001Okay. What's up, Dr. Praise? Sure. William Penn students if you could stand and lead us in Ice of the United States of America and to the for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right, Mr. Pishner, roll call, please. Yep. Mr. Christensen, here. Mrs. Feice here. Mrs. Hedley, here. Mrs. Hoppy here. Mrs. Janisk here. Mr. McGregor here. Mr. Scowzo here. Mrs. Turner here. Mr. Modrech present. Nine present. Thank you, sir. at this time like to make an announcement. Uh prior to this meeting, we had an executive session to discuss um some legal matters and personnel matters. So at next next time, uh we're going to have recognition of the William Penn recycling team. So uh boss was taking lead for that. We back to Mr. Rosski. Well, but
002we also have Penn students giving us the highlights of the year, too. That's correct. So, why don't we start with those folks? Mr. Lenoski, students, the highlights of the year. Yes. Yes. We have our two fourth grade teachers here, uh, Mrs. Katie Clifford and Miss Jen Sable. They brought some fourth grade students. We have to fix the mic. You didn't say that when you pulled. The students, teachers, and families of William Penn are proud to participate in two very important community service projects yearly throughout each holiday season. This year, they are proud to have collected many toys for the KISS 96.1 FM stuff a bus program. Mrs. Thomas, our reading specialist at William Penn, brought this service project to our school several years ago, and William Penn stepped right up. Over the years, she has
003continued to be the lead in promoting, setting up the hallway display, and dropping the the donations off at the headquarters. The toys are then distributed to local families by the toys for tots program the week of Christmas to spread joy throughout the holiday season. The second service project William Penn is proud to support yearly due to Mrs. Saraphini's efforts is a collection of daily essentials which is collected and and given to the women's shelter of Alageney County. These donations also provides joys joy to those less fortunate each holiday season. Thank you. Very good. Very good. William Penn is proud to run a daily recycling program which is started by Mrs. Litenburgger many years ago. Several students show up early to school to gather papers, materials, and plastic bins in each classroom. These papers are transferred
004in to a a bigger bin and then taken to our upper parking lot to be dumped in the giant paper collection bin daily. We are proud to be helping William Penn and the earth by performing the important daily task. Thank you. As my friends in Mrs. Clifford's class just explained, the teachers and students at William Penn do many things to better our school community and help those in need. But today we are also proud to share one of the reasons why our school continues to do so well academically and why we are currently ranked number one in the school performance in the whole school performance profile in the whole area. I heard about that amazing right indeed. At William Penn, we believe in deep thinking. In math, our teachers help us learn help us learn
005how to to focus on the why behind how to solve problems instead of simply getting the right answers. We draw pictures, try multiple strategies, and discuss our reasoning rather than just focusing on the solution. Ultimately, it helps us become more confident independent learners. We also do a lot of error analysis. That's a fancy way of saying we discuss why and how we make mistakes. Teachers at William Penn teach us that we all make mistakes and discussing why we make certain mistakes helps us understand it's a natural part of learning. It also helps us not to make the same mistakes twice. At William Penn, we are always looking for ways to better ourselves and our community. Whether we are collecting for a charity or pushing ourselves to be better problem solvers, we are up for the
006challenge. [Applause] I would like to introduce the recycling team. Um, and then I'll finish with their sponsors. So, uh, most of them are here, but I'm going to read all their names. These recyclers do this every single day. They go from room to room throughout the, um, the building and take the recycling up to the upper parking lot. Uh, Quimma Banda, Annabelle Brown. Oh, let's uh have you come up when I call your name. Annabelle Brown, Aurora Kanty, Maron Cummings, and May Cummings, Riley Finne, Evelyn Gerriio, Avery Gasb, Giovani Hegodus, Eve Picolino, Gabriella Vulpati, and Vico. Go Vulpatti. These students are led by Sid Litenberger and Sue Thomas. So, if you guys could all come up, we could get a picture of those. Where's Mr. Chromy at? There he is. All right. And Mr. Lunoski,
007we have a couple certificates that Mrs. Hawk and Mrs. Headley are going to be passed out on behalf of the board to these fine students here. Even better. Turn around. Yeah. Just walk. Walk right in front of this. Every single day. That's awesome, guys. Sometimes twice a day. to see some scallop method. That seems to be the thing though. Can you do it too? I can. I want to see how this plays out. But I'm show you. Good language. Is it just Tommy? Lots of energy. Three, two, one. Awesome. Nice job, guys. Congratulations. [Applause] Yeah. Okay. Thursday. two. You guys did a great job. [Applause] Again, thank you to Melissa Lowski and the staff at William Penn for an excellent job. In what place did they say Oregon? That would be the number one. Was
