001um [Music] okay oh my god it was nice i grew up we got out of town new jersey you were in ocean new jersey um yes oh you did you grew up here oh yeah [Music] i was angry before [Music] in my mind [Music] i was angry before [Music] let the sun go down [Music] let's go [Music] oh [Music] hey colleen we're gonna do a little check here uh mr acker's on the phone so i'm gonna put my the speaker the microphone down you let me know if you can hear that go ahead i don't think thank you for your patience all right we'll go ahead and begin in his absence okay i'd like to welcome everyone to the june 22 2022 meeting of the abbiston heights school board please rise for the pledge of
002allegiance running the meeting [Music] mr abdullah here mr azar here mr fleming here mrs henderson here this is carom here mr madinski here mr robson here mrs tierney here mr acker all present thank you uh next i think dr schaefer we want to make one amendment a motion to amend uh the agenda is that correct correct can everybody hear me back there i'm going to uh amend action item m to strike the spring athletic edr positions this action item was meant to approve athletic edr positions for the fall and winter we will come back in the fall and do the approval for the spring for no other reason other than the spring is somewhat far away and there are changes so it's in our best interest to do the fall and winter now thank you
003so moved second roll call please mr abdellah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mr mrs henderson yes this is karen yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr acker 9-0 okay now i think we have to have a motion to approve the agenda correct so i have a motion to approve tonight's agenda now that it's been amended so moved second roll call mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr modenski yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr acker 9-0 thank you could i have a motion to approve the june 1st the minutes of the june 1st work session so moved roll call um it's june 1st work and may and the sorry the may the board session the main board session and
004the june works and the june 1st workshop just so we know what we're doing the may public meeting in the june 1st work session correct right okay so we have a motion for that mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr madinski yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdullah yes mr azar yes mr acker yes nine zero okay thank you do we have any board reports uh yes the aeio we had our last meeting in june for the season i want to thank all the community members that helped us out with our first nepa gives fundraiser we had a great response to that and it was our first annual so we're so thrilled that we were able to make the funds that we did also if there's any community member that
005really shows an interest in sitting on the aeio board please contact the uh the website that's on the school district website we would love to have some new members some new business owners to sit on our board it's an incredible opportunity to see all the curriculum enhancements that we help to provide for the district thank you the facilities committee met a week ago to uh mr mirabelli reviewed the proposals for the facilities assessment so we met a week ago the facilities committee and we reviewed the uh the facility uh proposals and rank them okay thank you mr fleming any other reports okay dr schaefer oh just one other mr the it committee was scheduled to meet last week but due to some hr activities that we had to do because of the of certain due
006dates at the end of the month we postponed it last week and it's going to be on the 29th at uh i don't know if we landed on 5 30 or 5 o'clock and so the purpose of that is long-term planning if you recall so far we did a lot of stop-gap measures with the switch and the website and things like that this is more of long-term planning okay thank you mr ropes dr schaefer do we have a report from our student representative today no no we don't okay all right dr schaefer the superintendent's report tonight thank you i'm i plan to make some some comments tonight regarding the budget and specifically some actions that we have taken in preparation as a leadership team for the 2223 budget however before i start that i do
007want to just make a a little reminder here that what we'll be uh posting very soon uh phil just talked about the technology committee what you can expect is we're working hard right now to make sure that we're gonna have that up on the website the public is invited to all of our committee meetings so we'll have the time in the the date for that we have not yet uh set up anything for broadcasting we are not that sophisticated um with the with the the technology for us a small meeting but we'll have that we'll post the agenda in uh the minutes and we're working on that going uh back if you have any questions about that uh please feel free to email me or or give me a call so at the beginning of
008this year and when i talk about this year i mean january 22 it's always an interesting time as an educator because i feel as if you have one foot in the current academic year and another foot in the next academic year we have to start projecting our needs thinking about setting up the organization our students to be successful in asking questions about what are our needs what are our supports what's not working as well as we thought during that during this this process we've made uh a few changes and i and i wanted to bring those to light because these are some of the things that i've talked about and i i think it's it's worthy of reiterating um one of the things that we did was we eliminated an act 93 position in order
009to add another elementary principle i believe it's important to have a principal in every building as well as a school counselor through some staff optimization moves we were able to do just that put a principal and a counselor in every building we're also able to make some moves to bring another trades teacher to the high school a much needed elective and course we also were able to add world language every single day for our seventh and eighth graders at ahms something that is needed we are also able to move a stem teacher up to the middle school to bolster that program and really work to improve where we are relative to what our expectations are for our programs for stem we are also adding more instructional math time for our fifth and sixth graders you
