr. Piperato, Mr. Zyadek, Ms. Piazza was we need a vision. We need to know where we're going. So we did some work around vision. We did a bunch of faculty meetings, some PD, and a lot of sharing and talking about what we need to do as a school. Where do we want to go toward that new normal? So what we did, we got a lot of groups together. We had workshops, and we... We ended up voting. We picked three or four that we liked, and we ended up voting on a new vision statement. And our new vision statement is Shawnee Elementary will provide a stepping stone on the path toward

008empowering excellence, rooted in integrity, valuing differences, and unlimited growth. So that's sort of where we ended up together and you notice those trends, you know empowering excellence when our students rooted in integrity highlighting kids like we have tonight Valuing differences which is huge for us and then focusing on that growth in all areas academic and all areas as well So we're really happy with our vision statement and we kind of feel like it's that bright light that we can always keep working toward So we have a vision and now with that with the information we gathered we have a plan So we're sort of starting our work in what we're calling a new three R's. We know the old three R's, which we're still, of course, we're going to work toward, but we felt like

009we needed a new three R's, and they are reset, reteach, renew. The first one is reset. We need to acknowledge what happened these past couple years, and we need to acknowledge that our school community needs a reset. and we're trying to, you know, ending on a positive note, a lot of great celebrations are back at Shawnee, but acknowledging first that we need a reset, and that's really important for our staff and our students and our families, our whole community. The second R is reteach. We want to come back strong at Shawnee. We want to come back in August, and we want to reteach by using, we want to reteach expectations. We want to reteach what it means to be a shark. We want to reteach what it means to be a student, and hopefully in

010a... uninterrupted way. So reteach is really important. And then the third is renew, which is come into next year, building on everything that we've done this spring, and really with a renewed sense of what it means to be a shark and what we want to do at Shawnee Elementary. So those are our three new Rs. We have a little timeline that we're working on now. So the first one was, who do we want to be at Shawnee? And that was identifying what was working, what was not, and where we want to go. So I feel really good about the work we've done. The second part next is Shawnee PBIS, and the work has begun on that and will continue over the summer. That's creating a system specific to Shawnee. Next is our choral teams, which

011I'll talk a little bit more about in a little bit. Work has begun on that. We'll continue into the new school year. And then finally starting strong with those three Rs and implementing systems that support our staff and students at Shawnee. So the first thing that the staff was really, really asking for was some sort of PBIS system. And it was really important that we create something that feels like it belongs to us, that it belongs to Shawnee and that everyone is invested in. So we have a team working right now, is going to be working on the summer. I'm proud to say we have 20 staff members who have joined our team, who are working over the summer, who are really excited about this. And I think the fact that we know we need

012to reset, but we still have 20 staff members who are committed to this work, I think shows that it will be a great success. You can see the work there. When Shawnee began, we had a PBIS system, and we talked a little bit about the system we had. And what we noticed was missing was equity. Equity at the center. So what we want to do is we want to move toward a system that is rooted in equity and is a system for 2022, 2023, and not just take some system from the past. We really want to make it new and fresh. We want to address our students' changing needs, and we're going to have the system ready to go first day of school in August. We're also creating coral and reef teams. I know Mr.

013Yenders and I got a lot of flack about our pillars and umbrella and did they sort of fit. So Mr. Piperato, when we worked on this, coral and reef we feel like really work. Thank you, thank you. So our coral and reef teams will be supporting our students and our staff. So think of it like the coral teams are different types of coral all come together to support the reef. So they're going to be responsive to Shawnee's needs. There will be four coral teams, which I'll talk about in a moment, a building level reef team that sort of comes together and guides the work. Professional development is going to be key throughout this process. And then also the DEI is really important to me and our work at Shawnee in terms of making sure this

014work is rooted in diversity and equity and inclusion. So we have our four coral teams, and these are the teams that are going to be working towards Shawnee's specific goals. We have academics, social-emotional learning, school-wide PBIS, and culture and climate. So how that's going to work is every staff member is going to be on one of the four. We will have leaders identifying each of the four, who will then join me, my school psychologist, my school counselor, as the reef team. And the Reef team will be the leaders of those four teams and myself that will sort of guide the work that will then go back to the other smaller choral teams. We want it to be super responsive. That's really important to me in terms of, you know, one of my teachers comes to

015me and says, we're really missing the mark here. And okay, that falls onto the academic team. That becomes the work of the academic team. How can we support our teachers to support our kids? And you'll notice those four choral teams, once again, ties back to our work that we've done as a principal group, I think. Number one, academics today with Mr. Doster, we had our final instructional rounds. And, you know, Andy and I were talking after, and I said, it's amazing the growth of the team. You know, in the conversation we had today, we've come so far as a principal group, and, you know, with MTSS and a lot of things coming. So the academic team. what I've learned from the principal group can directly impact that academic team. Number two, social-emotional learning. You saw

016Mrs. Jones from Paxinosa. She gave a great presentation on SEL. Mr. Yanders, as well, with his pause room. So we're building upon each other. School-wide PBIS. Mr. Hightower just very deservedly won an award at the IU Awards for his PBIS program. He took a chance, said we need something different, inspired us to do the same. And climate and culture, which is super important and something that we're working on all the time. But I just want to highlight... you know, when the principal group gave our presentation. All of that work is directly impacting our work at Shawnee and it's really exciting and I feel really supported and we have a great team. So all of these choral teams and the work at Shawnee is directly a result of my peers and my other principals which has

017been wonderful. So before we finish up, I just want to highlight a couple things. That number there, 13,078,956. That's how many math problems on First in Math Shawnee Elementary School has solved this year thus far, which is incredible. I'm sure you've seen on Lehigh Valley Live, we were highlighted, Mr. Sun came, and we were on the front page of the Express Times, which was awesome. We had 141 grand champions. So in June, we're going to bring Dr. L's class. Denise Lodenslager's class, which was number one class in the world, the entire world. Shawnee was the number two school in the nation. Really exciting things are happening at Shawnee. So just wanted to highlight that number, but in June, we are going to be bringing some more of our kids, and Mr. Sun will be joining

018us to properly celebrate those guys. And then finally, addressing that fourth choral team, the climate and culture, gratitude. So we... I wanted to acknowledge how difficult this has all been. I think if we don't acknowledge it and pretend we got it and it was fine, we're missing the mark. So Shawnee Elementary in May has been focused on gratitude. Students have been filling out papers. Every morning we have kids saying who they are grateful for. Ms. Robertson's daughter did a really cute one about the vet. It helps keep her dog healthy. So there's a lot of really cute things. I'm grateful for my dog, my parents, my teachers. And just having the kids express gratitude to their peers, their teachers, their parents has been uplifting. So I want to acknowledge all of you. because I don't

019think it's some, certainly in the past two years, I don't think there's been a ton of gratitude. You've made a lot of really difficult choices that weren't always popular. So I wanted to say publicly, thank you for that. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to lead this incredible school. I'm so proud to be the principal of Shawnee Elementary. So we're just going to finish up with a little video our Sharks made. We wanted to express our gratitude to the greater Easton Air School District community. So just have a little short video from Shawnee to our community saying thank you. I'm grateful for my family because they take care of me and they do really good things for me. My name is Yavier and my teacher's name is Mr. Rice and I'm in grade