008that number one school in Western Pennsylvania? We're number one, right, Sid? Number one consistently. Thank you. And now our audience goes away. Jeez, we do this at the end. Yeah, that's an idea. Captive audience captive audience right before just give me a few more seconds. Mr. Pushinary is it RC's turn. Mr. Pishner, is it RC's turn? All right. This time we have a presentation from our favorite contractor RC. Great. He's giving us a beautiful news on our new elementary school. Okay, good evening everybody. So, here we go with the update. There's your uh building as it stands. It even looks now it's a the exciting time of our construction now. Every day looks a little bit different. So, um there's the overall footprint of the building. All the steel is up. You can really get
009a size of the scale of the building. And that's better. So there's the back of the building showing area E-class wing, F-class wing. There's the connector bridge courtyard beyond. Here you see F- wing, classroom wing. This is the side that faces NMS. Um there's a small entrance there to get into the uh gymnasium area. So all this all the ex exterior framing is up. Um this is the gymnasiumstorm shelter. Um this was our access point in and out with the cranes and material delivery. So we're plugging up that hole. All the steel is set. We're currently uh putting roof deck down the auxiliary grim gym on the ground floor. All the raw fins are complete. Uh we're done in there for now until we could get the building closed in. Ground floor area A. So
010this is the the primary literacy K in the K1 area down on the floor. You can see all the framings done there in the U MEP ruffins are ongoing. Ground floor area C. The roughens are pretty much complete there. pretty much all the the ground floor the um the rough ends are complete. Um area E, as you could tell by the picture, is the most uh far along. We have all our rough in inspections, framing inspections, ready to go. We're ready to hang board as soon as we could um get right in, which we're racing to do. You can tell by the water on the floor there. So, we got to quit the water from coming in, either getting it weather tight or having some favorable weather from mother nature. First floor area A. So
011moving up up in the building, you can see the progress there. Um we're going to start framing there and mechanical rooms there. Even this picture, this is area B in the first floor kind of where the um LGI area and looking into the cafeteria area. But we got a lot of this um slab on grade either prepped or poured already since this picture was taken last week. This area is right outside the gym. So the gym's over here. This is cafeteria space here. So that slab is poured. Getting all our slabs poured. This is again looking into the uh kitchen cafeteria mechanical room space. This is what got poured today. This was last Friday. They were pouring that um inside the gym. So, the gymnasium floor is poured. That got poured late last week. Um
012this area where the health rooms are. This is area D again right outside the the gymnasium area. Um first floor area E. Um, we are continuing, we're getting close to getting our all our inwall inwall rough in and framing inspections there as well. Um, area F is not far very far behind. So, we're uh we're racing through there pretty good. This is uh the second floor area of A. This will be this slab on deck will be poured probably by the end of the week. Um, we're supposed to get some good weather here, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So, we're going to take advantage of that and get all this poured so we could uh get the framing up and again get the build the main goal right now through the summer get the building closed in
013and dried in so we can continue with the interior um finishes over over the winter. Second floor area F um is the farthest in progress wise. It's just the sequence we're we're running through the building. Um, area F, we're putting a roof on now. Area E already has the roof on, so we'll do roof on F. Then like the A, C, D area across there. So hopefully all that water will be not a problem issue in the very near future. So courtyard, you can see we're getting the exterior sheathing up in the courtyard. That's one side. Here's the other. So they're they're even farther progressed since this picture was taken. So again, upcoming work we're going to continue to work F exterior framing and sheeting here is E AC and F interior framing. MEP rough
014ends. So we're not really uh slowing down at all, but the the main goal is to get it dried in as as absolutely as soon as possible. Um, and the big milestone there would be to start drywall as soon as possible. Still, um, successfully safe. We still got our tally running and that's all I have for you today. How much time has been made up since the last time we spoke? And then if whatever Well, we did we did have some weather, so we we we kind of fought that a little bit. Uh so we probably picked up maybe another week. Okay. And what is the projected plan to make up the rest of that time? Yeah. So currently right now um we have we are working the team the project team was tasked with