010can recall in february march i did presentations about where we were academically in part based on our state assessment results and some anecdotal data that we have and at our middle school we noticed that some of our math scores are lagging more as compared to some of our other schools so this is a much needed instructional time back that puts students at the middle school on par with our elementary and high schools relative to instructional time we're also able to reduce class sizes at the middle school in seventh and eighth grade about five to six something that we feel is very important adding adena students to our middle school again getting that extra support for our students and our families the middle school does have the highest enrollment out of any school and did not
011have an administrative team commensurate with that we were also able to move our gifted teacher from point five to one off so i just mentioned all of those changes that we're making and we're able to do that at a cost of fifty thousand dollars and we will work as a team to close that gap that was just through optimization we also did not uh or i should say we eliminated four positions from kelly services secretarial positions and we added two district positions this resulted in a cost savings for the district close to forty thousand dollars i mention this because as we think about our position and where we are as an organization in into next year i want to make sure that we are communicating some of the changes that we're making and how we
012think in advance for that one thing that we have to do as an organization is to always ask the question are we operating not only efficiently but effectively and if not how do we right size that and always keeping in mind what is best for our students with that said that ends the report i have for tonight thank you very much dr schaefer okay we're going to move on to item 4 on the agenda public participation if anyone would like to speak i would ask you to fill out a card and turn it in with your name and your address we have a few people up here that i'm going to announce please remember to state your name and where you're from in the district and also please limit your comments to three minutes first
013speaker will be jerry carey thank you board members for this is my first time i've ever spoke of one of your meetings but what i want i'm speaking on behalf of clark summit bureau council and one of our linden street apartments were sealing their parking lot and they had to move all their tenants cars to another area and we got in touch with dr schaefer's office and they accommodated them they offered them the parking in the lower parking lot and of course our police also allowed them to park on linden street they were extremely grateful they got in touch with us and i did recommend them to send a thank you note and i just wanted to let the board know that anything that clark summer bro can do to work with you back and
014forth we'd be more than happy to do that we've done it over the years and we'd like to continue but thanks again for a good job that you do thank you thank you thank you very much ms kerry next speaker will be alicia vogel good evening um some of you most of you might know me i'm alicia vogel i teach first grade at clarkson elementary my purpose tonight is to say thank you to all of the administrative staff school board members the administrators that are here tonight last tuesday our last teacher day of school we had a wellness expo that was put on by the administration and it was a phenomenal event i want to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation to everyone that was involved with that works so diligently um to arrange all
015the vendors i went through the list again today maggie i think there were over 30 about 30 of them and it was just very refreshing for everyone to have that opportunity to interact with the community members and staff members from all different levels taking the time to educate us in all different aspects of wellness so much to the point where there are some dr schaefer was in one that i was in that the jcc had this sound of healing and it was incredible to the point where i think that some of it could be implemented in our classrooms even i imagine some of my six and seven-year-olds in first grade like some of them would be completely fascinated because it's something new to them so um it was very helpful very enjoyable a lot of
016positive feedback then we had a lunch that was provided after there is a chef on your board here sitting among us that everyone enjoyed and we had administrators walking around helping you know the lines were very long and maggie was trying to facilitate to move it along move it along move it along the afternoon a lot of team building activities aha has been part part of an adopt the highway program along the stretch of winola road before you turn on noble road there so because of covid we hadn't had the opportunity to kind of collectively get together so we were permitted to do that so all around i think it was a fabulous day we really enjoyed it i'm speaking for all of the faculty and just collaborating with colleagues and the community as mrs
017tierney said getting people involved like the school district is a focal central point of the community and i couldn't think of a better way to foster that so i thank you for that and i appreciate all that we look forward to what's coming my next job is to figure out how to cope with the fact on tonight's agenda one of my former first graders is on the docket to be hired so i need to figure out which coping one and who i can call for that realization i know because i only look like i'm 25 how could that be possible but thank you again we all really appreciate it thank you very much uh ms vogel and i know i received a ton of feedback from the community as well and i think it was
018a great job by our administration to do that that day for our students and i heard the chef was pretty good also so great job mr mirabelli next speaker will be tom sheen uh i had to staple this in the right hand corner because the way it printed out okay my name is tom sheehan i live in waverly uh and the hits just keep on coming again this is something i came i came across recently and i thought i want to make you aware of it in case you haven't seen it [Music] i'm not going to read the whole article but i'll take some excerpts here on the first page we members of the civic alliance convened by the national association of scholars call on all u.s senators representatives as well as all concerned american
