PENNCREST School Board (Apr 14, 2025)

001Miss Beards, Mr. Bennett here, Mr. Brown here, Mr. Chsy here, Reverend Kuster here, Mr. Johnson here, Miss Lugo, Mr. Savorski here, and Mr. Gilleski here. Okay. [Music] I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing for a moment of silence, please. [Music] Thank you. [Music] We will um head into our committee of the whole meeting at this time. Um and we will begin with our student representative Good evening. I'm Ella Maria and I'll be informing you on what Cambridge Springs is up to. Starting with the elementary school, Mrs. Martinez, a third grade teacher, was recently surprised by Penn West University in Jet 24 with a Golden Apple Award. Big Ideas Learning,

002presented Mrs. Martinez with a donation of $250 for her classroom. Ezra Mayers, the third grader who nominated Mrs. Martinez, mentioned a lesson in which Mrs. Martinez had the students manipulating noodles and candy as they learned about vertebrates and invertebrates. He also praised her talent at being at bringing books to life for her students. Congratulations, Mrs. Martinez. Fifth grade students recently explored career paths and went on field trip to Crawford Tech with an interactive presentation in the high school. Last Friday, an assembly was held for 8th through 11th grade students that where the teachers introduced the classes they offer for the students. It really hyped the students up, making them excited to plan their classes for next year. Mr. Austin's finance and intro to business students over the last three months have been playing a stock

003market game with students around the whole state. They buy and sell stocks to see how they can make a profit or lose money. The Money Inquisitors with Abby Harrison, Lacy Prince, and Devin Ellison won first place in the region and fourth in the state. Two weeks ago, leadership students held a baked potato bar lunchon for both the high school and elementary staff. Prom is coming up on May 9th. The prom court was just announced. Congratulations to Amelia Holland, Ava Boland, Maddie Carver, Kirsten Grubs, Seth Glenn, Devin Lanowitz, Alex Dubet, and Gage Johnson. Team Interstellar consisting of Tyson Finley, Anthony Landis, Bill Stanley, Jared Dailyaly, and their bot Neil won first place at the Meville Robotics Tournament. They beat four-time champion from Cochran and will be going to nationals in Ohio. It was funny. The boys

004seemed more shocked about beating rival Cockerton than actually going to nationals. You should have heard them. Oh, wait. You can hear them. Check out Cambridge Speaks on Spotify and I interviewed them about their win. Check it out. Also, stay tuned with all of our other social medias for further updates. At the end for of this week, the new edition of the Pitchfork will be out. Don't miss it. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Next up is Gabby. Julie. Yeah, Julie's here tonight. Yeah, I'm here in in place of death. And Ella's absolutely right. I had to take a look at the pictures of the box today. The boys were so excited about this is what it looked like before. This is what it looked like after. And we be cockr care less about going to Springfield.

005So, good evening school board administration, staff, students, and penrest community members. My name is Julie France. I'm the vice president of PAEA and I'm speaking on behalf of nearly 200 teachers and educational specialists of this school district. Debbie Miller, our president, sends her regards. Uh she is away attending to the medical needs of her family. When Deb said that she had a family member she needed to be there for her daughter, Alex, a 2018 grad of Cambridge Springs High School and a 2023 grad of Leecom with her doctorate in pharmacy degree. Uh that brought two two things to my attention. One, Penrest truly provides a top-notch education. And two, Penrest is a district where people really do matter most. First, I would like to focus on what is good about our schools. Too often, we

006get focused on problems in the negative. And at times, we forget that we are graduating students that have a solid learning foundation and a desire to achieve and learn. We are turning out skilled students who enter the workforce directly. Students who enter trade or technical schools and students who do as my colleague's daughter has chosen, enter college and graduate college. But above all this, we are striving to turn out students who have strong work ethics and morals and who make this community or any other space they land in a better place. What I love about Pancress is that we do not take that last part for granted, work ethic. We had recently brought a concern in this area to the board and they have directed that to this be to be addressed and I applaud

007the board for looking at the challenges openly and calling together the stakeholders to solve them. As board member Brown said, we want our students engaged in meaningful experiences as seniors. Maybe like the old senior projects of the past and I know that Mr. Ford and Mrs. Phely are already coming up with ideas. We are up to the challenge of always making the products of our schools into real world real world success stories. Secondly, I thought about Pancress as a place where people matter most as our leader Mr. Ford supports that by pushing for a safety first philosophy and that he that he is spreading across the district and he talks about each time in the community engagement nights. He is also backing up his words with decisions. actions do speak louder than words. And his

008decisions are resonating that we have a zero tolerance when it comes to threats and violence in our district. Staff, students, and families are clearly receiving the same message that school is a safe place to grow and learn, and no one should ever feel otherwise. So, it is when we are focused on safety that I would like it to once again bring to the board's attention class sizes. Crowded classes are likely to be the place where safety erodess. If the teacher is bombarded with individual issues that they may not have the time to attend all students and an already marginalized child may act out or lash out in frustration and I seek for attention. Also, incidents may occur when a student is educationally frustrated and doesn't feel like they are getting the support that they need.

009We can't control the hand that some st students are dealt with in life, but we can control class size and in essence afford them the greatest opportunity to overcome those cards. So, as we enter the tedious budget season, let's make class size our number one goal, knowing that in turn that will positively impact all other aspects of our school. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Jul. Up next is um the business manager and I'm going to combine my report tonight with Kristen as we talk and go over the budget presentation. All right. Good evening. Kristen Slash, your business manager. Um, we're going to give you the presentation of the proposed budget for 2526. Um, the role of the school school board um in Pennsylvania plays a critical role in the budgeting process. They serve as

010the financial stewards of taxpayers dollars while ensuring the educational needs of students are met. Three primary budget responsibilities of the school board is budget development and approval, financial oversight, and policy setting. Getting into our enrollment trend, as you can see, from 13 and 14 um to 2425, we've had a decrease of students um by 23%. Um, so we've had declining student uh data over the past um 10 years. You can see Maplewood um elementary here is increasing enrollment as well as Maplewood High School. Those are our only two schools that have increased in enrollment um over the past decade. Our special education numbers are actually decreasing. Last year we were around almost 19%. This year we're at 18.04% 04% of special needs students. So we went from 465 to 438 in the past year. Can

011I speak there for a little bit? Um back to special education. Um this past this past week we were audited. Um and this is a every six years supposed to be every every six years. And coming out of the audit, I I knew this, but I'm I'm just going to give kudos to Mrs. Speely and her team, we had a really good audit and she she might be talking a little more in detail about it, but our audit from a superintendent's perspective, we should be proud of what we're doing with special education students in the district. Um, so Patty, good job. Okay, and on the 18% number, I mean, some schools have 25% of their student population as special needs. So, with Penrest being at 18%, we're doing a really good job um with special

012ed numbers. Um moving into our non-public schools, our homeschooling students and private tutoring, we have a little over 500 um students that live in our district, but they do not attend our our public schools. Um listed over there is your top 10. You can see um the big hitters there. We do not get any money for those students in our state subsidy formula because they're not in our buildings. Um they are private school students. If Can you go back there real quick? I I might do this a lot tonight. So um um if you think about that number that is bigger than most of our schools enrollment wise if you add that up. And so I I think that's key. You we talk about enrollment, we see the enrollment trends, right? um part and I'm

013by the way I'm not I'm in no way cutting on on on where people are going. I just think it's good to look at the data. Um and so I just thought I would share that with you. Um I was real I didn't realize this. This is my first time going through the buzzer season and when Kristen put this slide up I was like huh. Okay. Um so anyway it's just another piece of the puzzle of Pinrest. So, moving on to outside cyber enrollment numbers, we have currently 92 students in our outside cyber programs, which is the lowest to date. Um, each of one of those regular students cost the district $16,8251. And for special ed students, it cost us $26,888.61. Um, and we have 66 regular students and 26 special ed students. Um these