020four. I am grateful for Mr. Rice because he's the best teacher in the world. Kind, awesome, he plays games, helps us, teaches everything we know. Hi, my name is Aaliyah and I am in fourth grade and I am grateful for Mrs. Bortman and the teachers in Shawnee Elementary. Hi, I'm Katie Klein in Mr. Allison's class in fifth grade. I am grateful for my teacher, Mr. Allison, because without him I would not know how to write as well or explain math word problems. My name is Morgan Bilger. I'm in Mrs. Jennings' class in fourth grade. I am grateful for my teachers, Ms. Fisher, Ms. Salt, Ms. Coltrider, Ms. Heimbach, and Ms. Jennings, because they've helped me through everything. My name is Chance, and I'm... And I am in Mrs. Halsrudel's class, and I am in first

021grade. I am thankful for my bedroom because it is so cozy. Hi, I'm Oliver. I'm in first grade, and my teacher is Mrs. Hendershot. I am grateful for my parents because they take care of me every day. Hi, my name is Romney Carr, and I'm in Mrs. Hayes' class in fifth grade. I am grateful for our teachers and friends because our teachers teach us what we need to know and help us along our way. Our friends because they make us happy and give support. This is why I'm grateful for our friends and teachers. I'm grateful for my best friends, Gabriella and Isabella. They are really, really sweet and kind. My name is Elizabeth. My teacher is Mrs. Muzzin and I'm in kindergarten. I'm grateful for my family, my friends, and my teacher. They are all

022kind to me. They are loving to me. I love them and they love me. My name is Oliver. My teacher is Mrs. Fisher. I'm in kindergarten. I'm grateful for my brother because he helps me get on the bus. Thank you. Thanks, guys. So, Mr. Killen, first of all, thank you. I know that the entire Shawnee community is grateful to have you. As a matter of fact, I'm getting tired of your teachers telling me so. It seems like every time I'm near your building, somebody runs and grabs me and says, oh, Mr. Killen is the greatest. I want to say, I know we hired him. and congratulations on the process that you laid out for the board this evening an outstanding improvement process actually one that we're trying to mirror district-wide we certainly haven't made the

023progress that you've made in your building but the fact that you created a shared vision is really the most critical piece of that process is that your teachers and your staff have been involved from the beginning and regardless of where you land and you landed in some great spots in terms of you know your your goals moving forward they're always going to be the right place to land if you involve your teachers and your staff in the decision-making process so very well done excited to see you know the positive developments that are going to come out of Shawnee once we get back to a normal school year next year I didn't I stopped over your building today I'm going to talk about your super sharks over here in just a second but talk to a

024couple your teachers and I think we're all feeling like let's just get to the summer we've survived this year and then next year we can excel having said that I think we all of our teachers and staff have excelled this year in order to survive And your leadership was key in that. So thank you. I wanted to share with you that a number of your sharks today were in a performance, a children's theater in their classroom that I was able to observe. I learned a valuable lesson about history of our country and a 16-year-old young lady who rode her horse to warn individuals about the British. I can't think of her name. What was her name, guys? Any of you? Sybil, thank you. See, I should have studied. But Sybil is a little-known character in

025history that did the same for our country as Paul Revere and showed courage in doing so. And I had not heard that story. And so not only was I impressed with the story, but I was impressed with the performance of all the students. So congratulations to all of you who participated in that. And at this time, if any of the board members have any questions for Mr. Killen or comments? No, I would just definitely like to say congratulations to the new Sharks there with the new Mrs. Galloway award. And I would also like to recognize, like you said, Dr. Lundslager's class. Maybe we could get Mr. Larry Holmes to come, our world champ from Easton. to meet up with our world champ math. That would be an awesome thing. The only two world champs in

026Easton. Well, I don't know. Olympics? Let's work on it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Killen. So again, thank you to everybody. Parents, thank you for being here this evening supporting your children. We are going to continue the board meeting, but this is a really good time if you'd like to get home at a decent hour to excuse yourselves from the meeting. Feel free to stay, but we all know what it's really like. Thank you boys and girls I do have a few more items Mrs. Hesse my superintendent's report So the first thing I want to do today tonight is to acknowledge The good news that is the good news and what I mean by that is that each meeting? In each month we seem to to be finding more and more good things that are

027happening in the district and the fact that those Whatever they are, those accomplishments are being recognized. As Sean said, we know that the... Lehigh Valley Live and the Express Times did a wonderful story on the math accomplishments, the world champions. And I think it's important that every now and then we pause and we recognize what's happening in this district in terms of good news. It wasn't long ago when I entered the district and one of the major concerns that was brought to my attention was all the negative attention the district was getting, especially in the press. And certainly, you know, the reporters in the Lehigh Valley have a job to do. And so they're going to report the news good, bad, or indifferent. And we appreciate that. But the more positive things we can present

028to them, and they've definitely demonstrated a willingness to report that good news. So we appreciate that. I also want to, in particular and specifically, I want to point out Rudy Miller. I found that Mr. Miller is more than willing to report on whatever news is coming out of Easton. And I also appreciate Rudy and other local reporters giving us the benefit of the doubt when they hear information. What I mean by that is whether they hear a rumor or somebody's presented information to them, they always reach out to us to ask for a comment, for further context, facts. And I think that helps to provide this community with what's really happening in the district. And so I wanted to just spend a minute tonight thanking them and showing my appreciation for what I think has

029been balanced. coverage of the school district certainly we're not perfect and there are issues that we have to address and we continue to but I really do appreciate the opportunity to share our piece of the story so wanted to spend a few just a few minutes recognizing that there's been additional good news there continues to be good news and and we appreciate that and we also appreciate the coverage that we're receiving so maybe some of the next things I'm going to talk about will be in the paper First of all, there's a beautiful new piece of art at an Easton Elementary School, and it has a pair of the city's most recognizable icons, the Peace Candle and the Free Bridge over the Delaware, and it was crafted by our students. But look closer at Paxinosa's

030masterpiece, and among the glued tissue paper and handprints, you can see what looks like tire tracks. The students used wheelchairs, wheels on the Bridge of Peace, and it was more than a new art technique for little hands. And I know they greatly appreciated this. And again, I know this project was highlighted in the local press, so we appreciate that. But we also wanted to take time to recognize the students and the teachers and the local artists involved. Also, CIU20's yearly regional STEM design challenge just took place every year. The CIU20 holds a STEM design challenge throughout the Lehigh Valley. This year's prompt was, in what ways can transportation infrastructure be improved to create a safer, healthier, and cleaner world? The task had two parts. One was to use K'nex recycled materials to create a prototype

031that shows an improved or new transportation system. And the second was to demonstrate how the systems work by moving a ping pong ball through the prototype. Students needed to create a blueprint of their design, maintain a journal of their progress, and create a video explaining their design. They submitted the prototypes for judging and waited for the results. Their designs were scored on a rubric in the categories of design, teamwork, creativity, and presentation. And out of approximately 40 elementary schools who competed, we had two... fourth grade Palmer Elementary School teams who placed second and third place. So we're very proud of them. When I read the task, I would not even know where to start. So the fact that students in elementary school were able not just to understand the prompt, but to actually design a