019citizens to oppose the civics secures democracy act and we now have another acronym csda whether in its original form over on the next page in practice whether it's in its original for revised form in practice the civics secures democracy act will enable the federal government to impose both critical race theory and quote action civics vocational training for ideologically partisan protests and lobbying upon america's schools and if you go down about two-thirds of the way down the page halfway through the last paragraph far from supporting the teaching of traditional american civics the civics secured democracy act will do the opposite under the pretense of supporting american civic education this bill would fund education research and teaching initiatives with an unmistakable ideological agenda biden administration made that clear when it issued priorities for american civics and history
020grants guidelines which proven the reference to 1619 project and the work of abraham x kennedy ibrahim x kennedy just think crt the bite administration history and civics grant guidelines amount to a call for critical race theory in education and the civic secures democracy act work funded so if you go to the second last page right at the bottom we note that several other bills including the civics learning act and the promoting programming research education and preservation civics and government act also promised as administered by the department of education to be used to support both critical race theory and action civics mr sheen if you could finish your comments your uh three minutes are up and go ahead and finish it okay i've spoken by giving you my opinion before of the department of education and
021what it's doing with the funds that's handing out and if they're handing out strings like this i think you should be aware thank you mr sheen i think that's all the public comment that we have unless there's someone else that didn't turn in a car okay okay we're going to move to the next item on the agenda which are the action discussion items first i request a motion from the board to approve the bills second on the question uh yeah i have a few questions on the budget analysis gym so it looks like we're wrapping up for this year this analysis goes to the end of may we have a budget of of a total of 50 million dollars for our revenue and our expenditures are 52 million to date we have of as of
022may you have a expenditures of 42 000 260. do you believe that there's going to be a lot more expenses for this year a lot more well you've budgeted for 52 million currently we have the end of may 42. so my question is um do you see a lot more expenses coming in that aren't allowed for for our june 30th uh end of our budget i absolutely do for for example uh our teachers are so you would you would pay there's an additional month of salary benefits to be paid here so june and then our teachers are paid through the summer so there's two more months to be paid there those are the major expenses uh we also frequently have um accounts payable in the range of 400 to 600 000 which will get accrued
023back into this number uh there are uh still things being uh paid for and purchased through june 30th uh which will then be accrued back so uh yes i am projecting uh significantly more expenses than 42 million dollars that you see on this may report does that answer your question yeah it does um i i guess i wait for the treasurer's report because the cash balance is over nine million dollars as of the end of may would that be enough to cover the expenses so you're asking if the cash balance well our treasurer's report is a cash balance as of the end of may is 9 million almost 10 million dollars that we have in cash so will that those funds be used also to go against the expenses that we will be accruing for
024the end of the year for the june 30th i'm not sure we do expend cash to pay for expenditures it will come out of that checking account is that the nature of your question you've also budgeted for a our revenue side of 50 million and we received million are you expecting any more [Music] revenue in before the end of the year i do it would be the same answer as that i had on the expense side we accrue back uh 60 days worth of revenue for example earned income tax when folks filed their june quarterlys after the fact which pertained back to the prior year we would accrue that revenue back uh any uh sales of real estate transactions that occur in the month of june or prior we would accrue that revenue back so
025we do keep the books open in essence for 60 days after june 30th so yes i do expect a significant amount of revenue to come in as well as a significant amount of expense which is traditional sure happens every year okay all right thank you anyone else okay roll call mrs henderson yes this is karen yes mr modenski yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdullah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mr acker yes 9-0 okay thank you mr madinski could we have the treasures report yes you may we started the uh yeah may uh treasury report uh we started the month with a total cash of twelve million forty three thousand six hundred thirty nine dollars we had revenues of two million two hundred fifteen thousand six hundred and seven dollars we
026had expenditures of four million three hundred eighty nine thousand four and fifty six dollars and uh we are left with the cash balance going into june as mrs tierney said nine million eight hundred and sixty nine thousand seven hundred eighty nine dollars great thank you very much i have a motion to approve the treasurer's report so moved second on the question roll call mrs karen yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mr acker 9-0 thank you and dr schaefer could you give us the personnel report please yes mr azar asks that the board approved the personnel report uh numbers 1 on the question i don't have a question i have a statement um pat mcgarry will be a loss he's
027a great assistant principal a great teacher at our abington heights middle school he will be very well missed we really loved mr mccary so if i'm not sure if he's here tonight but it was just such an honor to know him and to have him in our in our building thank you thank you miss terry i'd echo those comments i had three middle schoolers in his building this year and and they all uh had a huge bonus for him and he'll be missed by a ton of people so best of luck to mr mcgarry and to everyone else on this list anyone else okay roll call mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes this is tierney yes mr abdellah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr acker 9-0 mr