014are the lowest numbers and special ed uh the state redid the PE 363. So that formula has changed for our number. So this cost was reduced this year um by like $3,000 um starting January 1st. So I mean it helps but we're still not there. Um you'll see later on in the presentation about what the state is doing um with cyber. So we'll go ahead and we'll we'll get to that point. Um but cyber it cost us a lot of money. So currently um to date and this was through March um have spent $1.2 million for kids that live in our district but go to outside cyber. So between our outside cyber and our private school kids. We have over 600 students um going that live in our district but go elsewhere um that we

015do not get those those funds for. And you'll see over here, these are our top um enrollments for our outside cyber schools. Um and since we've started our PCA program, we've brought a lot of those students back in house and it helped save us on our outside cyber numbers. Um so we have a great program right here in Penrest which was started, I believe this is year four now, um right before. So that really has helped drop these numbers, but it's still pretty significant. Um last year, you can see we spent almost $2 million So once we get to the this what the state's trying to do to help um we'll we'll go over those numbers and how it could potentially impact our budget for this year. The certified tuition rate um this is our

016per pupil expense. So this comes from the the state gives me these numbers. Um so this is calculated based on our AFR and our child accounting numbers. So this is the number if somebody that lives outside our district wants to attend our Penrest school district, this is what we charge them to attend. For an elementary student is $13,86.58. And for your high school, it's $15,66.65. And you can see that the breakdown below of how they go ahead and calculate these numbers. So, I know there's a lot of talk usually with um your per pupil expense and how we spend more than the average, which when we look up the average, it's right around 18,000. Correct. My notes, I couldn't see them. Um so 18,000 and I think the national average is around 17,000 and that's

017based on the Commonwealth data. Um so the state gives us these numbers. So you cannot take our budget number and divide it by our enrollment number to get our cost per student to educate. Um the reason being we have a lot of pass through funds in that number with the IU. We have federal number or federal programs in there. Um so you can't simply take that number and I think that kind of gets misconstrued um when we kind of take the overall budget number and divide it by our total enrollment. So these are basically what the state is telling us based on the data that they incorporate into their formula of how much it costs to educate a student in our elementary schools and our high schools. So again, if someone that lives in say

018General Mlan or Titusville area, if they want to come to Penrest, this is what they pay us to come to our schools. And we do have we've had some in the past. Um, Penrest is transportation. We cover 409 square miles. Um, Cambridge Springs is 115 miles. Maplewood is 220 miles. And Seagertown is our smallest attendance area for transportation with 74 miles. We are the second largest in the state of Pennsylvania, I believe, um, for transportation. So, we cover a lot of area um, for our six schools. We have two bus contractors, GGNC and Christ transportation, which was previously PM busing. This is just broken down by attendance area. So, you can see how many students we have enrolled at each attendance area and how many buses we have on each route. Um, and then it

019goes over the average time per um per route and the average uh roster kids per route. That's uh that last bit there on the average route. That's a big that's an important number to consider because that limits our flexibility in putting more out. I mean less out, excuse me, because we're already at such a high high number in minutes in order. Say we wanted to um disband a couple routes, that's going to go way up. Kids are already on a bus so long to begin with. So I think I don't want I don't want us to miss that point of that. Um I that that another I have some about four or five surprising things in this as we as I've gone through this process. This was one of them. So just wanted to point

020that out to to the board and the public. Um so our estimated the total cost that we spend on IEP van transportation is around $419,390. Um, I have it broken down here by attendance area and how many vans um or buses that we have on the road per attendance area and the average kids um that are rostered to those vehicles. And this is all IEP driven. So, we cannot the IEP team has determined that there is a need to have those students um on a van or a bus and sometimes they need a lift bus. Um so that is driven by the IEP which is um the law that we cannot we have to provide that transportation our non-public transportation. So we have to by law transport to the private schools in our area I

021believe if they're um a 10 mile radius. So these are all the private schools that we currently transport students to and the cost of those are 59,272 estimated and these all these numbers are based on the beginning um of the year at any point. I mean tomorrow these numbers could change as far as your students going to those locations and that um but we do have to transport all the um non-public students um to their school if they choose to. Some parents choose to self-transport but others we do transport. We other transportation that we do we go to Bethesda, the Barber Center, St. Mudica and we have to transfer homeless students by law. Um so you can see here the different van routes that we have um on the road and how many students are

022on those vans. Um you'll see over here we have one van, one student. That is due to the location of those students and where they live. um within our district and the schools that they attend. They we try to as much as possible consolidate those routes as as best as we can. Um these numbers have changed um obviously since the beginning of the year. Um so I believe we currently have like what five students total now. Um and we have tried to condense those routes but it is based on where they they go to school and where they live um where they're currently living. We we have literally we have people at all ends across various not I'm not even going to say Crawford County it's across various counties like we go to Erie County

023we might have to go down to Vanango County. So in order to combine these which we we would love to do but because of the location and and where they're at it's just about impossible. So that's um the one thing that I know has been asked of me from board members about um this. So I really wanted I dug into this pretty heavy with Kristen because I wanted to know about it also. So we tried to be very transparent and exactly what we're doing here and why we're doing it. So um that's where we're at. If if you have any questions now thanks man. Um now for the homeless students uh like I know like there's one in Erie County now. Why did we have to go pick that student up to bring that? That

024was my question. They're deemed homeless if their living situation if that student is not living with mom and dad at home. if they're shacked up with somebody else um living with somebody else, we have to because they're it's your last district of residence. So that's why we have to transport them. Patty, would you like to elaborate on that? It comes back to the school of origin where the student was originally attending. And what we try to do is work with those districts where they have they're currently living to see if they have transportation coming our way or we have transportation going their way. Um and then we split those costs. So if we have a student moving in Erie County, that cost of that transportation is split between the two school districts. Even though they're

025coming to our district and we're providing the transportation, we build them at the end of the year for those services for half of those services. So last school of origin, so like each school year is that change like if he's in ninth grade, he went to Seagertown, moves to Erie County and stays in Erie County for 10th, 11th, and 12th, his last origin would have been ninth grade here. So we've got to do that for all three years after that. So it's really not necessarily about the school of origin. When a student is deemed Mckin Vento eligible or homeless, then they actually have the right to choose what school they want to attend. Um and it does not have to be the school they were previously at or the school that they moved to. We

026though have to follow up with the transportation responsibility for that if they choose our to attend our district. So it's one of those unfunded mandates that we have to we have no choice to say you're living in Erie go to Eerie schools. We cannot do that. So there's literally nothing we can do anyway. There is not we try to do the best we can to work with our neighboring district as long as they as long as they meet the criteria. Correct. There's a criteria, but if they meet that criteria, then there's nothing we can do. [Music] But this is one of those things that's good for the board and the public to see. This is it's only 109,000. There's 109,000 more. This is a teacher. A little bit more than that this year because again,

027these are based on the beginning of the year. Now we have instead of three students, we have five. I'm just using that number because it's there. But you know that that's a teacher that we need. Well, and those are five students that we couldn't get on our typical transportation routes. A lot of our students that are McKinto eligible end up on our regular buses. So they, you know, it's only those ones that are outside living outside that we have the broad alternate transportation. Moving into our revenue stream. So the district is funded by local revenue, state revenue and federal revenue. Um your other is sale of fixed assets or uh refund of prior year expenditures um which fall under your local funds. So underneath all these different funds you can see for local our biggest

028one is the real estate taxes. Um for your state the biggest one is your basic ed subsidy um and transportation and special ed. And then we do receive um the title funds along with our revenue. We are a multi-county school district. So we are located in Crawford County and Denango County. We have one little um one little county in Denango. Um so with that the STEB um state tax equalization board, they use a formula. So when we change our millage rate, it automatically changes the Venango County rate. So that's important. Um they we don't set Venango County rate. we only set Crawford's and it's based on um Crawford's rate is how the Nango goes along with it. So with the real estate taxes um there's a lot of talk about a mill. So what is