032system for a safer, healthier, cleaner world, that's amazing. So we'll make sure that... that we recognize them at a future meeting. But that was Mrs. Kathy Colomino's class, Project K. Next, last week, many of the members of my cabinet attended the Greater Lehigh Valley Consortium for Excellence in Equity held at Lehigh University. And at that presentation, which was a day dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion, there was one and only one award presented that entire day. And much to our surprise, the recipient of the award was Mrs. Piazza. And so Mrs. Piazza was awarded the Greater Lehigh Valley Consortium for Excellence and Equity Collaborator of the Year Award. And I'd like to read the description of Tracy that the individual wrote who nominated her for this award. And by the way, the person who nominated

033her was not a member of our school district. So this was somebody. from outside our school district from another school district. And this person says of Tracy, aside from being a regular and contributing participant to LUSSC sessions for many years, Tracy is also a regional leader in the effort to improve literacy outcomes. She serves as part of the steering committee of Lehigh Valley Reads. a chapter of the national campaign for grade-level reading that has led to a clear focus and tighter strategy toward having all students across the Lehigh Valley reading at grade level by grade three. Tracy is never too busy to collaborate or lend a helping hand. when she can support another school district. She's a trusted colleague in the common cause. She's principled, Ellie, and selfless, just the kind of under-recognized leader that

034this award has always honored. Easton is one of I think 16 or more than 16 districts who belong to that consortium So there are districts all of the districts in Lehigh Valley and beyond and of all those educators our very own Tracy Piazza was recognized So how about a round of applause for Mrs. Piazza? Very proud of Tracy And the award's perfect. If you know Tracy, you know that's the perfect award for her. All right, so that is my presentation on good news. Continuing our good news, we have the Easton Area Public Library budget presentation. And with us this evening is Jennifer Long. Is that correct, Jennifer? That is correct. All right, so I warmed the audience up for you. Great, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Actually, it's

035been two years since I have presented in person. as I look around this room I realize there's a lot of new faces that I'm seeing for the first time so I just want to take a few minutes to introduce myself to all of you and hopefully I'll have an opportunity to talk a little bit more after our meeting today but my name is Jennifer Long I have been the library director at the Easton Area Public Library for 17 years now I actually started when I was high school and I am a proud alumni here of Easton high school 30 years this November of graduating from Easton high school but even more prouder I am an alumni of Cheston elementary school and Cheston when anyone at Cheston elementary asks can the library partner i'm immediately jump

036and say yes not that i'm not happy for all the other schools our school district is awesome but cheston is very near and dear to my heart so thank you so much for this opportunity to speak to you this evening i am here to formally present to you the 2022-2023 easton area public library budget we are presenting to you a total operating budget for the library of 2 million 300 $331,658. But as you can see, the library's budget is asking for $1,729,353 from the special library tax revenue collected by the school district for this upcoming year. For those of you that were serving on the school board last year or part of the administration, you may recall that we did not ask for an increase last year. However, after reviewing our budget, reviewing some new

037initiatives going forward, we like to propose a 3% increase in our budget, which is a modest increase of approximately $50,000. The remainder of the library's budget consists of state aid that is proposed by Governor Wolf, state aid from being a district center in the state, and also just our own... income that the library generates on its own. The library is recognized in the state for our leadership and is one of the 29 district centers in the state, which means for over 50 years we have been able to serve in this role because of our dedicated local and community support. We provide professional guidance to seven libraries that are assigned to our library and are required by state law to meet continuous minimum standards. This program not only supports the cost of material sharing in our

038region, but supports the e-book program that we provide to so many for at a very reasonable cost. One thing that we did learn through the pandemic when unfortunately the library did need to physically close, our online presence grew. grew tremendously. Even when we were working from home, we were able to generate library cards for people to access our online materials. We currently offer over 8,000 titles through our e-book program, and these are books from children's books right through adult books. We have a little bit of everything. We have over 3,000 magazines through our online magazine subscription, and over 4,000 audiobooks for those that like to listen to audiobooks. We still do have audio CDs, but newer vehicles don't have CD players, so now audiobooks through online being downloaded has become the new popularity. And although

039we are still operating very cautiously, we were proud to see that last year's summer reading program, which was Tales and Tales, welcomed almost 1,000 children, school-age children, to the program. And in our summer reading program, children are encouraged to read books, not necessarily the number of books, but the time spent reading the books, whatever they like to read, and we provide benchmarks and give prizes away. All of these prizes are sponsored by our friends at the library that are terrific supporters of our summer reading program and always have been. And it's something that we love to be a part of with the school district as well. Last year, because of the pandemic, many of our programs were held either through Zoom virtually or outside, which was very nice and a lot of fun. And for

040this... summer reading program theme oceans of possibilities we are going to be offering a lot more in-person program but also taking advantage of the outdoors that we have at both our main library and our palmer branch and even some programs through zoom as well for those that are still still hesitant to be to be in in person all of those programs are free to all of our families throughout throughout the district of course Currently, we offer weekly storytime sessions at both our main library and our Palmer branch, and they are all at full capacity. It is really amazing to see that everybody has, I think we all have just itched to get back amongst each other, learning and being part of the community. For our school-age children, we are now hosting weekly sessions of art

041clubs. computer coding club gaming card club writing clubs book clubs we're really seeing a lot of our school-aged children coming into looking for communities looking for clubs looking for things to do and that's that's really been a big change and a big positive for us this summer we are looking to partner with the local YMCA to provide a summer summer food need in our community of course where the library the main library is located at 6th and North Hampton Street partially right there at the cusp between downtown and West Ward we have that dual dual personality there we want to be able to help our community and we're working with the YMCA to be able to offer free meals to children in the community as another location throughout our district So also talking about just

042some other of our online materials, not just the e-books and e-audiobooks, but through the library's website, one thing that you talked about, Mr. Piperato, is the increase of the local newspapers. If you don't subscribe to a local newspaper, and we all can go to their websites, but... Sooner or later you might run into the paywall or run into the subscription. If you have a library card, you can access the newspaper. Yes, thank you. You can access the newspaper for free. Let me repeat that. You all live in the Easton School District. You can get a free library card. You can access the newspaper through the library's website for free. This is something we, the library, pays to subscriptions to provide to everyone. And whenever I speak at Kiwanis Clubs or Rotary Clubs or Lions Clubs,

043I tell everybody this, and sure enough, the next day, how do I access that, Jen? How do I get into that? But not just the newspapers. We have so many other databases that help with just adult education. Of course, with school education, but adult education. There's things that we can use to help guide you, whatever you're looking for. The other, even what else surprises between our programs is, I think all of us being home the last two years, people needed projects, looking for something to do. our marks room of local history. If you have not seen our marks room of local history, please call me and come see this. This not only houses the beautiful one-of-a-kind eastern flag, but... This is where people come from all over the world to trace genealogy and local history.