028azar had asked that the board consider a motion to approve the agreement with the children's service center for the partial hospitalization program in the therapeutic educational program along with the hipaa confidentiality document as contained in item 1. so moved second on the question roll call mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdellah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes this is karim yes mr madinsky yes mr acker yes nine zero mr azar at asset the board uh approved the transportation contracts and item number two so move second on the question roll call mrs tierney yes mr abdullah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mr acker yes 9-0 mr azar asks that the board consider a motion to approve the
029school board meeting dates for school year item number three so moved second on the question roll broca mr abdellah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr acker 9-0 mr azar had asked that the board consider a motion to approve the agreement between abington heights school district and hr solved to provide human resource support for employee management and reporting as contained in item number four so moved second on the question roll call mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes this is karen yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr acker yes 9-0 mr azar had asked that the board consider a motion to approve the june volunteer list item number five second
030on the question roll call mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr azar yes mr acker yeah nine zero mr azar had asked that the board consider a motion to approve the disposal of four spectrophotometers from the abington heights high school second on the question i have a question dr schaefer what are they spectrometers that is a that is a great question miss tierney that we do not know the answer to however i will recall that we had a previous action item about the disposal of curricular resources so right now what we are doing is going through our buildings to find obsolete equipment in order to create some more space i imagine this may be in the realm of microfiche that's
031a good answer okay thanks all right thank you anyone else on the question or sorry roll call mrs henderson yes mrs carom yes mr badenski yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mr acker yeah nine zero mr azar asks the board consider a motion to approve the abington heights athletic director job description as contained in item number six i'll move this is revised right this is a different one that we had though yes correct this is revised one of the financial questions relative to the booster clubs has been revised by jim yeah okay great thanks roll call mrs karam yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mr acker yeah 9-0 mr
032azar asked the board to consider a motion to approve the agreement with brian t kelly cpa and associates llc for new required regulatory reporting as a result of the adoption of gas b87 and sas numbers 134 through 35 45 as contained in item seven so move second on the question roll call mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr acker yes 9-0 mr azar had asked the board to consider a motion to approve the 2022-23 final general fund budget as contained in item number eight so moved second okay so on the question i just want to slow things down a bit here for a second i think we're going to spend some some time talking about this topic
033obviously we have we've had two extensive uh presentations by jim mirabelli and i i just want to compliment jim on on just how much data was put in front of the board we really didn't talk a lot about it after those two meetings and i'd like to go through a few things today i know some of the other board members have expressed that they would like to as well i have a few slides i was just going to talk but it's when i talk i create slides it's just you know what i do uh so i i'm gonna go through these slides but i would ask any board member as i'm going through each of these the first couple of slides are really just data uh and then i do have some of my own
034views on some slides um but i would ask board members to just chime in raise your hand if you want to if you want to talk for a while about anything that i have up here so this is coming up okay it'll be up here in a second so while that's warming up i'll just i'll talk a little bit about this first slide and explain what i'd like to start with so um there we go okay so if you go to the next slide so on this page what i tried to do and this is an insult to mr mirabelli uh to try and put his world onto one page right um the the the stack of information that backs up these numbers is almost as high as this room um but certainly for i'm
035a new board member i've only been on the board for a year and a half we have some other new board members i know a lot of these board members that have been here for a long time know these numbers certainly a lot better than we do but in the in the last few weeks few months i've gotten a lot of questions from people that i know in the community about our budget and i know that a lot of people in the community don't don't really know this stuff i've been in finance my whole life and it's it's not simple and i think it's helpful as we discuss what we're discussing tonight which is a big deal it's helpful for us to to go through this again and i i don't want to ask mr
036mirabili to repeat everything that he's repeated the last a couple of meetings where he did do extensive presentations but there have been a few changes uh mr mirabili since your last presentation and uh before i ask you to sort of review those what i laid out here for everybody's benefit behind me on the left is our this is our projected budget for the coming year at the top are the revenues that are projected local state and federal you can see very heavy uh local and then the expenses underneath obviously are laid out by category based on our projections so far if we if we do nothing if we don't raise local taxes this year we would have a 3.3 million dollar deficit based on our projected budget and if we do raise what's recommended by
037administration uh we would have it still a two and a half million dollar uh projected deficit and then on the right these are our savings accounts basically so just like you have at home we have money set aside for other things not for our operations not not not for our our salaries our payroll our services for other stuff basically so i'll go into that in a minute but jim if you could just talk for a little bit about some of the changes that maybe have taken place since your last presentation uh so uh when i presented can everybody hear me this is it doesn't seem to be coming through okay um so i had committed to the board that uh we would be making some changes between the preliminary budget and the final budget and