029a mill actually worth? Um a mill is every dollar or we receive every dollar for every$,000 of assessment property value. Um, so basically, um, a $35,000 home that's assessed, keep in mind assessment is different than market value, would generate $35 for every mill. So the current millage rate is 57.75. Um, so the revenue generated from that property would be $2,2125. Moving into our state funds, so we are getting PCCD grant funds. We have applied for um a lot of the grants through PCCD that we're eligible for. We've applied for some and not received them. Uh last year we applied and we did receive these three. Um so they are a two-year grant. So we have the school safety and mental health grant which we are using to put bullards in to secure all of our

030entrances at every school and to help with the cost of our school police officers. The notorious grant is for the K through 12 classroom support and the school mental health grant pays for contracted service uh contract contracted mental health services um within our district. Again, all these grants have strings attached to them and you have to write them for what they're specifically designed for. Um and then they pick and choose based on the criteria and the need of the district. Um so we can't just use them for anything. We wrote these grants specifically for those um criteria. Moving into our healthcare. So we are part of the Norvbit Trust um which was established in 1992. There's 19 schools in the trust and the career and technical center in Needville. It's administered by international. It's a

031self-insured program. So what does that mean? the district does not pay for um we don't pay a premium for health insurance through Highark. We just pay all the claims. Um so anytime an employee goes to the doctor and has a claim, we're basically paying for that claim on the back end. Um so we don't pay for premium shares. We just pay for the the healthcare claims directly and we have um safety guards in place. So a mini pool covers our high-cost claims. So, we're reliable or we're um we're on the hook for 110,000 and then anything that goes over 110 hits the mini pole to 300,000. Anything over 300,000 if it's a high cost claim goes to the insurance, the stop-loss insurance. So, healthcare has definitely been a challenge. On this slide, you'll see in

0322122 till now, we used to be funding we fund this at a composite rate per employee. So we were funding 1546 per every employee we have on our healthcare. And you can see by this slide, this is the number of employees on our healthcare. So our numbers are going down based on our staffing needs and decreases, but our health care costs are going up. So this year we're funding per employee uh $2,550. Our healthcare cost and claims, again, we're self-funded, so we pay everything, all those claims. You can see here the breakdown. The red is your medical claims and the gray is your prescription claims. So this year we're we're pretty close like 7030% on where we're standing currently on our claims. So moving into the high cost claims, um the new uh GLP1 drugs

033that I'm sure you guys have heard a lot in the media. Um currently that makes up 36% of our prescription data. Um, so we have 93 claimants on these prescription drugs. So we've paid this year um through this is through January, I believe, uh, $542,000, $829 of our total prescription cost of $1.5 million. So the GLP1 drugs are making up 36% of our prescription cost, which is huge. So we are looking at ways to um get that number reduced um for next year. Um high cost claims are roughly about 36% of our total cost claims. So currently we have 946 total members on our insurance. That includes employees and dependents. 28 of those high-cost claims are over 25,000. So that's kind of like the benchmark we use for a high-cost claim. Um so we have

03428 over that 25,000 mark. Six of those 28 are over 110,000. So like I said, between 110 and 300, the mini poolool covers that for us. So all the other districts that are in that trust help cover that cost for us. Um it's like a cost sharing poll. And then we had two claims go over $300,000 that we had to submit to the stop-loss insurance carrier. So you can see our total high-cost claims are uh $1.3 million of our total 3.3 u million in medical claims this year. Again, this data is through January. Moving into our staffing. So we currently um in this year's budget, we have in the 2526 budget, we have 346 staff. Last year's budget, we had 362 at the beginning of the year. So you can see the breakdown here, our

035professional staff, um support staff that are 180 days, 260 days. Uh we added our SPOS's and you can see our administrators and directors. So moving on with staffing and enrollment trends. So this slide you can see from 1718 we had 40 staff and currently we have 347. So it's a 14% reduction since 1718. student enrollment here you can see 1718 data to current data we also had a 14% reduction. So we are reducing staff as we're reducing students as students are um leaving and our enrollment's not up we are reducing staff at the same rate. This is another slide that that hit me pretty good. We know I was um this is important. This is one of the things that I was wanting to look at is like as our enrollment decreases, how's our staff,

036you know, and but we were shocked it's 14% both sides. So, I think I think the district's since 1718 done a great job of keeping their enrollment and staffing um in line. So, thank you. Moving on to our debt. So, as you guys know, um most of you, half of you are probably here when we took out the bonds in 2020, 20 2021 and 2022. So, we took out those three bonds. Um so, those total payments um for this year in including is 1.7 million and then we also um are liable for the vote bond based on our share of the students in the vote Crawford County vote. So, that's 30.6%. Um so that debt this year was estimated to be 218,346. So our total debt in this year's budget is [Music] 1,925,540. Um capital

037projects that we have slated for the 2526 school year. Um you'll just see here it's based on each elementary school. Um we have certain projects slated um that come out of fund 32 which we fund from our general fund gets transferred every year um and we budget 400,000 for that amount um and that has been a consistent amount amount for um since Mr. Hopson was here. So we have not increased that number um except for the one year when the previous bond ran out. We were able to put that million dollars um in between that uh 181 19 and 20 year when you guys took out that other bond. we were able to move that money into there um to keep the budget level. Um otherwise we currently fund that at 400,000. The high school

038projects, these are just the projects that are slated um for the 2526. Again, this can all change based on need. Um depending if something would happen, we might have to switch some of this around, but currently these are the projects that are slated. Moving into the actual budget numbers. So 2526 our revenues are projected to be 59,44600 sorry 59,400 44,682 and our expenditures are 60,411,98 with a total deficit budget this year of 1,366,416. Um this is where our starting point is. Um, last year, if you remember, we were at $3.7 million when I presented in April. So, we're we're in a much better spot this year than last year. So, this is this is pretty exciting. Um, currently our budget deficit is 1 million 46,132. So, you can see our expenditures only increased 2.3% um

039from last year to this year's budget. and we'll get into the details of that. Um, but that's that's a pretty good increase overall. Again, this is preliminary. Um, we're we still monitor this and look at this to try to find reductions in our numbers and we don't have concrete numbers from the state yet. So, we're hopeful that we can we can bring that 1.3 down even a little bit more um at our next meeting. We're wait. waiting for a few numbers to come back and we're we're c we're cautiously optimistic that we're going to get some more better news to bring that number even further down. Um which hopefully here in a couple weeks we'll be able to share that with you also. Um we we we I think every day we've been going through

040um various parts of our budget to try to keep bringing it down and bringing it down. this this reflects um there are no um staff in that number. Okay, I just I want to make I want to make sure we're clear on that. Right now there's no staff cuts at all. Okay. Um this number is all what we've done. So we haven't even we haven't looked at staffing yet at this point. Um let me rephrase that. We have we're still looking at that because resignations just came in. But this number does not include that at all. Okay. So, this breaks down um the total $60 million um dollar budget for your expenditures. Um breaks it down by your objects um your major objects. So, basically majority of that increase you can see here is the

041the benefits. Like I said before, that health care cost um went up about 20% per employee um this year. So, a majority of that cost um falls in this this line. Um also your pasers cost um that goes up. It was very minimal this year. Um we'll get to that, but I believe it was 109,000. So, that's also in this line item. Um you'll see the salary and benefits went up 314,790. Again, very minimal um in comparison to where we were last year. We have decreased some of these categories. And you'll see this number here. Here I put a little asterk um just because PE it's the change of uh objects um reporting. We moved our electric uh from our 400 excuse me our 400 line to our 600 line. So you'll see um that's

042in there. So within this this is not just your general supplies. Um it's not what we call 610 and 611 for clothing. This is also includes your natural gas. It includes um your gasoline, your diesel. So there's a lot of other big items in that line item. It's not just um general like office supplies or building level supplies. This graph kind of puts the whole budget um into perspective of where the major categories are. Um so you can note um salary and benefits 67% of our overall budget. Um so that is where we save um in the save when the budget is in your staffing. Um you'll also notice um our debt is in there that's 4% um professional services um materials other purchases. So there's really not a lot of discretionary spending in this