044It was something that we've done before the pandemic is welcome a lot of the fourth grade classes to visit the Marks Room. Of course, we have had to put that project on pause. But being able to talk about the local history, and even if you're not from Easton or your family's not from Easton, we have so much. so much history about the school district, pictures and photos throughout Easton, and not even necessarily of buildings and such. We have pictures of individuals, and it's great to look as a cultural of our history, what individuals wore, what people looked like, what did they do, what did they eat. We just got a menu from a 1930s... football banquet, Easton High School football banquet, and of course being football in November, turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, it was great

045to see and that's a part of our heritage, part of our history. For those of you that have... have heard me speak before, I can actually say now we have a complete run of the Rechafe at the public library from 1905 through present. We were missing a few years in there and because patrons, I think everyone cleaned out, they donated, we have a complete run of the Rechafe yearbook and that's something that's great to have, great as a community resource that we can provide to so many. The library's annual circulation figures close to about 250,000 items. If an average item costs $20, library users saved about $5 million by borrowing items through the library. We have over 35,000 library card holders in our community, and we register about 200 new library cards a month. Even

046just for our visits, even with the pandemic and such, we're still averaging about close to 300,000 visits a year to the library. The library this year was awarded a $30,000 ARP grant from the Office of Commonwealth Libraries. And with this grant, we purchased a poster printer to be able to post large-scale flyers and information about library events, whether it be summer reading or a book sale. We also purchased 20 Chromebook computers for libraries, for patrons to use in the library. We still have our computer lab, but as we have needed to promote a little more social distancing, we thought it would be better if we can purchase these Chromebooks. People can use them within the library, but can move to a table and not be locked down at our computer lab. And in addition, the

047library has a collection of board games, museum passes, and Wi-Fi hotspots that we check out regularly to patrons. One of the other priorities in our upcoming year is the library board would like to start to think a little bit more forward. We'd like to... go through a strategic process a strategic planning process as we start to Pull some of our ideas closer together Certainly, we will be in touch with the school district as well if there would be anyone who'd like to assist us in this process And one thing that's been really great too is being able to get back out into the community after being so restricted. We're going to be at the Eastern Farmers Market three times this year. We are going to be at other community events, Forks Community Days. Just about

048a month ago, we were at Cheston Elementary School registering library cards for families. So anytime we can get out into the community, we're happy to do so, whether it be at a school or community event. That's something I really believe in. Being an Eastern girl, wanting to give back is not hard for me at all. As always, the Eastern Area Public Library is grateful for the support. that the Easton Area School District provides the library by agreeing to be our taxing collection agency. For over the last hundred years, we have worked together to provide a useful, cost-effective means of meeting the educational needs of all the residents within the district. I believe libraries are not only an investment in our communities, but in each one of us. And truly, What's important to me is this

049library is our library. It's the Easton Communities Library. As I said, with so many of you being new and even those of you that do know me, please call. Please come see me. Let's talk about what we can do together, providing more tours or more information about the library. I'm very happy to do so, and I can continue to talk about the library. Thank you for your time this evening and your consideration in approving the library's proposal for a 3% increase to the library tax. I really do appreciate all of your willingness to serve on our school board and recognize your dedication. As was mentioned earlier, I know how difficult it was, not just for myself and our library board the last two years, but... Seeing what you've gone through as well. It's it has

050been really tough and thank you your your efforts don't go unnoticed Are there any questions that I can answer about the library the library budget? Thank you Thank You Jennifer. We appreciate that and that concludes my report this evening Thank you. Okay. Next we'll move on to reports and we will begin with colonial intermediate unit 20. Mr. Snyder Yes, thank you. Just a couple of quick items On April 17th, the IU had their 50th anniversary celebration. It was a late dinner with a few speakers just honoring the 50th anniversary of the creation of the IUs in the state as well as the creation of the IU20. On May 12th, we had the Excellent Education Awards ceremony, which was held at Blue. It was a dinner recognizing National Merit Scholar semifinalists. and as well as a

051special recognition to Mr. Hightower and the Tracy staff for receiving category one award there. So congratulations to them. Coming up, the graduation for the IU is in two days. It's May 26th. And our next voting meeting is tomorrow night. And that concludes the report. Thank you. Next is the Eastern Public Library. Mr. Thomas. Good evening. My name is John Thomas. I'm a member of the board of directors at the library. Jennifer had the hard part tonight to ask for money, and then she got to do some fun things. I'm just going to do fun things. For the first time in two and a half years, the friends of the library were finally able to hold their annual book sale. long waited, greatly anticipated and I'm happy to report that at fifty cents for a children's

052book fifty cents for a DVD or a CVD or two dollars for a book the Friends raised over eight thousand dollars at the book sale so we are greatly appreciative to all those who came and took advantage of that we're looking forward to doing another one in the fall, the Friends are looking forward to doing another one in the fall The library is accepting donations at the main branch on Wednesdays and Saturdays, at the Palmer branch during normal hours. If you go on the library website, the times and dates are there as well as the types of material that can be donated. Getting back to something of normal, with all the proper considerations in place, the library has begun to move back some of the more comfortable original furniture that was in the main part

053of the library. People are very excited to see that back. They feel a little bit better and a little homier coming in and using those things. One of the things that we noticed was that with the advent of so many mobile devices some of the computers in the children's section of the library were actually being underutilized and so the staff has removed those and made more of the play area for children to well play which they absolutely thoroughly enjoy again with all the proper considerations in place. Also with regard to buildings, the Palmer Branch is currently working with the township on a project to install all new carpeting throughout the Palmer Branch. We anticipate that will probably take place sometime late in the summer or the early fall. Jennifer mentioned... both the library staff and

054the board members getting out into the community. You can well imagine that at Cheston's Community Night, Jennifer was there to promote that. She mentioned some of the other things that they have been at and things that we anticipate participating in in the future. And finally, the library has created a little business card. On the back of the card is a QR code. And with a mobile phone or any other electronic device that has a QR reader, you can scan this. It immediately takes you to the library's website, opens up the website, makes our calendar available, listing of events. And so these are available at the library. I brought a stack tonight. I'll leave them here for anyone who would like them. Any questions from any of the members? Again, as Jennifer said, we certainly appreciate

055what the school board and the school district does for the library. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next, we have Career Institute of Technology. I don't know if Ms. Price or Ms. Wellington. No? Okay. All right. That's fine. That's okay. So this is... Since we had to change our meeting from last time there's quite a bit of information, so I'm gonna do this CIT placed first in sweet treats award. It's the fifth year that they've done that and it's pretty amazing they have all of the groups up there and they Create a display and then the culinary's Make cupcakes and they compete against all the other districts all the other CIT the technology technical Schools. Thank you. So anyway, they placed first again, and it was amazing. They had a carousel, and they had the

056background, and they had the lights, and the carousel, and the horses went up and down, and it was just really amazing to see all the groups come together and put that together. They received the Da Vinci Educational Award. The third annual SkillsUSA signing was May 13th with 27 students and if you will indulge me, we had several students and I apologize if I mispronounce any names for this. What they did was, you know, they looked at a lot of the different college signings and they felt it was important to recognize the students for that also. So right now we have Vladimir Acosta. He is protective services and he's going to Northampton Community College to study computer information technology Haroon, but he's computer systems Network. He's attending Northampton Community College to study networking systems technologies Shamari

057Jones de Mun study he was They were going for HV RP and they're going to Northampton Community College to study HV AC Zachary let Liz new ski computer science network systems networking attending Northampton Community College for network systems technology Community college getting a lot of our students Thomas more protective services attending Grand Canyon University to study criminal justice Messiah Ostrander Early childhood education going to the Community College to study early childhood education Ashley Reyes early childhood education going to the Community College to study early childhood education Jace Graziano Protective services will be serving in the US Marine Corps Enrique Lara, Masonry, will be serving in the U.S. Army. Calvin Robb, Automotive Technology, will be serving as a general laborer. And Yamilet Rivera, Cosmetology, is employed by J. Morgan Salon Company as a shampoo tech, and