038uh i'm coming to you tonight to to let you know what those changes were on the revenue side we are listening closely to what's coming out of harrisburg and although there isn't much coming out of harrisburg uh we're not hearing much for bad news in terms of what the subsidy may be so we revised our revenue estimate from the state upward by one percent for a total increase of two percent over the current year subsidy we also made some revenue adjustments on real estate taxes based on the delinquent tax collectible amount uh as well as some of the tax appeals that are going on in the real estate tax assessment world we also revise our earnings estimates in this interest rate environment i expect we'll be able to earn some some more funds on our
039deposits and that's basically uh the highlights from the revenue side between what changed from the last presentation to this side and then on the expense side excuse me excuse me jim could you actually give some financial numbers with those uh revenue sides those those numbers are contained in the in the document that is set forth but um just for edification [Music] the increase in state revenue is was about a hundred thousand dollars between the basic ed and the special ed increase there the difference in local revenue when you consider the um the refined revenue estimates was actually negligible it changed the entire local revenue amount by one thousand dollars so i'm just alerting you that there were some revisions in those specific line items there so that's not reflective in these numbers right changes that
040you're this is the updated that was sent out last week this is the updated what i'm reviewing now are the changes between the preliminary budget which was adopted in may and the final budget which was sent out to the board last week correct okay and then on the expense side we had some reclassifications budget neutral for expenses related substitutes we went so we made a change of about 470 000 to move it from one line item to the other we'll still be employing substitutes just in a different way we also that's just a shift in in the line item right correct budget neutral but for full disclosure i'm i'm noting uh you know the changes that i made we also reclassified some provisions for salary estimates for future increases for certain categories of employees who
041have unsettled contracts with the district which was budget neutral there was no monetary change there uh also in response to the uncertainty with with charter schools uh we increased the budgetary reserve by 250 000 it's our initiative to reduce that number greatly however there is great uncertainty there right so in the event that that something goes there this is not a budgeted line item that we plan to spend it's a budgetary reserve if something goes wrong right so that's what it's there for most years we don't touch the budgetary reserve it's it's not a slush fund it's not it's just there if there's a cost overrun in a year of great uncertainty it's commensurate to have a higher budgetary reserve can you give us an estimate on what we spent on charter schools last year
042and comparative to what we spent this year i can answer the question now um give you an idea in in 1920 it was 981 904. in 2020 21 it was 1988 159 and then 21 22 projected is at and as jim mentioned we were working hard to make sure that we have discussions with our families in the district who have chosen the charter route to reorient them to some of the programs that we have and hopefully they could come back to our schools so you're budgeting more students leaving our district our budget estimate includes a goal of reducing the number of students so in the budget where i think we have about one 1.45 is is our projected spend for next year the 250 k in budgetary reserve is if folks make a different choice
043the budgetary reserve is there because we don't have the legal authority to spend over the total budgeted dollar amount so that so yes we're budgeting or to plan to reduce that number because of the active engagement we think we can get there but budgetary reserve is there for great uncertainty so this year's budgetary reserve that you put in from last year you have the numbers of what we spent on charter schools was there money left over did you budget accurately did we have a deficit did we have to pay more do we have to use that reserve i i believe we're spending more than we budgeted for yes we budgeted about 1.6 million dollars we started off the year right on the money for about the first two months circumstances changed and uh you know
044the the rate went up so we're we will see a negative variance in that budget line item but we did create some budgetary reserve for items like that thank you and beyond that there were some minor inflationary adjustments in things like electricity we just learned that the cost of copy paper is about doubled things of this nature so we're dealing with inflationary uh items just as every other consumer is excuse me uh so we we made uh some some inflationary adjustments to line such as that thanks jim so just for clarification uh last year's uh total budget was what for the last fiscal year oh just give me one moment please 48 million 40 48 million in revenue 6 million increase you're over here like what are the expenses i'm sorry buddy [Music] that's right
045it's that's right last year the prior year budget amount is in your treasures report and you can compare the two years handily i just can't access it right now because my computer's not as good so does that make sense jim that it was 47 million last year that is not a correct number the number was 52.4 million dollars was the expense for the current year mike was asking for last year's last years the year ended when you compare 2022 to 23 to the current year that would be the year end of next week the year immediately preceding it okay so were you asking what the budgeted expenses were for last year the actual projected we're talking about 54.2 million right this year projected for project yep for the next for this for this fiscal year
046right what was it last year the projected no no the actual or the actual we don't have that done yet so two years ago during the covet year where expenses were down because we were closed i i will obtain that number for you as well just give me another minute thank you so the actual spent in 2021 is 50.6 million dollars that was before we added uh 10 or 12 additional teachers that was the year ended june 30th 2021 is what you're saying right correct it is what greg is saying about the three million dollar bond payment that's that is taken off the top that's that's included as an expense in the 50.6 really i'm not sure i didn't hear the question what what is the question that was a transfer to the capital reserve