043um within the budget. Um I think we kind of showed that last year. um a majority of it is um driven by contracts um and services that we need for the students. This is just breaking our revenue down by um each source. Um so you'll see our uh local revenue. for about 21,327,60 and our state is 35,7881 1111 and you'll see on the next slide I'll show you the percentages um our total uh revenue sources and we do get about $2 million in the federal funds. We do not have um those federal numbers yet. There there's talk that um based on what the governor presented there could be a reduction but we will not have those final numbers quite yet. So currently in there you'll see just what the state has projected. So 61% of

044our funds come from the state, 36% are local um and 3% are your other um the federal and we have other just sale of fixed assets as you know Richard stated last meeting about like 26,000 um from a mun municipal bid that we did um so it's very minimal. So, the major expenditure increases, we've kind of touched on this. You'll see wages went up um 314,790. Healthc care is the big one, 1,373,843. And Peters went up [Music] $109,27. Uh major revenue increases. So, our real estate taxes, our assessment amount has increased, which is um fantastic. and we've increased our collection rate which has resulted in an increase of 225,964. Earnings on investments um and the interest rates are still pretty high. We also changed our bank accounts to sweep accounts so all of our money

045stays in our um savings account and then sweeps into the checking when it's needed um to cash checks. That way we can continue to earn a higher yield on all of those funds. um which should result between that and the Fed's not decreasing the rate yet an additional 65,000 um in earnings. Our transportation subsidy increased around 169,000. If you remember last year, the state has had increased the transportation subsidy, but it's a year behind. So, they increased it last year, so it's reflected in this year's budget. Um so, there's $169,000 increase um in that line item. and earn income tax. Um we increased that about $100,000 just based on um history over the past couple years. That has been coming in pretty steady. Moving on to the state budget. So the governor presented the budget

046um in February. So total basic education fund um is 8.2 billion. It's a $75 million increase or 1.92% um increase from what he presented in last year's budget. 300 million is distributed through the fair funding formula. As you remember last year, I went through that whole um how the whole fund funding formula is broken down. Um it's a very complex process. Um so with those additional 300 million that go through that formula, we are getting this year 72,583. It's very minimal from the state. Um but they did not put as much money this year into um the funding formula. Last year was about 525 million. Total special ed funding is projected at 1.2 billion or $40 million increase um from last year, which is 2.69% and we're projected to receive an increase of $66,115 for

047our special ed funding. Again, none of these numbers are final yet. They're still working on them at the state level. So, 526 million has been put in for the additional um adequacy formula funding. Um if you remember, we did not receive that funding last year. Um that used to be the previous level up funding um is what is commonly referred to. So they put 526 million additional this year into that funding formula instead of the basic ed funding formula. So that means 152 schools are not receiving any of the adequacy funding this year and we're again one of them. So we are getting zero dollars from that. Had they put that money into the basic ed formula we would be getting that money um through our through the formula in our ADMs. But since it's

048going through the adequacy funding, we do not get that. And they did not change how they did the formula last year. So if you got it last year, you automatically get it this year. So you get 526 additional funds are running through that formula. Um but there was no change in the formula. So we are not getting that. But there is hopefully hope um that people are advocating to get these 152 schools something. Um I can you elaborate? Yeah, I can. So there's three they call them the P groupoups. There's the PASSA which is professional association that I belong to. It's a superintendent. There's PASBO which is the association that Chris Kristen belongs to. Um then there's um PSBA. So they they call them the three Ps. They tend to work together for advocacy at

049the state level. Okay. So for instance, um I'm I I serve the IU up here um on advocacy for this area. So we help set the initiatives for the year and then and then you know I just got on I just got left to that and I wanted to be part of it. um because of this um the 152 schools we are we are absolutely um pushing this across the state because it's it's it's really unfair for that those many districts. So this has been a big talking point at at our professional level. Um and it it needs to be a talking point because last year they told you know they say things like last year that you know then they'll have new numbers for this year based upon what you've done previously and they

050stuck with the same exact formula from last year. So um do know that we're trying our best because this is this is really important. Um and and I I'd like to think um that the state's considering that. Um I know that uh Senator came out, Senator Pitman from Indiana County talked a lot about this. He's the head he's the head down there that this needs to be reconsidered and relooked at. So um please know that we're going to we're going to keep monitoring this and keep pressing on this particular issue. Is the funding formula still being contested legally? That was the last year. They Yeah, they didn't. This was an outcome of it with the adequacy funding. That's kind of how they fixed the formula is they gave all these other they created a new

051formula for the adequacy funding. But again, we don't we don't get any of those dollars that are distributed through that. In our decision to give more money to the state, we were said that we would get some money back and so that didn't really happen. We got the 72,000 through the formula because they put the $526 million in the adequacy formula instead of the basic ed. Right. So, okay. But yes, if they would change this, maybe they will put it in basic edition funds. Thank you. Now, is this something we can solicit our politician, local politicians to go down and argue this? Um, you could. Yes, that's something that you could help. Um, and you'll see whenever we get here to the next bullet point on the statewide charter reform. So, this is where I

052was talking. If you recall, um, we're paying like 16,000 for regular ed. This is our outside, um, cyber numbers, and then the 26,000 for special ed. Um, the state is proposing to do um the outside cyber um, reform of $8,000 per student per year. So, that would save us substantially um, in this year's budget. However, they have put this on the table every year and it has never passed. This year is a little different because the auditor generals um went to all these outside cyber schools and did an audit and the fund balances are substantial. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um substantial like uh budget RSI is around 60 million. You know, we'll get to our fund balance, but they have like 300 million in their fund balance. We do not have anywhere close to that. um

053and they don't have brick and mortar buildings, which is why this is a hot topic this year. So, if anything, this year would maybe be the year that this would get passed. It passed the house last year, um but then it died in the Senate. It was supposed to be revived into the governor's budget, but so it fizzled out with that, but it didn't pass the house. Um but as Tim said, we didn't get with our So, the representatives voted against that proposal. um hours um reluctantly still passed or not reluctant reluctantly to them still passed. Um I welcome someone to describe to me why that is a bad thing. So if I can connect two dots, we pay $16,000 when a kid goes to PA cyber. Right. Correct. But if a kid wants to

054come here from an outside school, we charge $13,000. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Yeah. Um Kristen's right. Their fund balances are outrageous. Uh well over 100,000 or I'm sorry, 100 million, 200 million. Um I looked to the community, research them. Please hold us accountable to how we're performing and how the money is being spent, but research Agora Insight, PA Cyber, their admin overhead is they have admin earning $200,000. the initial founder of PAR I believe is was in prison for 20 months for uh research how well they're performing. They're getting 10% kids proficient 4% kids proficient in math and science and reading. Um go to their schools research how they're performing. This is money we're spending. But if you do the kindergarten math, you take their total budget and divide by the student population.

055Yes, per pupil it's smaller, but they don't have a brick and mortar. They don't have transportation. They don't have food. If a child wants to participate in extracurricular, we pay for that. They come here and play and do extracurricular. So, I please welcome somebody to tell me how reform is a bad idea because I would love to have a conversation so that we can move forward. But research those schools and research our school into the money they have and the money we're sending them. And the last point since I'm speaking is we are 1.3 million as a deficit. The money we spent to outside cyber was 1.2 million currently this year currently which is likely to go up maybe in a few months. So it's almost the the same amount of deficit. So cyber reform

056would not fix some of the problems we have but it is a big head start. Um we perform better with much less and we also have to provide many other services that they don't. So check their enrollment, check their staff, check their fund balances and their performance. You know and to me this is not a this should not be a political um conversation. It should be a financial conversation. And what the auditor general found, I'll read, we found instances of cyber charter schools legally paying using taxpayer dollars on things like staff bonuses, gift cards, vehicle payments, fuel stipens. Additionally, the Commonwealth Charter Academy spent 106 million to purchase and/or renovate buildings, which to us seems a bit out of the ordinary for a public school. This district spent 33 million over the last how many

057years scrimping and saving, working their tail off to try to to try to make sure that we have a little bit and that and that these folks get all this money to do all this. I have a problem with it. Um, you know, we have the retirees come in here and tell us they don't want us to tax, which guess what? They should come in and tell us that. We have our teachers come in and say, "We need lower class sizes." I'm okay with them coming in and tell us that. I'm meeting with parents next week who are coming in and saying, "Don't cut our programs. Don't cut our athletics." So, our whole constituent across our whole district. And yet, this this is where we need to be focusing our time. if we come together