058I'd like to thank those that will be serving our country especially. Let's see what else we had. Spring Open House was the fifth. They will be hosting an advanced manufacturing training, partnering with the community college, and that will be running from June to August. And of the Noctis, so for them, they take the Nocti test, which is a written and a practical for the, I guess, what would they be called? Like the automotive. and the other tests that they take. So 134 took the test. Out of that, 66 were placed advanced for both. 35 were competent. which means that they were advanced in one portion and competent in the other, and then 35 were basic. So that is my report. Sorry to be lengthy. That's a lot of good stuff. A lot of good stuff,

059exactly. And community college will be receiving a lot of our students. Yes. All right, so next we have the community college. Mr. Fainal. Thank you. And we definitely appreciate that, all the students right now. We're hoping that we're starting to see a turnaround. I know the question was asked previously at a meeting about what enrollment's looking like. Yes, enrollment's still down, but what's interesting is depending which program we talk about, we were talking at one time about the food service program, and we're finding that this year they may have to restrict and put people on a waiting list. Yet we have other programs, you know, that are not being totally filled. So it's a mix. But we're hoping as more and more opens up and everything, we are starting to see that increase in numbers

060starting to come back. But again, it's by program, you know, in specific areas and everything else. So... The hospitality program, that's like the opposite end, and yet it's still connected with the food service. So it is a mixed bag of worms at this point in time, figuring out what is going on and where are the students coming from. But we do appreciate all the students that do come in. We had prepared a report that was sent out. I think one thing to note on here, again, I will thank you for the approval of our budget and everything. And along with that, we had approved the budget and now continue that process moving forward. I think the last thing I will comment on, yes, we are still in the process of the search, not quite finalized

061yet and everything, but hopefully in the next few weeks we will finalize that. Hopefully the intent was and still would be to see how close to July 1st we can have a replacement on board. With that being said, our next meeting is in June, next week. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Faino. Next the foundation for schools miss say I go is not with us tonight And I don't have anything as far as I know so we can move on Charles friend science and technology. We have no report for this evening Diversity Alliance, mr. Piper otto Thank You mrs. S first just a reminder that Little Rock 9 will be June 2nd, and we're very much looking forward to that Mrs. Piazza, would you like to introduce? No, you don't want to

062know, not the student him or herself, but the reason we have the student here tonight, which is tied into your department summit, no, tied into your curriculum committee for diversity alliance and what's been happening in terms of professional development. Sure. Actually, I have to give all credit to the high school. and their leadership team, one of the things that we've been talking about across all of our diversity committees is wanting to make sure that the work that we're doing is not only impacting our adults within the school community and community at large, but also the students. And that if we have our students involved, that really would be a grassroots effort and all that much more powerful. So this evening, We do have, I believe, one student with us here who has participated at the

063high school level in providing professional development for the teachers at the high school. And so I apologize, I don't know the name. I just got the information that you were here a few moments ago. So I do believe we have someone here that's going to talk to us about their experience in talking to teachers. And we wanted a couple of our students to come. share with the board because all that we heard from the administrative lens was how very powerful those messages were, how authentic they were, how unfiltered they were, and how receptive the teachers were in hearing the voices of their students. And you know, in my opinion, there's nothing more powerful than the voice of a student. So we were anticipating having some students come at their availability. And tonight, we have one

064student available to share their experience, I believe. I apologize. They did not have your names in advance. So please introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. And then the microphone is yours to tell us about your experiences. OK. So hello. I am Marcus Davila. I am currently a senior here at the high school. I'm the president of the school's GSA club and we did a presentation on the LGBT community and you know how it surrounds the school and we had a lot of teachers that attended and it was all positive feedback. I was really really proud and I've had like so many teachers over like the past few weeks like come up saying hey you did a really good job I enjoyed your presentation you did so well this conversation needed to be

065had all that and I haven't had and the best thing about it is that I haven't had any negative connotations opinions or anything of that sort to me which is like that means a lot Hi, I'm Mackenzie Langner and I'm a freshman at the high school and I'm Marcus's vice president for GSA. Like he said, we had a lot of positive response from teachers, which honestly was not something I expected. I kind of expected it would be more kind of driven like kind of homophobic wise, but they were actually open to everything we said and I was very proud of them. Thank you once again for giving us this opportunity. I never could have imagined, because we've never gotten this invitation to speak out about this stuff. So thank you once again. Would either of

066you like to share perhaps a topic or two that were part of your conversation, or maybe some of the questions that the teachers asked of you? And if you can't think of any, I'm putting you on the spot. That's okay. It's totally fine. So we talked about preferred pronouns and how... sometimes it's not considered and teachers go over it. But at the same time, there are students that aren't comfortable sharing that information. And we also talked about how we could include it into the classroom despite it not being a necessary thing to talk about in a school environment. One of the frequent questions we got was how can we respect students without being disrespectful or confusing them with their parents. And the best thing was that they had a Google form at the beginning of

067the year with their legal name, their preferred name, and preferred pronouns. And then they would check a box if they were out to their parents or not. And it was honestly just the best way to keep students safe and students comfortable in the school environment. Yeah, I think that's it. Just a logistics questions if you don't mind. So I think the faculty was divided up and had an opportunity to choose between topics of conversation. Did you have one group of teachers the entire time? Yes. And about how many teachers were in your group? There was supposed to be around 30, but I was told that a lot more teachers, like they didn't go to the meeting they signed up for and they came to ours. And that's a lot. But that's illegal. No, I'm kidding.

068That's great. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for all your work. And congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you both for taking time out of your schedule to talk to us this evening. We do appreciate that and we encourage your peers to Ask and look for the same opportunity. Thank you, Tracy. Um, don't push that button I'm gonna put you on the spot for one second more So there were multiple groups of students meeting with groups of teachers. That's my understanding of the day. Do you know what? With the other groups what they represented or what topics they were discussing. I know I'm putting you on the spot Probably answer that more more fully than I can but So the theme is passing the buck this evening So Mr. Menard actually worked alongside some other

069teachers and the students from many of our affinity groups throughout the building. So some of those groups include NAACP. There actually was a group that wasn't necessarily an affinity group, but a group of individuals who actually ran a 30-minute PD session on student discipline, which was the first time in 20 years that I've been in education and 15 years as an administrator. that I actually saw students having a dialogue and doing some professional development regarding student discipline. And some of the questions were extremely interesting that they posed, that the teachers posed to the students and the students then posed back. So I had the good fortune of attending the student policing and discipline, and I attended the NAACP session as well. Mr. Reichel actually was present, I believe, for those sessions as well. And so

070the teachers, in terms of logistics, had the opportunity. I think there were eight presentations to choose from on the first day, which was an hour session. there was two 30-minute increments. And then there was a third follow-up for some of the groups that didn't necessarily fit into the initial schedule. And then the teachers had the ability then to select one more that particular day. So all teachers participated in an hour and a half of three sessions, and I believe there were nine or ten in total. that were run by the student group. So GSA was represented, NAACP was represented, there was a student discipline, policing, the Asian American Club also founded and ran a session, and there are a few others that are just escaping my mind at the present time. But just to give

071you an understanding, they were representative of our student body. and the various cultures that are represented in our student body as well as our diversity. And an opportunity for students to speak on behalf of those groups and have teachers learn a little bit more in terms of insights and ask questions and start a dialogue. So really the first step in any selective change for the better regardless of what that is for diversity, equity, inclusion is awareness. And so obviously this is the first step in that direction. And the students were quick to press step two, and that's action. So we moved right from awareness to what can we do in a 30-minute session. So, you know, they mean business when they decide that they're going to speak to, you know, the adults in the building.