047fund and transfer to the debt service fund the debt service is about 1.2 million dollars and that's correct right so our actual expenses that we spend out it's only 47. i don't have the number in front of me but right you have to consider all the covent related savings that occurred in that year we didn't pay 100 of our transportation project our so there were there were a number of savings we didn't pay substitute teachers because folks were virtual uh no overtime things of this nature so it's it's a year it's apples and oranges in my view that was your point mr fleming you were questioning the big jump right so some of that that's my concern yeah i'm just trying to reconcile right the big difference yeah yeah i mean i think that i
048don't know the detailed numbers but certainly there were a lot of the expenses that we would normally occur in a school year weren't weren't happening so i don't know what the magnitude of that oh that is but correct so it was high it was a large magnitude but then subsequent to that lower spending year we added 10 or 12 positions which is 1.2 million dollars right um but did we use our stimulus money for those salaries up until year 23 24. yeah but that's the year yes but that's not relevant to the expense side of the user those are revenues that are covering those expenses but the expenses uh went up dramatically quickly because of those lower expenses during covet plus we did hire last summer 10 new teachers that that just increased the raw
049expenses they're covered for the next couple of years because of the asset funds but they're not the expenses still went up yeah right and how much attrition do we expect i mean i know that's a tough question but i would assume that there is some professional staff attrition that we'll realize in the coming year do we have any understanding of that that's that's not something i can comment on i we do have about a third of our staff at the top of scale but beyond you know i'm budgeting what a status quo maintaining service budget as i've maintained as i've described all along to this process and i i'm not projecting any additional savings we've we've hired folks we've adjusted the salaries down to to what they are or up uh because it's a different
050job market now uh we're not hiring at step one uh a lot of the times uh so the the salaries in this budget are the folks that we've identified that are coming next year so uh there we wouldn't have any attritional savings to project in the the current yeah right or in the 2223 budget but that could be a cost savings yes yeah it could happen you just you can't project that so it's not the same way i can't project if a kindergarten class goes over 26 and we have to hire another teacher a month from now right but it's a safe assumption that we will have some attrition this coming year yeah i agree with you i mean it has happened every year i mean i would think but you don't know what the
051magnitude is going to be um i took a few minutes to look at our audit that we received for june 30th 2020 21 that we received i think maybe february march from last year and i just kind of read the highlights we approved a budget with the deficit we hired 10 plus positions we had contractual raises we had earmarked technology we have a plan for feasibility study which i know we're working on now but we had that in the works in this in the thoughts last fall we ended the year with a surplus of 2.5 million 105.3 percent of the budget we had invested in a new track in turf field we had met all of our obligations and mandates we did we paid our pension we had our salaries and benefits we increased our
052special ed expenses we paid all of our charter expenses we actually even drew down some of our debt and we have acquired we've also have well over the required percentage for our general funds and we did not raise taxes and i think that's important for all of us to see it is a very difficult time for us when we don't have all of the information in front of us for us to make this kind of a decision tonight this was just handed this revised budget was just handed to us a few days ago so i think we need to really look at this a little bit more seriously tonight um rod i'd like you to yeah we'll keep going keep going with your slides but i think it's important for us to know the history
053here and know we're starting um so we can get a pulse on where we go and project our future thank you anybody else have any comments on this slide before we we won't spend as much time on every slide as i went should we explain to the audience what the different funds are yeah sure um so jim you want to handle that one sure our general fund balance think of that as your normal checking account balance i'm going to go quickly because we've talked about this twice already this year so the capital reserve fund is used for projects that are capital in nature infrastructure type projects that the district chooses to invest in you cannot use these funds for things like paying the electricity bill or salaries health insurance fund is used to pay claims
054out because we're self-insured we pay premiums i'm using air quotes to ourselves out of the general fund into the health insurance fund and then the claims are paid out of this fund in years where the premiums we pay to ourselves are higher than uh what the claims are there the the balance will go up in years when the opposite is true it will go down this balance has been right around that same seven million dollar mark for quite some time now the food service fund is our cafeteria operation and those funds can only be used in the to serve our students in the cafeteria debt service fund is simply an in and out we transfer funds from the general fund to the debt service fund and then we go and pay our bonds through that
055fund good great thank you thank you okay so we've committed committed to a few projects uh namely the south abington elementary roof uh some about 300 000 in information technology upgrades and those are the two that are coming to my mind at this point they're not included that's 4.4 net of those expenses correct yeah that's right yes and what's expected for next year what's budgeted for for the next fiscal year for capital for capital those are the two there is no currently there's a facility study out we've only we've only identified here um what has been approved by the board there's i don't have a specific capital project right now your market for that 4.4 that's that's part of the work that we'll be doing uh through our facility study procedure okay okay great anybody