058as one, even putting aside our differences, this is the kind of stuff that we have to do for this district. Um, I'm I'm I was shocked when I saw this. I've been I was just at a conference. I probably I told everyone I would be calm tonight. Um, but I'm very passionate about Penrest. I want what's best for our students and I also want what's best for our retirees. I also want what's best class size-wise and so and I don't want to cut programs like we saw at Cambridge Springs winning the robotics by the way beating my old elma m where I used to be principal. Um congratulations. It gives me a little bragging rights now. But but I that's all I want to say. I I think if we come together collectively we can

059do great things um for that. And I think we have to advocate on our behalf. So, so I think their argument is they can't they don't have the taxpayer base to to raise funds to raise revenue. Um but what happens is they take our money um and spend it unwisely is I think what Mr. Ford was saying um and not investing in in things with um good outcomes. And so then that leaves us with less. And so we either have to cut or we have to generate revenue on our constituents which is a bad answer and a bad answer. So uh please we um Kristen listed the schools where our money is going. You can go on it's very easy to research how well they're performing their administrative pay their fund balances. Um, you would

060be, if that was us, if that was us, we'd be having an auditorium filled um and and a lot of screaming at our microphone. I'm in favor and I'm probably a little different than most educators. I'm in favor of competition. I think it makes you better. I'm in I'm not even saying that we shouldn't help fund those schools, okay? But what I am saying, let's make it reasonable so that so that we could what Kristen if they went down to 8,000 what would be what would we save as a as a district roughly? I'm putting you on the spot. It's in my notes that I couldn't access but it's roughly like $800,000 I believe this we're going to save like a million figure roughly half. So that's what we're saying. Be reasonable. I mean, I'm

061all about, hey, we'll compete with anyone, but put us on the fair grounds to compete. And so, that's all I'm asking. We are competing and we're out competing with far less. We are we are doing better. Yes. Well, and I think that's the thing that we need to focus on and I was going to we need to make sure people know that how poorly these cyber schools are doing. And a lot of these people, a lot of parents or not a lot, but I've talked to a few parents that say, "Well, what's the difference? What's the difference in the cyber school?" I said, "Check the scores. You're not held to the same. You're not held accountable like we are." Those schools do not get the notoriety. If we if our scores come out like that,

062we'd be on the front page of the news with eerie TV uh news channel would be down here. I may be all over. But cyber schools, nobody says a word about it. There's a hidden cost too. Do we have numbers on how many leave for cyber in return? I don't have that. So when a child leaves and goes into a a school that is doesn't perform as well now we have the hidden cost which is almost impossible to try to put a number to to try to catch that child up. Um you see that over and over again. Now there are many good schools out there and it's a great option for a lot of families and I think Mr. Ford's right. This isn't a knock on cyber. It has benefits, but um man, that

063$800,000 would do good right now and we're 1.2 or 1.3 deficit. But I think what I see uh since Mr. Ford and the new board is here is the the test scores and the numbers thanks to the teachers are going up for us where cyber is not going in that direction. So, it's really a better value to be here bringing water with us. But thank you and the teachers for making that happen. Finished. So, how can you help as we kind of talk? Um, get a hold of the state legislators and PSBA went ahead and provided a sample letter. Um, if you my presentation will be posted tomorrow on the website. You can go ahead and you can click on the link. Um, here's the email. You can copy and paste it. Um, it came

064from PSBA. Um, so it's just a template and you can send it to uh, Senator Michelle Brooks and Representative Brady. Oh, we need to put Kathy Kathy. Kathy R. Okay. I can Well, I was going to say I did talk to talk to Michelle Brooks at the last Republican convention or dinner I went to and I will say I was very disappointed because uh she basically told me she had enough time even though I am a constituent and I did vote for her but they did not seem and I tried talking to Brady also and they did not want to talk about this at all. I do not know what their reasoning is. I'm sure somebody else in this on this board could tell me, but uh yeah, I I don't know, but I was

065very disappointed and they were very standoff standoffish when I brought it up. So I I do say as many letters as we can get out, we should. That's the key. They've heard from us board members and I think they're just getting tired of hearing. Quite honestly, I've I've reached out to several politicians in the last few months. John Federman is the only one that has reached back to me. I was totally shocked with that one. I was totally shocked. Our local ones have not got back to me on anything. I think we just need to take that letter and flood them. Not from us, but from the public. I couldn't believe John. check it was I'm not saying that he we shouldn't send the letter and that I support this but at the same time

066we can't say that it's all the state's fault like I feel like that's what we've talked about the last 20 minutes like you know we have issues too we do and we need to be and I'm not saying we shouldn't petition you know our government officials because we should um and obviously there's issues there that should be addressed but um you know we need to also be working inhouse So, well, I know you like saying that every year, but the state is responsible for a lot of this because they could be helping us fight some of this. I mean, yeah, 800,000. I know you keep saying we can just cut more and cut more and cut more, but there's only so much we can cut. No, but you can gain efficiency. If I ran Oh

067my god. from a grocery store. If we ran it like this whole school district and teaching running a store, the same. Yeah, I found that. We got We got to start with us. We got to start with us. And I and I absolutely agree. I I agree with you, David. Um but when we look at our starting point compared to where we were, we this we're working really hard to start with us. We are we've gone through just about every line item in that and we're going to go back through it again. We're going to keep going back through it to try to bring that down. Um we're we really truly are try I because I agree clean your own house up before you start throwing rocks at everybody else's. And so we're doing that

068um without trying not to impact students and we're trying to get out here. You know, if we have students here in the middle, we want to try to maintain everything right here close to them. We want to get out here and cut out here. And so that's what we're looking at right now is all because in here is you know what's in here? That's your educators. And so if we can stay away from those and get this out here under control and become more efficient, look at supplies and look at all that then then that's what we should be doing. And that's what we really truly are doing that um for the last month almost. Kristen, you getting sick of me? Um um I I' I've been every day. every day though. Every day I

069call her every day and say, "Hey, how about this? Hey, how about this?" And so, um, but we are I commend you guys for that. I really do. I'm just trying to say we need to be careful not to point finger, you know, we we need to apply everything to ourselves, too. It's the best way to approach problem. Yeah. You know, this is not a for profit here. Um, this is this is a service. But when you look at those fund balances of some of these cyber schools, it looks like they're doing it for profit. You're talking hundreds of millions. I'd like to say and remind the the the PA when we were negotiating contracts that the PAEA said they were going to consider looking for other options in healthcare that might reduce our costs

070which could really go a long way in helping the district. So, I'm hoping as we're drawing into other negotiations in the future that that's being researched. [Music] Moving on to the federal budget. Um, so we received title funds. Um almost um $1.1 million are in the budget for title funds. If you were at the community engagement night at Mwood Elementary, Mrs. Phy went over what we use all of our title funds for. Um, I know there's a lot of talk out there with the federal budget. Um, PD doesn't know what's going on yet. Um, we have not gotten any updates really on that. Um, currently this year, it's front end loaded, so we should be fine. Um, going into next year, it's in the governor's budget this year. Um, but we really don't know what's

071happening yet. Um there is a concern of the potential impact of the federal um funds being lost, but um when we know more uh we'll definitely pass it along, but we currently don't have any additional information. Um the fund balance um you'll see here uh we currently have a fund balance of 14,961573. Um with that fund balance, it's you want to have uh four months in the reserves. Um, currently we run about $4.5 million of expenditures every month. Um, so in the event uh that the state does not pass their budget because we have to have our budget passed by June 30th, the state should have theirs passed. It has been passed, it has not been passed um in June. So it's been October, December. So, we need to make sure that we have a