072And I think it's because once they've been presented with the opportunity, they know it's an all-in process. And so kudos to them and kudos to the students who came out this evening to speak before the board and the public. It's a great opportunity for them and a great opportunity for us to learn as a school district. Thank you. So the one thing I will share in there is that some of this, and certainly the folks from the high school can fill in details far better than we can, but I do know that this has been a little bit of time in the making. There have been some of our guidance staff. administrators who have helped students create something called chai chat and I believe there's been about five or six sessions that I'm aware of

073over the past I think two to three years that our students presented via via zoom for folks to log in and and hear about different cultural norms and how that influences perhaps our students here living in America but still having strong family ties to those cultural norms So there were a number of sessions around that. And then I know that the high school all started, I believe, this year with small groups of students, I want to say about 10 at each grade level, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th, of a diverse group of students who really wanted, I forget what they called it, but come together and talk about their student voice and what was important to them. And they quickly found that those students had lots to say and also had some combined groups of

074all. all 40, I'll say, students, all grade levels together. And I think there are many students who would like to be part of that and be able to have their voice heard. And so I know they're at the enviable problem of trying to manage that and allow kids to kind of have that similar experience. So really proud of the work that our high school is doing and taking advantage of the age of our students and their knowledge and courage to speak out on various topics. So great job to them. And Ms. Piazza, that group is called Student Voices. Okay, well, thank you very much. Thank you to Marcus and Mackenzie for coming out, and everybody who was involved in that. I think it's a great opportunity, like you said, to be able to have the

075conversations and for people to feel safe having those conversations. Next, we have Student Council. Hi everyone, just a little update for the high school. As you know, AAG went on last month and we raised over $1,000 and that's going to be going to the project of Easton and I know that was a success and everyone was really happy with that. And prom was just this past weekend and that went really well. Everyone was safe and happy and I know it was really good to be back in the steel stacks for some type of normalcy as we are ending our year. And prom is, not prom, graduation is just two weeks away. We are doing our last day of cap and gown hang, gown hang. handouts and I know the senior class they're really looking forward

076to having a new sense of tradition at the high school as you know we're going to be in Cottingham everyone there and we have our graduation practice the day of graduation and I know everyone is excited to start that new type of normal for the classes to come and We also had a talent show today that I attended that my friend Hannah over there led, and it was really great. I think it's something that's going to be taking place at the high school over the next few years. I think it's really great that students have an opportunity to express their talents and just stuff that they're really passionate about to a small group of audience, and I was really happy with it and seeing students really come out of their comfort zone. And also I

077just wanted to take the time to thank everyone here. This is definitely my last meeting because I'm graduating in two weeks. It's definitely been an honor to be student council president and have been able to attend all these meetings and see how they've developed since September and seeing how the meetings have honestly grown in length just in issues. And I think that's really important. I grew up in Easton. I've been going to the Easton school district since second grade. It's very comforting knowing that we're taking action at a small level and letting different diverse groups have a platform to use their voices. Easton is a very diverse community, and I'm really happy that I can see my peers take action as leaders and acknowledge issues in the classroom from race or sexuality and just feeling

078comfortable in their own skin and not making it necessarily a political issue. And just again, I just wanted to say thank you all for being amazing, and I really encourage my peers to come to a school board meeting and see what they talk about because I think they're really important. Thank you. Rachel, so I jumped the microphone before Mrs. Hess wanted to. I just wanted to say thank you and really we appreciate all of your work and you've represented the school population, all of our students, with great class along the way. So we will miss you. Sorry, Mrs. Hess. That's okay. I don't have much more to expand on that, but wishing you very well in your future endeavors and can't wait for you to come back and share some of that with us. Enjoy.

079Okay. Next we have association reports. Okay. We don't have any others. Mr. Dealey couldn't be here tonight. He had a previous engagement. However, he did ask me to give this information. He said, please relay my thanks to the board for their continued support of the staff and students in the district. This has been a very stressful year for all of us, but because of the board's leadership, we have managed to weather the storm better than most. I am more proud than ever to be working for this district. Although we certainly have a lot more room to grow, I believe we're headed down the right path. I'm especially thankful for the willingness of the board and administration to pursue goals that are aligned with equity and inclusion for our students and staff. When I look around

080other school districts that are facing community pressures to remove books from libraries or control the curriculum to remove items for purely political reasons, I am thankful that we are different. We are acutely aware here in Easton that our diversity is our strength, and that diversity is not only about culture and ethnicity, but about the free expression of ideas. It is not our job as educators to indoctrinate our students. It is our job to develop critical thinkers. I'm looking forward to our profile of a graduate work, which I believe will be in... answer to many of these impertinent attacks against public education. We know that our students learn best from educators that can relate to them and we have many. The more we focus on training the staff on trauma-informed practices the better. I believe those

081relationships will be for all students and staff members. I'm glad that it is I'm glad that is also a focus for our administrative team. I'm looking forward to the summer and starting our next school year with as much normalcy as possible. Despite the upcoming break, I will continue to be hard at work. Please let me know if I can be of any service to you. Have a safe and healthy summer. Okay? All right. So if there's no one else from any associations, we will have the public to be heard on agenda items. And I get to read my little brief thing here, statement. The board recognizes the value to school governance of public comments on educational issues and the importance of involving members of the public in board meetings. The board also recognizes its responsibility

082to conduct the business of the district in an orderly and efficient manner. The board has established the following guidelines to govern public participation. The public may comment at two points within each voting meeting. The board shall require that public comment requested at the beginning of the meeting be for comment on agenda items. The superintendent's report is not considered an agenda item. Public comment at the end of the meeting shall be for general comments or non-agenda items. All statements shall be directed to the presiding officer and no participant may address or question individual board members. Public comment is not a question-answer session nor debate. The public is permitted to comment but should not expect a response from the board or administration. The president may interrupt or terminate a participant's statement when the statement is too lengthy,

083redundant, personally directive, abusive, obscene, or irrelevant. Personal attacks on board members, administrators, or direct employees will not be tolerated. So with that being said, if we have anyone from the public to be heard on agenda items, please come to the podium, sign in. Go in once, twice, okay. All right, next we'll be moving on for informational purposes. Executive session was held April 19th for the purpose of litigation information negotiations, May 3rd for negotiations and informational, and one this evening for informational personnel and litigation. Okay, so now we can get started on the rest of the meeting. So next, if I could ask for a motion for the approval of the minutes. No? Okay. Motion. Second. Any questions? Comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Next we have personnel. We can take A, Eastern School.