056else so if you flip to the next page this is uh something i put together if i was not on the board and even being on the board these are the three questions that i would ask when told can you flip the page sorry so these are the three questions that i think are the instinctive normal questions to ask whenever the topic of a deficit comes up is how do you solve it so the first one i put on here because i got this from a lot of people in the community can't we use some of our reserve funds we have 23 million dollars in reserves why can't we tap into that uh instead of raising taxes why can't we tap into that to do other things that people want in the school district you
057know all day kindergarten other things that we all hear about and so the point that i make here in the first two bullets and i'm gonna ask jim to tell me if i'm wrong but more than half of those funds it's not legal to use for budget items i think that's what you were just saying jim right the capital reserve the health care reserve we can't use those funds for is that correct you cannot pay for ongoing expenses out of those two funds right you can't pay directly okay so that leaves us with the general fund and i and i use the analogy of into your house right if you have money in the bank everybody should for emergencies that's really what the general fund is and it's it's a significant number we can have
058a debate on if it's the right size number um but you really you can't budget to use the general fund for a deficit you should really balance your budget and so you know that's the reason why that money is not technically available unless we as a board decide that we think that that number is too big and we should move that money somewhere else maybe the capital maybe maybe spend it so other than that i don't i don't know that there's any other any other topics to discuss relative to the reserve funds but i just wanted to point that out and i'll just go through this and then if everybody wants to jump in with their thoughts so could we could we make meaningful reductions to our expenses to close the deficit we've done that
059in the past as a school district right there's been a long history here for for well over a decade of doing that of we've had deficits before other people can can speak to that better than i can and uh we've done things to to reduce the deficit and have a surplus in some years um i think that as dr schaefer mentioned we're certainly working hard on cyber school and that's a huge unknown we could have a windfall this year if we're successful or it could be worse it's really hard to project that the only other real ways to solve on the expense side that have a meaningful impact is to cut stuff to cut teachers cut administration cut staff if you think you have you know too much cut services cut programs cut athletics and
060you know that is something that you know is certainly on the table to do as an option i'm just laying out options here the third question is okay well what can you do on the revenue side how can you how can you have higher other than raising taxes how could you increase our revenue so i listed three things you could certainly have positive changes in state and federal revenues i wouldn't bank on that but uh that could happen federal is a very small part of our budget uh states significant that could change but unlikely we could have positive surprises in earned income taxes and real estate transfer taxes we did the last couple of years earnings were way up real estate transactions were way up so we had some nice surprises so that's possible that
061could continue but it's you know probably not prudent to rely on especially given the environment right now with the economy the last one on here this is something that i think really does have legs not this year not next year but there was an article in the paper today excuse me um about the reassessment that's happening in lackawanna county we haven't had a reassessment since i was not born yet and then i'm dating myself but uh in the 1960s so uh there's there's a lot of issues with reassessment i don't want to get into the political you know football of of reassessment but the dynamics of reassessment that could be positive it's not going to make us any more money i've heard that too from people like well when we have a reassessment our revenues
062are going to go up they're not it's just that people in the community are going to have potentially diff definitely different taxes people that have under assessed properties are going to pay more people have over assessed properties are going to pay less but the revenues that the school district are going to have the moment that that's done are the same it's the future that could change so ask anybody that develops commercial residential real estate in the abingtons and there's been some but there has not been a ton not as much as some other school districts have had one of the reasons is that if you build a new house in the abbetons or you develop a property it's a huge tax bill it just that's that's the dynamic and that could change and i think
063that that could stimulate some growth but we're talking about three four years from now and just the start of it so that's a big positive but it's not something that is going to help us in the next couple of years so this is i just laid this out because i think it's helpful to to talk about how can we fix this problem what are our options so i don't know if anybody else has any thoughts on these questions or other other topics as it relates to the to the deficit that the administration is projecting okay okay let's go to the next one so the next few slides i'll go through quickly these are ones that i i sincerely pirated from mr mirabelli and i just overlaid some data in the last 12 years on this
064slide here let me go to the next one this is showing that in the last 12 years abington heights has only raised taxes by 5 in the aggregate the second lowest is north pocono at uh four times the level of abbitton heights and then the average is almost 30 so clearly we've significantly not raised taxes for the last at least 12 years that's how far the data went back that mr mirabilly showed us so if you flip to the next page that's not printed out well here so this is a line chart that shows the actual increases and you can see the average per year for everton heights is 0.4 percent the next lowest school district is 1.6 that's north pocono per year for the last 12 years so this is some of the like