072healthy fund balance to pay our expenditures in the event that um the state doesn't um give us our funds because we are heavily um funded by the state. If you remember, it's about 60%. You'll notice the committed lineup here for the future debt service. So, we take that half mill that um we raised in taxes in each one of those years and it is in a separate account um to pay that balloon payment here that's going to be happening um in about 16 to 18 years now. Um so that money will accumulate every year in that account. Um so that is the key note on that slide. It is in there. Um we do transfer it every year. So, next steps, we're going to continue to monitor the state and federal budget changes, um staffing

073needs and enrollment numbers, uh department budgets, like Mr. Ford said. Um we go through this all the time. Um when we get a retirement letter, we, you know, we do the evaluations to see if, you know, we can save any cost there. We're looking at every line item within the departments um to see if there's cost savings there. We're just kind of waiting on some final numbers um from the state and federal level. Um we plan to host a finance committee meeting um on April 28th um up here at the high school Sagtown High School at 5:30 in the auditorium. That is our community engagement night. So it's an easy I mean everyone was already planning on being here so we thought um it would be good. Typically, this committee of the whole meeting has

074replaced committee meetings, but in the event of the budget, since it's such a big topic, we're going to go ahead and post a separate meeting and we'll we're going to hope to have you a little bit more concrete numbers um here in the next couple weeks. We need to approve a preliminary budget on May 12th, um the next meeting, and then approve the final on June 9th, the June board meeting. That was a lot of information. I hope it really wasn't an hour. I apologize. Um, but is there any questions? May have been me a little bit here tonight. All right. Yeah, I can't take full blame. All right. I'll I'll take a little credit. Um, if there's no questions now, you certainly can send me questions. Um, so we can go ahead and get

075you answers to those on the 28th. Um but this year in comparison to all the other years, this is the best best year um as far as me presenting a budget that we have come in. You know, 1.3 is is significantly lower than where we have been um in the past. So like you know, Mr. Ford said, I mean, the three of us are meeting constantly. We're constantly going over this. It's about every day um seeing where we can improve the budget to get it closer to being balanced. Okay, thank you. I would like to congratulate I I don't have much on my report tonight. I'd like to congratulate Mrs. Martinez on a on a well- earned um to the Golden Apple award. So, congratulations to Mrs. Martinez to the robotics club and we'll wish

076him well out in Ohio and uh see if they can bring back some national hardware. So, um at this point we'll move into our department reports, Mrs. Fieldy, education. Sure. Our uh first item will be the special education plan which has been up on the website for 28 day public review and now I'm bringing it to you to the board to pass it so that I can then submit it to the state. Um nothing in there has changed in the course of 28 days and uh we also as we had mentioned had our cyclical monitoring process last week with the state. They were here for three days. It's quite intense. They review or monitor us on over 3,000 items. Any item that is a no as a finding. Our preliminary um accident review from u

077the department of ed has us sitting at about seven items that we need to take a look at. Some of them, most of them actually being very simple to fix like the num, well, it's not really a simple fix, but it is not necessarily an item that we have a lot of control over. Our the number of students that we have opting out of our PSSA and Keystones was a finding for us because we did not hit 95%. Um, so we will have to create a plan to try to get more of our students in grades 4, 8, and 11 to participate. Um and then some looking at some items with you know having the school resources resource officers in our buildings also how we deal with um students with special education needs when they're

078involved in an incident revol involving the police department is something we will have to take a look at and redesign and um we also will have a finding because we did not have 95% of our faculty complete the survey so we will have to address that as well. So, um, again, minor findings, um, they were very, um, uh, I I will say I'm impressed with our file reviews. He was, um, impressed with the, um, level of our paperwork and how hard our faculty are working to meet the students needs in this district. So, it was a good process. Um, the formal CAB will be out in 30 to 60 days. [Music] Um the program of studies are on here for approval from um the ele for the elementary schools and the and PCA our cyber

079academy. There were no changes to the elementary program of studies for next year. The PCA program of studies has added a few courses in ELA, math, and science to help adjust to the new incoming standards and options for students. Also, the Cambridge High School teams made it to nationals and Nashville, Tennessee. Excuse me. You'll see an action item on there to approve that trip. It's at no cost to the district. They have a lot of outside funding for that. And I think this is the fourth year, I believe, they've made it to nationals. They they've been very successful. Um you'll see uh resources on there for approval including junior achievement all about cars which is a program for students in 11th 12th grade. It's a pilot program for them where they come in and talk

080to them about car ownership, purchasing a car, what the responsibility is as a car owner. Um it sounds like a very good opportunity for our student students to learn some of those real life skills that um we don't often have an opportunity to cover. And again congratulations to the Cambridge High School robot team. That's a fantastic win for them and I wish them the best of luck. That's it. Any questions for me? Okay, Mr. Luke, facilities transportation. All right. So, uh before you tonight, you'll see an action item um to approve uh turnkey service with EAP Industries. Um they are a company that handles um hazardous materials, packaging and transportation of them. Um, as we started to prepare for our uh construction project over at Cambridge Springs High School this summer, uh, we were presented

081uh, with um, a couple of our science teachers uh, presented to us that they had chemicals that were in storage uh, that were they were no longer using were stored somewhat unsafeely that they wanted to see disposed of as we'll be doing uh, flooring in that area. and they're worried about uh the disturbance of those chemicals. Um we have partnered with EAP in the past. We did a a project with them, a small project with them in 2022 that was about $6,000. Segre School um we also did a project last year which um you may or may not remember. Um that was a free program through D. We had to sit through um a training and uh they basically paid for a clean out here at Sagertown. Um unfortunately that's you know a once in

082a a lifetime program. That's not something a service that's going to be available available to us um this time. So um we we got all the teachers the the science teachers together um to go through all of their rooms as far as chemicals that they needed to see uh removed. Um, like I said, a lot of them are stored in glass containers with no tops or with um unsecurable lids. Those all those chemicals need to be repackaged uh manifested and transported by a D approved contractor. Um that is why the cost to do that service is $22,96. Um we reached out to I would say at least a dozen uh contractors throughout the state. Um some in our area, some as far away as State College, Harrisburg. E EAP was the only one that uh

083gave a bid on that. So um it is something that is important for us to do in order to be able to get those chemicals cleaned up and removed. that way we can safely uh complete our asbestous remediation and and flooring in those rooms. So, um that'll be for before you tonight. Um I'm happy to answer any questions as it relates to that. Just where's the funding for the 22,000 coming from? It's a great question. Um I think, you know, I'll let Kristen and Mr. for help with that. But I think that um we raised some money through the municip bid. Um that was about $26,000. This would this would chew up a lot of that, but okay. Um it it's not something, you know, within our department budget that we can accommodate. So, but

084it is important to uh to our mission this summer. And unfortunately, some of these bottles and stuff just weren't were never marked properly. Now we have new teachers in chemistry and sciences and they don't know what they are. Makes you sick. It's a lot of money for removing chemicals. Oh, I agree. Highly sick. Yeah. Yeah. But if we weren't a public school, we could do it. Since this goes under um someone that repairs um I'm just saying we had contingency money. I'm sure you guys listen to that, but we did. Yeah, we can see or is this not eligible for that? It's part of the construction. So, we were we're kind of we need to see where we come in under our contingency funding. Um and we won't have that idea probably until August until

085it's completed and then we know what the punch list is. Um, but we will you'll see a budget transfer on for next month. Um, we're gonna we'll evaluate the building budget, see if we can take any from there. We'll probably peace meal it. Um, like Mr. Luke had said, there is the the ass sale of assets that we just sold. Um, that will help offset it and then we can look within the maintenance line item to see if there's going to be any, you know, a couple hundred dollars here and there we could transfer. Um, but yes, if we could take it out of our capital, but again, remember all that bond money is allocated. So, I'm hoping with the interest we're earning on the money that's currently in there, that's where I'm hoping to

086pull that money from. Um, because those numbers change every month with the interest um that we acrew on those funds. So, that's where I'd like to take it from. Um, but again, we kind of need to see where our final CERS project comes into um to see if those funds are available in that. It might be coming from general funding, but it's something that needs to be done to continue on with our project. So, it's just one of those unfortunate um unplanned expenditures that pop up. It's not something I really know a lot about like disposing of chemicals, but we like talked to Lord at all about, you know, who they would use for or if they have any recommendations or I'm just thinking they're the biggest chemical plant around. Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't