015putting together accelerated schedules. Um we have two plans. Um, so we're working now to come with the most efficient, cost-effective way to marry them together. And I'm Will we get to hear about the plan or know the details? Yes. Yes. As soon as um we get all the bugs worked out, I want to get all everything vetted out properly. Okay. Because I don't want to pose a false date. What about a an estimated rough date that we'd be able to see something like that? Pro uh probably next month when I know you're not meeting. I mean, we could have a separate meeting. Okay. I'd be happy to come up and explain it to you. Yeah, we're close. Um, see, Reichcon has they're they're the lead contractor. So, they're respons they're responsible for not scheduling per
016se because everyone's a separate prime, but they lead the coordination of everyone's schedules. So, they were asked to put a accelerated schedule together. They did that to successfully show a July 31st completion date or substantial completion date. Um I'm in the process now of rectifying that to make sure that they are not rectifying it but um vetting it. Make sure that um what we like to call P6 magic. P6 is a scheduling program. So they could they could hide a lot of things in this schedule and um I just want to make sure everything's working the way. If we don't meet next month, I don't know if we are or not, but if we don't, could you email what you have? Yeah. All nine of us. Absolutely. Okay. I just want to make sure that
017we're we're definitely going to get that done. Yeah. I feel comfortable we we will. Right now, like I said, it's just um So, you can say it to the public, right? What's that? That you feel very strong with that. We will this will be It's doable. Yes, it's doable to get to that point. Right now, I just want to make sure what Reichcon's telling us, okay, in giving us is properly backed up. Okay. All right. Thanks. Anybody else? RC on the agenda tonight, uh, we're going to be talk going over some change orders and I was just wondering if you could cover these. They're mostly credits, but I think we should just you can explain what these are. Sure, I could run down them. So, um, part of every project um, the Misero is the
018construction management for we we in our specs require the general trades contractor to provide a what we call collocation trailer. So they're provide a trailer complex whether it's a single or double wide trailer where representatives usually the project managers and the superintendents for all the prime contractors are in one trailer. Um it it it's more conducive to a teamwork environment. Anyway, um we took advantage of the existing house on the site um in lie of that trailer. Um, number one, when we first started, there was nowhere to put trailers, nowhere to access power. So, we just kind of settled in there and it and it worked out and it was working out. So, um, contractors agreed that that was working out for them. And so, the monies in that contract, um, mostly for Reichcon and
019the electrician were removed out of their contract because we're not using that service. Okay. So that's that's the first um GC24 credit for the collocation trailer. Um GC25 surface drain along Boyer Avenue at NMS in the process of installing the new parking lot at NMS and adjusting the grades a little bit. An unforeseen condition of some under underground water. Um we're having trouble controlling it. um was unforeseen and that's what washed away. I don't know if you've been through NAS parking lot, but that's where the blowout was around the manhole. Um water was coming down off that hill and just undermining the pavement at that point. So, this is an attempt to solve that. So it's basically just the under surface drain to route the uh surface and the near surface underground water to the
020storm sewers. So it's not undermining any anymore. So that's that's GC25. EC 005 again that is Merritt's portion of the collocation trailer that was um owed via by contract. So, we removed that out of their contract. And um I don't know if Dan you want to talk more about this. He's more schooled about this last one than I am. 006 essentially um we changed the way we are routing and supplying power to the firearm system. Sure. EC 006 uh we changed the specification on the fire alarm wire. We had some redundancy in the wire that we were running and so we were able to reduce the grade of the wire the the quality of the wire without the facility uh incurring any any risk. Um and so that was a that was a pretty good
021number for you. Okay. Quality of the wire or gauge of the wire? Well, actually we we removed the conduit. Okay. So, Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Any dialogue? No, we're good. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, guys. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks. Have a good night. Uh at this time, uh we are open up for public comments on agenda items. All right. Okay. Uh we're going to move uh that being said, we'll move on to personnel committee, Mr. McGregor. Okay. Underneath personnel, there are three items tonight. Number one, acceptance of resignations. Number two, change of assignment. And number three, approval of professional tuition reimbursement. Any discussions, questions? Hearing none, I'd like to send these three to the consent agenda. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Christensen with facilities. Yeah, we just have one item