084Motion to approve the Eastern School of Nursing Cooperative School Nurse Practicum Affiliation Agreement for the 22-23 year as presented. B. Motion to approve the Millersville University of Pennsylvania internship affiliation agreement as presented. And C, motion to approve the collective bargaining agreement between the Eastern Area School District and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, District 33, Local 1881, Administrative Professionals, effective July 1, 2020, through June 30, 2025. Do I have a motion? Motion. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, next we have a motion with regrets and best wishes to approve the following retirements as presented. We'll take E, resignation. Oops, sorry. Yep, you're right. Yeah, nope, I was looking for a motion to approve the following resignations as presented. If we could take F. Leave

085of absence motion to approve the following leaves of absences as presented and then we'll move on motion Any questions or comments all in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Next we will have the administrative transfers G motion to approve the following administrative transfer We'll have H voluntary transfer motion to approve the following voluntary transfers And if we could have I, election for a professional contract, motion to elect the following professional contracts as presented. So moved. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Next we have J, election of TPE, motion to elect the following temporary professional contracts as presented. We could have K, election for the support staff. Motion to elect the following support staff as presented. We have a motion. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Next,

086we have the election of the administrative staff as presented. We take the election of the coach. Motion to elect the following coaches as presented. And an election of the volunteer coach. Motion to elect the following volunteer coaches as presented. So moved. Any questions or comments? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I will be voting no for L. Okay, next we have the after-school program. Motion to approve the following after-school program staff as presented. P, the summer school program. Motion to approve the following summer school program staff as presented, which is very long. All right, now we're at Q. Motion to approve the following support staff substitutes as presented. Do I have a motion? Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, next we have academics, education, technology, and student supports. We

087can take A, 22-23 academic calendar. Motion to approve the 22-23 academic calendar as presented. The June CPEC schedule. Motion to approve the June CPEC schedule as presented. C, the conference request. Motion to approve the conference request as presented. Do I have a motion? Motion. Second. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, next we have D, the new CELA renewal contract. Motion to approve the new CELA renewal contract as presented. E, motion to approve the Zello renewal agreement as presented. F, motion to approve the renewal contract for our school physician and dentist services as presented. And G, motion to approve the school nursing contract as presented. Can I have a motion? So moved. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, next we have H, motion to approve the

088agreement between the Eastern Area School District and the International Exchange Student to permit one exchange student to enroll at EAHS for two semesters in the 22-23 academic year under EASD Policy 239 as presented. We can have I motion to approve the field trip request as presented. We could have J, jazz band trip. Motion to approve the jazz band trip to Flensburg, Germany to perform and participate in a cultural exchange with a tentative date of May 21st to the 28th, 2023. And K, visit of students from Germany. Motion to approve the visit of students from Altus Gymnasium, Flensburg, Germany to Easton Area High School on October 10th to the 16th, 2023. Motion. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay, next we have athletics. A, motion to approve the updated quote reflecting an increase

089of $459 for the EAHS main gym scoreboards, two as per attached paid with St. Luke's contracted funds. B, motion to approve the tennis court backboard as per attached paid with St. Luke's contracted funds. And C, motion to approve the updated quote for the FAT system display paid with St. Luke's contracted funds. I have a motion. Motion. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We're going to proceed. Okay. We have that, Mr. Ramirez. Okay, thank you. Next, we have the budget and finance. A, treasurer's report, motion to approve financial matters as presented for the treasurer's report, general fund revenue and expenditure reports, monthly student activity statements for East Nary Middle School and High School, the bill register. for regular and ACH, the general funds, special activities, capital projects, and food service. We have

090also for B, motion to approve a three-year agreement with Barbicane Thornton and Company LLP to perform the annual district audit as presented. So moved. Okay, any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, next we have C, resolution designating depositories. Motion to approve the attached resolutions designating depositories for the Easton Area School District as presented. D, motion to approve the CM Regent Renewal Life and AD&D Insurance Policy for the 22-23 school year as presented. E, motion to approve the attached annual service agreements for five district laminators with AACO as presented. And we can take F. 20, motion to approve the ratification of the Colonial IU 20 copy paper janitorial product bid for the 22-23 school year as presented. Do we have a motion? Any questions or comments? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay,

091next we have G, motion to approve the sole bid for the trash and recycling from Schoen-Holling, Inc. at a cost of $128,853.97 per year as presented. H, the transportation bus lease motion to approve the administration to execute the documents for financing $1,620,295.05 over a five-year term for the 15 buses previously approved and ordered through Rarer Bus with Domler Truck Financial Services upon solicitor review as presented. So moved. I need a second. Okay. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Next, I like this one. Giant Corporation donation. Motion to accept a donation in the amount of $14,785.24 from the Giant Corporation to be used toward food service equipment upgrades in the student cafeterias. Can I have motion for J, motion to approve the settlement of tax assessment appeals for the attached list of

092properties and to authorize the solicitor to execute said stipulations? And K, motion to approve the EASD 2223 proposed final budget in the amount of $195,000, oh, I'm sorry, $195,000, I wish, right? $195,112,815 as presented. Have a motion. So moved. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nay on K. I will also be a nay on K. Okay. Next we have buildings and grounds. A, motion to approve the Cottingham stormwater agreement between the City of Easton and EASD per attached. B, Paxinosa-Chiller, motion to approve the Paxinosa-Chiller repair as attached. I have a motion. Second. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, next we have other business. A, a motion to approve the expulsion hearing waiver form for student number 37143 under the terms as presented. B, a motion to

093approve the expulsion hearing waiver form for student number 37093 under the terms as presented. Could I have a motion? Okay. All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Next we have C, Northampton Community College election of trustees. Motion to appoint three individuals for the vacancies to serve on the Northampton Community College Board of Trustees as listed. And D, motion to cast ballots for the annual election of Colonial Intermediate 20 board members as established by the PA School Code of 1949, section 910-A, 24PS9-960B. Ballots will be distributed, completed, and returned. at this time. Could I have a motion? So moved. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. If everybody can return those to Ali, that would be appreciated. Next, we have public to be heard on non-agenda items. Is there anyone in the public

094who would like to come and speak on non-agenda items? Okay. Come up to the podium if you could sign in and just let us know what area you're from and you'll have five minutes to speak. Well, I'm from Easton. I'm specifically from high school. Okay, just sign your name there. For the address, do I actually write my address or do I write what I'm addressing? Yeah, your home address. Okay, I just wanted to make sure. Well, hi, my name is Hannah Badidjo. I'm a junior at Easton Area High School, and I came here to ask permission to... have a club, an acapella club at Easton Area High School. The main reason why I'm here today is because I was supposed to attend a previous board meeting, but we received some problems with the choir department

095and some just negative feedback on us starting the acapella group. And for my reasoning is I feel like students, aspiring artists and performers should have a space where they can create music in acapella form without any restrictions from what Easton has in their specific choir department, specifically because Easton is a little bit more traditional in their music. and I feel like personally there aren't really a lot of opportunities that allow their students to express themselves in their artistry. So I wanted to create this club for it to be specifically student led and for us to just have fun and create music. I'm just here to seek approval for to start this club but to be separate from that specific problem that we have, like separating from the choir department because this is supposed to be

096a student-led club and this was never supposed to be like something that was supposed to be joined. Yep. Sure. So just so we understand, you're not asking for the chorus or the choir to create a new group, but yes, no, I'm not. Right. But instead, you're saying that you would like to have approved a student club, student created club that would participate in acapella activities. Yes. OK, so. The board will ultimately have an opportunity to approve that, but there's a process that you need to follow at the high school that goes through student government. And so my advice would be to see your high school administrator. They'll guide you through that process. And then ultimately when it comes to the board's attention, does the board approve clubs here? Okay. I just blanked out there for