087know, maybe they'd have a way to help us. I don't know. I just hate to just jump in and we talked to Directly and I mean our our options are very limited. That's No, no, it's it's all at our We're not talking about a large amount. There's quite an extensive list. There's a lot of acids, a lot of, you know, corrosive acids that you can tell that have been in that room for 30 years and are eating away at the cabinets that are back there, you know, just from being stored there somewhat improperly. I mean, it's just it's it's a safety issue as much as it is. Um, I agree we need to get rid of I was just asking how much. Yeah. I mean, if we're talking, the chemistry lab is the majority of

088it. Uh, biology and physics are minimal. The chemistry lab is the majority of it. And it's, you know, a 10x10 room that's just totally packed full the back room. So, it's it's a lot. So, Jordan just leaned into me and said, "Get rid of those chemicals." Is there any safety policy written on these chemicals at all and their stories? 30 years ago, the regulations were a lot. Yeah. I mean, just for them to hit the road now, they have to be everything has to be completely repackaged, sealed, documented, all that stuff has to get turned over to the state. And there's there's a lot of paper. I mean, we know It's just pay it. All right. So, we have our traditional the stuff every month, the dispersements, uh, treasures reports. Um, you see all that

089on there. We have budget transfers. You can see we're taking um some from the budgetary reserves and transferring that for our safety and security supplies, which you guys knew was coming. Um, when we hired our three officers, we had to outfit them all. Um, so there's some costs there. We have tuition costs. Um, again, we put money in our reserve um to help offset our cyber cost last year in hopes that they did the reform. They didn't. So, that money was still in our budget in the reserve. So, you're seeing the transfer out there. Um, transferring a little bit out for the legal services. Um, and then just uh within the building. So, nothing too major there. The Crawford County and Career Tech budget is on for approval. So, like we said before, we have

090um 30% of that their budget is passed on to us um for our students that attend that program. So, it was already passed, I believe, at the Votech last month. Um so, now it's every district has to um pass that. So, that is a reduction from last year. So, that's good. Um again, when I did our budget, these numbers weren't um actual yet. So, you will receive um you'll see a reduction in our budget. Um, based on these final numbers, the woodring contracts on there for our security officers that we have at events, um, the cost went up um, slightly to $25. It's nothing major. Um, again, still the three-hour minimum and we have a couple donations on there. Um, a couple being boards. You remember you um, last month you approved the 8,000. Well,

091that check actually came in at um, 8,650. So, we're bringing back that additional 650 for you guys to accept that donation. Um, so that's just part of that large amount. Maplewood Elementary, there's purchase on there uh for $500 for library books. And Kyle Greyhouse donated $1,000 for the Cambridge Springs Robotics Club. That's all I have. Thank you. We're going to move into the voting part of the meeting at this point in time. Um, are there any citizen comments on agenda items? Approval of minutes. Resolve that the Penrest board of school directors approve the following minutes. March 10th, 2025, um, which was a school board meeting. So move. Second. Got a motion to second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I post say motion carried on the uh policy before we

092go on. I have a question. Uh shop teacher, Mr. Sturdivan brought up a concern with the policy. Uh he he's the wood shop teacher at Mwood for those of you who don't know and he's running out of lumber very fast and all his stuff is through donations. Uh Pancress really hasn't bought any materials in quite a few years. The problem is if he gets somebody who wants to donate lumber sometimes it's like well it's here if you want it take it but he can't take it till he gets approval from the board. My question is, is there a point where why does teachers need or why would they need our approval to get lumber or wood products or art supplies or other stuff like that that if somebody's willing to donate it or give it

093to them, why do they need our approval for something? There's not I don't see anything controversial over free supplies to for our kids to have in shop classes. So, I I just asked if we could think about making amends to some of this. The board doesn't have to approve every little thing. If we have a policy in place and it's followed strictly, uh I I just think it's crazy and it's making it harder on some of our teachers. I would I would agree and I I would think in those in that situation that they could bring it to me and I could I could give them a that's what they're asking. That that would be something for sure. I mean, um, I would probably say the best way, Jordan, you can help me out. The

094best way to do that would maybe just do a a vote under new business to authorize specifically for the wood or art supplies. Um, would you agree? Yeah, that's fine. Would that be all right? In lie of even note that's written in policy that would supersede. How would that work? I mean, if you're going to make an amendment to the policy itself, you should probably get it on for a first read. That that's kind of what I was figure I'd like if we're going to do it, let's do it right. Yeah, that would be the right way to do it. And that way they have, you know, they can that way they can just text or call Mr. Ford and say, "Hey, this gentleman wants to give me a bunk of lumber. I won't be

095able to pick it up. Okay, good to go." I I don't think we should have to approve every little thing. This is This is getting ridiculous to approve. What what you could do, Tim, too, is you maybe at the next meeting, you might suspend the requirement for any additional reads, you know, to try to get it implemented a little quicker because it is sort of a policy that makes good just logical sense that we could get it, you know, in quicker. That would be great cuz B is trying to rapidly get some material for next year. He's he's out. Yeah, I'd get it on for We don't have money to buy it. So, Sure. I'd get it on for your next meeting and then maybe take a look at trying to get that one, you

096know, in front of the board. And I know the art teachers are also looking for supplies, too. And I don't want them to have to wait. We could we could also we could do um because we put it on there for the community night. We could have a real quick um meeting afterwards to get that on too. You could we could do that, right? That's why we put it on there for that reason in case stuff like this came up. So love to advertise. Love to advertise. We have we have enough time though, correct? I just mean financially. I was just financially. She does that to me all the time. What would this What would the salt be though? Um that it would just be superintendent's approval on a donation. Just to add that to

097the the policy. Is that the salt? The other Let me look at I want to look at the policy a little clearer and then I'll come back with recommendations on on a first read of the policy. Great. Okay, that's yeah, that's what I was kind of getting at. Not that you can keep track of them all either, but it's kind of nice sometimes to see what and I'm not saying we need to approve all of them either, but it's kind of nice to see who gave stuff. You know, it could be in superintendent letter, you know, but just, you know, it's kind of nice to see who's donating. Absolutely. Right. They're not asking to not let the board know. I know, right? Question. Is there a way to approve it? You can't. I don't know,

098Jordan. Is there a way for us to approve like after the fact, you know, or I I can I can I go down and certify tomorrow and give him some lumber and he can take it and start using it next week. Can we just approve it like at the next meeting that this was donated? And if anybody ever had a problem with it, then we have that conversation of what happens. Yeah. I mean, my advice would be if you're going to make a change to the policy, if you want to do it at your next regular board meeting or after your community night, as long as it's properly advertised. Okay. I don't really have an issue with it for for a policy like that. You know, reads, you can have as many reads as you

099want. So, if you want to suspend the read requirement to try to get that one implemented more quickly, then you could do that. Okay. Yeah. and and I I do know other community members have wanted to donate supplies for robotics and other things too that there's always a question everybody's a little uh hesitant of donating because of all the rule changes from the past and the policy changes and not everybody just goes in and reads policy law so it's easier just not do it then I think we're hurting ourselves we need to not make it difficult we need to make it as easy as we can we're not donating books or anything like that. It's just supplies to help out help the students out as long as something states that material or supplies, you know,

100non-reading materials. So that way it wouldn't cover it wouldn't change it totally. Mr. Ford, you got your task in your spare time. Knock that out. We'll take we'll take a question. I just wanted to ask really quick um Jordan, what's the the amount of money for the dimminimus? Because if if it's, you know, brought up at the meeting and it's a dimminous amount of money, isn't it allowed to be put on and voted on tonight? Like that can be added to the agenda as long as it's What's that number? Yeah. So, I mean, my take on it is that doesn't really apply because it's a policy change. So, you know, what I would do is what I said I would, right? I I agree with the policy, but like if if it's a donation and