022which is what RC just covered. So, if there are no objections, I recommend moving that to the consent agenda. Very good. So be it. Uh, finance committee, Mrs. Walsh Turner. There are nine items under the finance committee. Um June salaries and bills, May salary and bills budgetary transfers. Payment for the new new K to5 elementary school project. Payment for Independence Middle School phase three renovations. Payment for Independence Middle School phase 4 renovations. 2526 general fund budget resolution. Um the Homestead and Farmstead exclusion resolution and approval of the student services contract. Um, without objection, I'd move one to six and nine. Yeah, I agree. We should hold out the general fund budget resolution in Homestead. Homestead. Okay. At this time, uh, we're going to move for consent agenda one, two, three, four, five, and six. Hold
023seven. There'll be a separate vote. Hold eight. Hold eight. and then move nine to student service contract. Okay, Mr. Pisher, any other question, thoughts for the board. Um, information only financial reports 31, 32, and 39. Um, I just have one question, Mr. Moderrack. Um, is there any way with phases three and four going on at IMS that site logic could attend before we take a month off? Um, Doc, can we have Site Logic here next week? I will make the request. Yeah, they are coming. I'm sorry. They they had a conflict with tonight, so they'll be here next week. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't see any notes, so that's why I asked. I'm finished unless anybody else has any questions. Okay. All righty. Policy committee. Mrs. Poppy. So tonight we have
024one item and this is the first of three readings concerning the selection of instructional materials and resources. This mostly has to do with supplemental materials um in the classroom. So this is the one that the board um uh looked at last month. We had pulled it out of the agenda and made some adjustments. We putting it through the readings again. And so this is actually the second public reading of that policy. It says first on the agenda, but it should it actually should say second because last month May 27th meeting was the first reading. I have some some questions about it now that I had a chance to read the whole thing. Um under the guidelines, not the first numbered set but the second numbered set. I was just wondering why we removed number four
025as it used to be. Instructional materials and resources shall be selected for their strengths rather than rejected for their weaknesses. So I was wondering if there was I Yeah, I'm not I guess because I didn't know how to explain that to a teacher. Like if I were teaching them about how to follow this policy, how do I explain what that means? It's a little more nebulous. Yes, it is. I felt like it it I mean theoretically they're they're only putting forward things that have strengths. Um and so I I kind of felt like it was a bit um too nebulous. Okay. I had some more questions. Go ahead. Um right below it number five, we used to have that uh instructional materials and resources on controversial issues. shall be shall be selected to maintain a
026balanced collection representing various views. But now it seems to be trying to get at each material must be within itself a balance and we aren't really explaining what a controversial issue is. I mean like there are some people I'm not sure we want to list it because those things kind of eb and flow don't they okay um what what might be safe conversation today might not be safe conversation tomorrow it's right the es and flows and so I I I feel like that one I I need to be nebulous because it almost depends on the gestalt you know the the time period in which that policy is being applied And how I I'm concerned about trying to get to a point where each particular item itself contains both opposing views as opposed to having some
027that are talking about I don't know slavery was not wonderful and some that may have another view versus only having resources that within themselves have both views. Yeah. So if that were the case, then we we should probably revise it to say have multiple views. If not have multiple sources that have multiple views. Yes. Because I sort of feel like that's kind of what it used to say that it was looking more at the balance of the collection versus Yeah. Wait. Do you see what I'm saying? I do. I started thinking maybe maybe I was the only one seeing it that way. Okay. And I mean I guess that was kind of there's some things that are in trying to square that idea of controversial issues and both views with the sections below. They start
028renumbering in the new red part like four and six particularly are saying that it's unbiased provides objective viewpoints and six that it's from a source that would be respected in the field of education and vetted for its quality and accuracy. I'm imagining some worst case scenarios of if it if it's respected as an educational source and it's unbiased and has objective viewpoints, are we going to say that it's still too controversial because someone thinks it's controversial? Do you know what I mean? I want to ensure that we are not ending up in a place where we are limiting access to information that is factual and historic and important because there may be people who believe otherwise. That's what I'm trying to make sure we're not I got you. I don't want to increase the likelihood