097a second. So you have to go through the process that's in place at the high school. Are you looking for help back there? Yeah. Can I call Mr. Okurji? Yeah, sure. We have a guest speaker. Help me understand. Hello, everybody. My name is Mr. Okurji. I'm one of the high school counselors here, and I am the advisor for the club. So the name of the club is actually Easton High Notes. And when the club was created, we went through that whole process, going through the student government board. Initially before on the day of that meeting, we kind of ran into a little issue with the choir department from just being honest. Yes. And that issue was just the logistics, fear of logistics of us running into each other. But I think professionally speaking. If I

098see that the choir department has an event that is scheduled for this specific date, I, as the advisor, am not going to schedule a performance for the club to be on that same date. So basically, Hannah and I are here to get approval from all of you to run our club without any outside influence. Because no other club here at the high school has to do that. And once this club was created, once I kind of went through the process with Hannah, it was approached to me that somebody else has to come into our little circle and let's talk. We have a lot of great ideas for the East and High Notes. And I don't want to speak too soon, but what we have planned for the East and High Notes is the vision that

099we have is absolutely... Magnanimous, I don't know if that's a big, it's huge. And we don't want anyone who is outside of the club stepping into our club to even have an opportunity to glimpse of what ideas we have because we have a lot of ideas and we just want approval for freedom to run it the way that, and it's a student-led club. And we just want to emphasize that and we just want approval for that to happen. Thank you. Now I have a much better understanding because of both of your explanations. So thank you for that. The reality is that I'll need to go back, sit down with Mr. Geiger, figure out what's going on here, and then if indeed it's appropriate to bring it to the board as an approval, we'll do that.

100But I don't want to skip any steps in the process. And I understand that you went through the initial process and then after the fact, you were informed that you had to have somebody else direct. what you wanted to do so i understand all that um so i'm asking you to give me a little bit of time to work on this um and you know i will absolutely 100 be in your corner and support this club but i just need to make sure that we're following the proper steps and then when it's the appropriate time it wasn't on the agenda this evening but when it's appropriate time we'll get it in front of the board for approval okay so you'll be hearing from me in the next couple days or one of my administrative team

101to just kind of understand exactly where we've been and where we need to go to make this happen for you. Okay. Okay? Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. And I can't wait to hear you. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so do we have anybody else in the public to be heard on non-agenda items? Okay, if you could, just sign your name and then let us know what part of the district you're from. Sure. Carlton Taylor. I'm from Palmer. The last meeting, I think, the pool was bought up and it was something that was going to be discussed at a future date. And I watched the video, but I didn't see what the actual future date was, who the stakeholders were. and I wanted to get some information on that so that Vice President of the Booster Club

102for Easton Swimming and Diving, President and Coach of Easton Aquatic Club Summer Swim Team, and I wanted to get some information on that so that we could be prepared to possibly have some input at the next meeting or whenever it's going to come up again. Yeah sure I can answer some of those. So the meetings that you were referring to from last was in regard to the five-year capital plan for the district in which that document that was on the website had the natatorium listed with a top priority as item number one as one of many items in facilities and structures around the district. So at that meeting I shared that in the future, we would make sure we brought those back with some administrative recommendations to kind of pare those down where we believe

103we need to move forward. So there's two things. One is we're going to be working internally to talk about some short-term goals and then also some long-term goals. I would say that's more of a long-term type of conversation and time period that would take place. But we aim to have that conversation, I would say. We were aiming for July, but we may end up having it at the June meeting. So that would be the time period. That would be the meeting where we present our recommendations. Again, like I said, you short-term and long-term and then start that dialogue. But we will work those conversations through our buildings and grounds committee that we also have here and then share out our recommendations from that committee at the standing committee meetings of the board. Is there any

104input from... the primary user of the pool? Or there's programming and other things that go into running a pool that might be beyond the scope of just the actual maintenance of a pool about how a pool can be, lose less money, let's say. And programming for activities and things like that, design, beyond just the maintenance. Is there anybody? Having those conversations with you before that Yeah, yes the answer that is yes And there's quite a few things including the programming that it just occurs at the high school level even for our students in as part of an academic program Above and beyond everything else so there are the way that the process has worked is that the internal team here has has met with the administration, representatives of our contractors, administrators, got some feedback from

105other constituents. So we're very well aware of that feedback. But again, I would encourage you that if you do have some feedback, you're more than welcome. You can contact me. I can certainly have that conversation and share that out as part of the feedback, general feedback for the process. Okay. I would like to do that. Sure. So I thank you for your interest. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the public to be heard on non-agenda items? Seeing none, we'll move on to any other business from board members. Do we have anything? Nope, I have one. I just wanted to let all the board members know that they are invited to the Engineering by Development Design for the Senior Presentations. So this is Mr. Gomer's group, and the group for that, it is so awesome.

106I unfortunately... you know with working you can't be there but to see the kids projects that they build it is you know so awesome to see so um that is june 1st 8 o'clock and it's here at the high school if you have the opportunity and you can make it please let mr gommer know and i encourage everybody if you have the opportunity come even if you only get to see a couple presentations pretty impressive very impressive So if there's nothing else that Mrs. Hess, I'd just like to uh if I may go ahead I'd like to um and and this is not easy for me to Speak about because my heart is broken once again Because of the shooting that took place in an elementary school in Texas today or 14 Elementary students and

107a teacher were murdered And I would just like to remind everyone in our community that we have a group of people here, our administrators, our teachers, everyone else, students, everyone needs to cooperate, participate in keeping our schools safe every day that we're here because we put our children on buses and we expect to see them come home. And that's one thing that those parents will not be able to see today. I am very, very grateful that we take the time and effort to watch what's going on in our schools, investigate thoroughly, because that's really the only thing we can do at this point. And I want to thank all the people that are in the security force that we have here. And I want to thank everyone who cares. Enough to protect our students so

108that they do get to come home every day on the bus or in their cars so that is Something I would like to bring up and just remind us as a community that we are all responsible for keeping our schools safe along with these Wonderful people that are here. Thank you And Dr. Keegan, just to piggyback, I think the board needs to be thanked, quite frankly, for your willingness to commit the funding and the financing for an armed officer to be stationed at every building in the district. The board made that decision several years back. We have phenomenal police force, as you know, here. It's not the perfect answer to all problems, but certainly, you know, I, as a superintendent, feel much more secure knowing that we have trained armed officers stationed at every one

109of our buildings and then as you indicated that dr keegan the rest of us have a responsibility to pay close attention and to keep everybody safe but i think the board needs to be applauded for dedicating that funding each and every year to make sure that that happens thank you Making that statement. Um, so if no one else has anything I would just like to again thank our entire staff in the district As everybody has said it's been a tough time and some things are starting to get back to normal and it's great to be able to be here and see everyone's faces and You know just wish everyone a very safe and Happy summer and we'll look forward to seeing everyone back starting a new year excited Hopefully. But just again, thanks to everyone

110for everything that they do, our entire staff. With that being said, if I can call for adjournment. I'll move. Everyone in favor? Aye. Okay. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you. Thank you.