101we you know if we knew what the donation was, couldn't we add just this one donation to the agenda tonight as long as it was dimminimous in amount of money? Like if it was $200, could you put that on as new business and vote on it within and still be within like the Sunshine Act? Yeah. I mean, so you're losing sight of what the policy change is. So the policy change wasn't on the agenda at all, right? Yes. Yeah, that's so I don't really think that, you know, it's trying to combine two things that I don't think are really capable of being combined. I appreciate the question, but we're just trying to streamline it. So if Bert gets an opportunity to get something, he can't say, "Well, I have to wait and present to the

102board next month." And then after he wants to pick it up now, he can call Sean and say, "Hey, I got a chance to get this loan." Great. I assume that you that there was something like he already had the ability to get. Well, no, he lost now in the moment. He lost some because somebody else grabbed it before he got approved. I got Thank you. approved this. Thank you, Jordan. Yeah. No, I think everyone's, you know, the discussion on it is really well taken, Mr. Brown. I mean, you want to try to make it as easy as possible, and you know, Mrs. Brown, I think you hit on the dimminimous requirement, too. I I just wouldn't get in the habit of doing it. So, I'd follow your policy, make sure it's on for first

103read, and then if you want to suspend the read requirement to get it through more quickly, then go right ahead and do it. Okay, sounds good. Moving on. Thank you. We have a first we have a first reading tonight of policy 200 um which is enrollment in the district. Um this this particular policy um Penrest um had a more restrictive um requirement for um parents coming in to enroll their students and and the documentation that they had to have to do that. P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P PE um Department of Education has come um um out and they have more um more ways to register, more ways to show identification. So, what we've done is we've taken what's in the

104PTE in the first reading tonight and we've added that into our policy. So, that's that's what that's what you see in policy 200. So, if you look at that here for the next um next month, you have any questions, we can look at that next month. Um the second reading tonight is is the following policies. Um so resolve that the Penrest board of school directors approve the following policies. 008 organizational chart 103 discrimination title 9 sexual harassment affecting students. 104 um discrimination title nine sexual harassment affecting staff. 121 student travel and 236.1 threat assessment and finally 626 the federal fiscal compliance. So move second motion and second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none all in favor say I. I post say motion carried. Under the education, I'm I'm breaking this down a little bit here

105tonight. So, we're going to resolve that the Penrest board of school directors approve the consent agenda um and education for items B through J as presented. So, move second. There's a motion in a second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none, all in favor say I. I oppose. Save. Motion carried. Education letter K. Resolve that the Penrest board of school directors approve the attached resources and materials in accordance with policy 109 um which is the 202425 library books. So move second. Have a motion in the second. Any comments or questions? Yeah, Kristen, just on um we got K and L here. Um what do we what's budgeted for books per year? What do we $750 is a flat rate per building per school? Okay. So, this would be doubling that up. Am I correct? Correct. They're

106asking I believe it's for 1,500. What's in the budget right now? 750. Okay. If they haven't spent anything out of that line. Okay. Gotcha. So we would be overspending it by 750 then versus correct. But this is last year's budget we never approved. Yeah. But this is this year's budget that we're on. Right now this is a this is a group we never approved last year. Right. Right. I guess what I'm saying is I'll only go with what we have budgeted right now. I'm not going to spend more than what we have budgeted in that area. Um, I'm fine with either or list, but um, I don't want to go back necessarily and spend money that we had in the past and don't currently have budgeted right now. I'd rather just stick with what we

107budgeted. A good a good budget sticks to the lines. But this other one's for next year's budget, right? This would come out of this year's budget, the 25 26. And then there's they both come out of this year's. But why? This year for me yeah only this was last year's budget only K will come out of this year's budget and then per policy they have to get the approval now for 256 correct correct yeah correct so we're approving this is two years worth of books yes so we're approving this year's books and next year's last year, sorry, last year, last year's books that were never purchased. So, we are approving $750 worth of books that we agreed on as a budget last year when we approved the general budget. Correct. That was unspent. So, the

108fiscal year doesn't roll over. It's use it or lose it essentially. So, that money doesn't carry over to this year. It rolls into fund balance. So, 2324 has been closed into fund balance out of 2425. Okay. So, we didn't spend any last year, but we approved to spend 750 last year. Correct. And so, now we're we're asking to be approved for another 750 for this year. Is that correct? Yes. But they put in I think it's 1,500 that they're asking for both of their years. So, they didn't get anything last year. Um, and we approved money to be spent towards them last year, but we didn't. And correct me if I'm wrong. Well, because of the policy, they make it so we could they couldn't get them ordered in time because we kept throwing them

109over on the policy. And I believe they didn't order books a year before that because of the policy. I think there's three years that have not we a um we we tabled a policy uh read, I believe. Yes. And so they were unable to purchase books last year, right? And the year before also. What I'm saying is I think we're currently doing good on our budget and I would rather stay that way and follow the budget. So that that's where I'm at with it. 750 would come um from the fund balance for the last year that we promised. So 750 we would have to transfer money into that line item because it would over it would be overspent. You know whatever you go over that 750 I have to transfer money from our budget from

110a different line item. So whether that comes from the building line item, if they have an additional 750 um all spend cut off for your buildings um March 31st, it's only your necessary spending to get you through, you know, graduation like diplomas, things like that. Um so that's where I would look first to see if there was an additional 750 um in any of those lines that were not spent and transfer that into your um 640 object for the bolts. Um, but yeah, once the money rolls over, it's it's use it or lose it at the end of the year essentially, and that money rolls to fund balance. So, you're not necessarily taken out of the fund balance. If we have money in other line items that weren't spent, but at the end of the

111year, if we're overbudgeting all of our categories, then yes, you're taking out balance. My fear is you kind of can get we can kind of get too comfortable transferring back and forth to move and you have to do some of it obviously but when we don't have you know like if we're on track right now I'd like to stay stay on track but any other comments or questions I do have some curriculum money that could be transferred that has not been spent yeah it's not really our job to figure out where the money comes from. The kids need the books. That's just Well, like I said, libraries have been out for three years. Yeah. I I think this is crap and it's time that we got to help them out. Any other comments? All in

112favor say I. I post. Same. Who knows? Education letter L. Resolved the Penrest board of school directors approved the attached resources and materials in accordance with policy 109. This would be for the 2526 library books. So move second motion and a second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. Post same. Motion carried. Under letter education letter M, resolved that the Penrest board of school directors approved of the attached dual enrollment agreement with Grove City College. So move second. There's a motion and a second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. Post save. Motion carried. You going to make it? You going to need David to step in here for you? Under education letter N. I'm going to revise the wording. Uh, currently it says resolve

113that the penrest board of school directors um approve student a disciplinary hearing. I would like to change that. Resolve that the penrest board of school directors expel student A following an expulsion hearing. So move second. Have a motion and a second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. Same. Motion carries. Facilities and transportation resolved that the Penrest board of school directors approve the consent agenda facilities and transportation items B and C. So move second motion in a second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. Same. Motion carried. The financial report resolved that the Penrest board of school directors approved the consent agenda financial items B through G as presented. So move [Music] second question. [Music] Y any comments or questions? hearing none. All in favor

114say I. I. Oppos say motion carried. under the personnel [Music] report. Under personnel number nine, resolve that the Penrest board of school directors approve the consent agenda items B through J. So move second. There's a motion in a second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. I. Those same. Motion carried. Under new business, resolve that the Penrest board of school directors approve to appoint Robert Johnson to the Northwest Tri County um intermediate unit 5 for the three-year term effective July 25 through June July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2028. That's up. Mr. Johnson has been serving on that. So move second and second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. Oppos. Same. Motion carried. Under H. Under announcements. The board met for executive session on

115April 14th, 2025. For personnel, legal matters, and a confidential student issue. We will need to meet following this meeting um for personnel reasons. Um, are there any two? Good. First, we have Mr. William Shoemaker, Athens Township resident. Topic: Current state of the MHS softball program. [Music] And how about Jillian Shoemaker at Athens Township Resident? MHS softball. Are there any other citizen comments on non-aggenda items this evening? Okay, thank you. We'll turn this back over to you for journ motion to adjourn. So move second. All in favor say I. I. I.