029that we go down that path. I I got what you're saying. I'm not sure I have an answer for that that challenge. I mean, what really what we're trying to accomplish here is to give teachers guidance on how to make these selections appropriate and wisely. What What would be the districts, aka board and the administration's expectations for what goes through your head when you're making these choices? And yes. So, so ultimately the idea of this is that they can use something one time as a pilot and if they are concerned about if they should use it then they should seek guidance from principal or department facilitator. But after they use it the first time, if they want to continue using it, it must go through the curriculum committee. Correct. And are the things that teachers
030are currently using, have they all gone through the curriculum committee? And are we going to have a big like special curriculum committee weekend where we are going through all the videos and YouTubetubes and all the So I can't answer for what's what has not happened or what happened prior to my arrival. We didn't have a curriculum, right, uh council prior to my arrival. So that's a sort of a newer phenomenon. I don't know how those materials were vetted approved or not approved in years prior. Yeah. Uh but what we're really aiming for here is to give teachers a little bit of of trust to make good choices and if it really worked and it wants we want to institutionalize it and keep using it then let's go through the traditional process and give the board
031the authority to adopt it as a permanent part of our curriculum. We're talking more like movies. Uh bless you. You know, movies and articles, reading articles and so forth. Um I don't know necessarily that that uh a news clip that happens to be on last night's news is going to end up permanently installed in the curriculum because it was it worked that night. If we're talking about it in class tomorrow and I want to use last night's news, it's that pertinent. True. I'm thinking more give them that that strength of of confidence to make those choices. Yes. But also it doesn't give them the ability to pilot that same thing over and over again if you follow my point. So once it goes through curriculum committee, does it then become distributed to everyone teaching that
032course and required that they use it or just I'm just thinking through there are teachers who have found like good videos that really explain plate shifting, you know, for for um earth sciences or something um that explained it in a way that worked well for their students at that grade level. I don't know. I don't want to end up somewhere where their choice is to either stop using it or go through the whole curriculum adoption process and fight to keep it so that then everybody has to use it. Let's hope it's not a fight. I mean, if it's good and and effective, it's not a fight. All right. I don't want to squaltch the teacher's ability. Yeah. What we don't want to do though is have them kind of devolve into fifoms where I like
033this video and I want my kids to get this video. True. Forget about his kids and their exposure to that is a fair point. If it's good and it's worth some kids, we want all kids to have access to it or worse. You know, we've been striving to have consistent outcomes through consistent curriculum through consistent process so that you get those consistent and high level results. I guess my question was going to be, you know, does there need to be a limit on supplemental content that's being used? I mean, is 49% considered supplemental or, you know, I don't know. But ultimately, it kind of gets to what you're talking about, but from the other side is how do we make sure that we're we're we're going to maintain a consistent approach to education that, you
034know, not we're stifling the good ideas, but how do we draw those good ideas into the rest of the curriculum, but yet we're we've got we're going to be confident we're going to have consistent results. Mhm. Because you know, you look across, you know, some of our elementary buildings, we got different results, different processes being used, different techniques. And that's what we're trying to do is have some consistency. I think that's sort of the n the whole spirit behind this policy is trying to create structures and systems so that we can better ensure that consistency of service and of programming. Again, back to Mrs. Jennis's point, if you have a great video that works really well for instruction, then everybody should know about it. true uh and we want to put it into the program
035of study. It's not a fight. You know, those things typically are really celebrated by the curriculum council when you have these kinds of opportunities. So, do they usually like envisioning this now if you've got a whole bunch of sixth grade social studies teachers and they're, you know, five different things that they would like to forward from five different teachers. Does the department facilitator sort through that and meet with them and work out with them what are we going to put forward to curriculum committee? Yeah, because the proposal the curriculum committee doesn't get all of it and have to sort it out themselves. No, the so the the proposals come from the department. Okay. And are blessed and approved by the department before the council gets to see them. Okay. So there is a vetting process
036that happens at the department level. Then the council Okay, that makes sense. And then it comes to the board. I feel better about that. I was just imagining this huge giant like stack of things everyone was going to have to plow through. So, yeah, I'm glad it's not that complicated. It shouldn't be. Uh, and I don't want to overthink it. I just I mean, do we just We're missing guard rails. I want to give them some guardrails procedures uh to sort of support philosophically where we want to be as a district with curriculum. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the conversation. more flexibility doesn't introduce more noise into the system. So, it's hard to understand what's working well and leading to positive outcomes and then what's not working well and leading to negative outcomes. You know,
037if there's too much noise, too much variability. You can't understand what what you need to fix. Yeah. Again, I I'm hoping that this is the this is what eliminates the variability. Yeah. Is that it's not something different academic experience from room to room to room. that if you found something and it's good, you test it on, you know, you pilot it with students and it was wellreceived and engaging, then bring it, share it with everybody else as we just talked about in the department process and let's institutionalize it. Let's put it into our curriculum. Yeah. And I think also it gets teachers, you know, kind of in the same mindset when they are choosing supplemental materials. They all have the same guidelines where, you know, it's not left up to like some nebulous thing to
038like it's almost like a checklist you know that they can go through and go is it this is it this is it this and if they have no doubt I think it it gives them a little bit more confidence in in using materials too and to your point too Sharon and I'm glad you clarified Dr. Walsh that as a department you know they gather and go over these things before they put them forward. So the collaboration is there you know which I think is important too as a department they have to discuss and and figure out like is this good? Is this going to get us where we want to be with this little piece in the curriculum because I anticipate it being those little pieces. It's not like giant, you know, it's not textbooks.
039It's still small things that add to and and enhance what we're already using, what we've already approved. So, um I I like this policy a lot. I I thought of one more question in terms of how it relates to UDL, universal design for learning. So for instance, if are th are those pieces already going through the curriculum committee or is that part of the UDL process? Like finding a video that explains the chapter on bees constructing a hive and then finding a visual representation of it so that students with various abilities can access the same information. So would that video need to go through this? And has that do we already have video components for some things? What's going on? Again, I I can't speak to what's been approved before I came, but we now
040have procedures and processes and reg sort of regulations about these things so that okay, we c we can stand behind our teachers when they made curriculum choices and put things in front of kids. So, those UDL pieces are already being worked on in another. Yeah. I we I think again and we we could get really really granular with this and I don't think that's where we're head where I want to be headed with policy. I'm talking about those independent spur of the moment. I found this cool thing interesting thing I like to share with the students or this particular story or this news clip. Give them some guardrails. Give them some suggest on how to vet it to make sure it's going to be appropriate and well received. Uh I'm I'm not imagining that any
041of those will end up in curriculum council because they're just spontaneous. They're spurof the- moment and timely, right, with where we were in our curriculum at that point in time, right? Um and on the other hand, there could be, you know, a new release of a video that right that was does a better job than any other previous version that they want to use. Okay. Those we would definitely see a curriculum council. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. All right. And again stating that is the second reading. Yes. For that policy just to remind everybody. So uh at this time uh we are open for public comments on any item. Okay. Board comments. Um Mr. McGregor, I would like to say congratulations to the students, the graduates especially for this year and um it's
042exciting time coming up on Thursday. Uh also thank you to the admin, the teachers, the staff of the district, everyone who's put in the time to get us all here. It's a it's a lot of moving pieces that it's a miracle that things actually do come to come to an end each school year and and um if it wasn't for you guys and um it wouldn't run so smoothly. So, I appreciate it and everyone have a good summer. That's what I was going to say. Congratulations to all the students and the families. You all hung in there. For all of our teachers and our staff and our administration and all the personnel, we really appreciate you because you're really what makes the district the district. It's not a bunch of buildings. It's all the people.
043So, thank you and enjoy your summers. One more week. We're back. One more week. We We are back. We're back. One more Um I have one question of the solicitor tonight. Um there was some information shared that I know can be shared with the public and another reason of holding out the um general fund budget resolution and the homestead resolution is there could be some changes um if some things come out. Could you explain to the public where we're standing right now with the CLR, which is the common level ratio, and from what I understand, over 75% of the school districts in the area are in the same situation. Yes, that's accurate. So, just to briefly introduce myself, my name is Lee Delicker. I am filling in for Rebecca Hall tonight. One of my areas
044of expertise is property tax assessment litigation. So, it made sense for me to address this subject. And um it it's a subject that the board is fairly familiar with, but a refresher seems appropriate and it does make sense to provide these comments for the benefit of the general public as well. And one of the big questions is how does assessment litigation impact the budget and funding in light of the fact there have been some major developments uh in this particular field. And um some some of these concepts are a bit uh difficult to understand without some education. So I'm going to try to put this into lay layman's terms. But um back in 2022, there was a fairly high-profile lawsuit that um ended up uh making the Post Gazette and other news uh sources uh
045on multiple occasions regarding the common level ratio. And for those who don't know what the common level ratio is, it's effectively a tool that's used in assessment litigation to basically arrive at the average amount of appreciation a property um experiences from one year to the next. Uh it's a tool that's that's necessary to determine what a fair assessment is for a property. Um, so for a number of years that ratio was effectively stagnant for about five years that ratio did not really move at all, which prompted a lawsuit against Alageney County, which essentially argued, look, we know real estate values go up year after year. How can you put forth the argument that the average rate of appreciation is effectively zero and that properties haven't appreciated? A court agreed uh the county looked at its
046um coding practices for determining the common level ratio determined they were flawed and the common level ratio fell through the floor. The result of that has been commercial property owners are using the common level ratio effectively as a tax loophole to lower their assessments. Um the problem with the common level ratio is it really captures appreciation for residential properties. The problem is when you apply it to commercial properties, it creates this fiction or this illusion that commercial properties have been going up in value year after year. The truth is that really hasn't been the case since the co 19 pandemic. For office buildings, for example, you've seen this shift in work culture. more people have embraced hybrid work models. More people are working from home and malls and strip malls have kind of lost their
047value since more people are using online retailers like Amazon and such. And what this has done is it it has significantly shrunk uh the commercial tax base not just for Bethl Park though it has done significant damage here in Bethl Park but throughout the entire county. And there is a um independent publication called the Alageney Institute for Public Policy. They published a um a fairly educational article back on February 12th of this year called Alageney County Tax Taxable Assessed Value Falls in 2025. It's worth reading, but they mention how in 2025, Alageney County as a whole saw its commercial tax base shrink by over $1 billion in assessed value, which is significant. So, how has this impacted school districts? Well, they have seen their commercial tax bases shrink. And as you're aware, when it comes
048to generating revenue, there are really only two things that help determine revenue. your tax base and your tax rate. And when a tax base shrinks, there are very few tools in a school district's arsenal to account for that. Uh as a result of this shrinking commercial tax base, we did see a number of school districts increase their millage rates last year. There are 43 school districts in Alageney County. 32 out of 43 of them increase their millage rates. That's 75% of them. So, three out of four. For those that didn't, um, they involved rural school districts that don't really have very many commercial buildings, so weren't as directly impacted by what's happening. And then you had others with rainy day funds that have since been depleted over uh, the past year. AlaGany counties kind of
049acknowledged this problem themselves. They went 12 years without raising taxes. This year, Alageney County raised their taxes 36%. Which is unprecedented. So, there's a problem. It's a problem that needs to be addressed, and it's a problem that's resulted in a significant amount of litigation recently. There are three lawsuits right now that are attempting to address this problem. One is from Pittsburgh School District and two are from se from private homeowners. One is a uh very nice woman who lives in Woodland Hill School District and another is a gentleman who lives in Lawrenceville who are pointing out that they are not being treated fairly relative to their neighbors and have also highlighted in their complaints the unfair treatment um homeowners are receiving in light of what's going on with commercial properties. There is a way to
050address this commercial property loop tax assessment loophole that exists. Unfortunately, it can only be addressed through a countywide reassessment, which is what these lawsuits are looking for. Um the timeline for that is unfortunately um somewhat of a mid to long-term time timeline. The last time we went through this process, it took six to seven years from the inception of the litigation um to the end point to actually implement a countywide reassessment. But that's what we're looking at to kind of recoup some of these losses from commercial properties. And I I've kind of been talking about things from a macro perspective for the county as a whole just to give you some insight into what's going on with Bethl Park just to kind of bring it home and contextualize the harm to this school district. Um
051we did take a look at some of the big commercial property assessment appeals that have occurred recently. Uh, and we did look at how much of the financial hardship from these appeals could be attributed to co to to the change in the CLR. And basically, we looked at the CLR as it was in effect for 5 years because I mentioned it was it was essentially stagnant for 5 years. And we looked at its change to what it is now. And we said, okay, how much did that have an impact on um on revenues? And our projections showed a loss of about $1.6 million in annual revenue, which is significant, especially when you consider the fact that, you know, the the value of the dollar goes down every year. There's inflation. You need to account for
052that. And when the tax base is actually shrinking or at least the commercial tax base is actually shrinking, that places a lot of pressure on school districts and municipalities to budget to balance their budgets when you have the county which unfortunately is is dragging its feet on implementing the the obvious solution to this problem. So, um, I wanted to explain how this litigation is impacting the budget and how it's something that the board needs to consider. And, um, and I also just need to highlight the fact there are numerous pending appeals now for big commercial properties like South Hills Village Mall that haven't been resolved yet. And there is potential refund liability here for the school district. You need to budget for that. You need to account for that. and and it's something that does
053need to be considered when setting a millage rate and and setting a budget. So, if anyone else has any follow-up questions of that, that is um essentially what I wanted to present here tonight. And you know, this is something that's frustrated me for years because the way this started was a lawsuit in Penn Hills by homeowners by an attorney. um I won't mention his name, but he represented these homeowners and the whole argument was kind of meant to get public support that this is going to be a windfall for residential property owners. And in turn, it really turned out to be a windfall for commercial property owners. And I I prefer to use the language rather than just a reduction in commercial real estate value is a transfer of tax liability from commercial property owners
054to residential property owners. That's what's happening. That is a very accurate description of what's happening. So when the commercial tax base shrinks, the only option to make up that lost revenue is to increase the millage rate and homeowners are going to unfairly bear the burden of that. So it is a shifting of tax liability from commercial property over owners over to residential property owners. And the frustrating thing is this very argument was raised back in 2022. So, the court was aware that making this change could have this effect. And when Pittsburgh public schools initiated their lawsuit in early 2024, they mentioned, look, it's a pro this transfer is a process. It doesn't happen immediately, but we can see we can see um what's happening. uh it's not that far in the distant future and unless
055we course correct now it's going to hurt homeowners year after year because these adjustments have to occur year after year to account for the transfer and the shift of tax liability. So highly frustrating um very easily foreseeable. it was foreseen um and unfortunately nothing has been done yet to course correct by the county which is unfortunate but but here we are. Well, thank you sir. Um part of our reason for having conversations you understand is next week when we vote on our budget and we propose a tax increase you can understand where and why this tax increase is coming forward. uh we lost $1.5 million in assessment value to one large corporate uh holding here within our community uh and it has significantly impacted uh our school district buzz budget. So we just wanted to
056again express where where the school board is coming from and what we're have dealt with uh to get a balance or a budget that meets the needs of this school district and our community. So, thank you, sir. Anybody else? Um, thank you. Yes, Doc. If I may, there's a rumor out there that Memorial does not have school tomorrow because of a water mane break. It has been corrected. Memorial has school tomorrow. Okay, you heard it from the boss's mouth. Now, we'll see how many people are paying attention to our meeting tonight. No one shows up. I we only have what? One more two more days of school. We're done the 12th. Yes. We have graduation on Thursday night, right? Mr. Vani, what time? 7 p.m. Can you get in if you're late? You can come
057in. You're going to miss the procession at 7 p.m. exactly. But yes, priority seats at 5:15. Gates open. General public 6:15. 7 o'clock. We walk on that field. Thank you very much, sir. and um we meet next week uh with our final board meeting for this school year. That's correct. One of the things that we uh were to tossing around this afternoon, wanted to get the board's opinion about adding a motion to next Wednesday or next Tuesday's agenda authorizing the administration to extend binding offers of employment for teachers that we interview after June 17th, but prior to the August 1st or August 5th, I forget the date. uh next board meeting, we have quite a number of teachers that we'll be interviewing and and hiring. If we wait until they're approved in August, then the
05860-day hold applies to these individuals, potentially meaning we wouldn't see our new teachers until late mid to late October. Um if on the other hand, you can authorize a motion to uh give the administration permission to extend these offers, they could then resign and start that 60-day clock once the interviews are completed. Sure. So, we'll see that next week or you want it tonight. And these are for positions that we've already voted to approve opening. Yes. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yep. So, we'll see that next week. Yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Motion. Second. All in favor? I Good night. Thank you everybody. Thank you, Mr. Borland.