065when we went through this presentation i didn't even realize it when i looked at the charts so i wanted to sort of digest it and look at the magnitude on a per year basis and what does that mean so if we had just matt it's on the next slide but you can stay on this line if we had just matched north pocono with with tax increases over the last 12 years and and raised at an average rate of 1.6 per year we'd still be tied for the lowest in the county we'd still be able to say that we were you know among the lowest uh of the spectrum that's four over four million dollars of revenues that didn't come into the school district that benefited the taxpayers for short if we were at the average
066which is 2.1 percent for the other nine schools per year it would have been over six million dollars so i know there were reasons why we did what we did and there was a lot of uh you know if i you know i've been a taxpayer myself and everybody likes it when their taxes don't go up but there are ramifications for that um and if you feel that you don't need to do it then you don't do it but i wanted to lay out the numbers of what what that impact has been so you can flip to the next one so this is what i just articulated this is the dollar impact and you can go one more now so these next two slides are the ones that really and i'm starting to get into
067what what my views are and then i'm going to ask everybody else to chime in obviously these are the two slides that really impacted me a lot i had no idea really of any of this math when i applied to run for the school board and i was really really surprised to see that our revenue per student was as low as it is so there's roughly 500 school districts and we've we've gone through this before with mr very belly but i think it's worth talking about again there's 500 public school districts in the state of pennsylvania we're 492nd as of 2020. this is a little dated information in revenue per student so the amount of revenue that we're bringing in as a school district per student we're at almost the very bottom so what does
068that mean how could we be great and we are we have great academics we have incredible performance and and i believe that it's it's not because we've as a community done what other communities have done it's because the parents and the teachers have done what they've done you know i know what goes on in my house not me but my wife and we have a lot of people that do that booster clubs ptas it's an amazing community the issue that i have is that if you keep doing that eventually it's going to catch up and you can't you know we're you know we're to a lot of school districts people look up to us and we have a lot of responsibility there but there are a lot of other school districts that compete for talent
069when people move to this area and people move back to this area and i my fear is that if we continue to be ranked this low that we're not going to be able to stay on top we're going to we're going to suffer if we do the next slide is just a sort of the inverse of the revenue side so spending per pupil and what's what's really shocking to me about this slide is if you look at the other three lines so abington is the blue line so our spending per student is 36 3700 less than the state average that's not the state high mark that's the state average but there's two other lines on here that are also pretty relevant the regional average which is school districts in northeastern pennsylvania and then the peer
070group average which is school districts like abington heights all over the state and all three of those lines are really tight together and we are way below and what i mentioned before about four to six million dollars of revenues if we were just at either the next school up or the average the difference here is over 10 million dollars if we were at the average and we're not going to do that overnight but i i think it it really blew me away that this is the difference between us and other school districts and some people think that it's a it's a good thing and some people think that it's a bad thing i i clearly uh i'm not i'm not real happy with it um i certainly don't want to be at the top right
071we shouldn't aspire to be spending more than anybody in the state but i also don't think that we should be 492 in the state so go ahead understand unless someone else wants to speak i've been speaking a bit does anyone else want to comment on anything i have a total different um opinion on that number there and that where we are i look at efficient and effectiveness we have a business manager that we have put to task and he's done an incredible job we have a great success here of our student population we have a 98 graduation class we have a orchestra that i actually went to the orchestra show in the spring there was not room for one more instrument or cello or anything on that stage i look at that as success i
072look at our sat scores i look at our student education i also understand that part of that formula is our facilities i am i have been an advocate for facilities in our our structures for 17 years i know we don't have the best of the best we have incredible students we have an incredible business manager that we hold to task so i look at this as a very successful number we have never been delinquent in our bills we have fund balances that are well above the percentages that the state recommends for us to have we have a great bond rating we have increased and spent money on fields it is a process so should we spend more on our students if it means that we need to do more in our facilities 100 i'm with
073you on that one but the fact that we have such a phenomenal academic level that can always get better and better and better but we've held our money down and our spending down to produce a great student thank you mister discount um jim i think my microphone is not working was so let's talk a little bit about a couple notes on uh one congratulations for being so efficient but you have recommended that we increase the tax revenue to keep up correct the administration has made that recommendation yes and one of the things that we're looking at with the crisis that we're seeing in revenue and spending is the cyber charter loss correct that's correct can you go over how we determine how much we spend per charter student the numbers and i have them in
074front of me so i'm asking you to just go over this for everyone else the number we spend per student based on this slide in particular and the number that we spend per student when they go to charter academies and where we get that that accounting from does that make sense sure so the tuition that we pay to cyber charter schools and brick and mortar charter schools for that matter is based on the our budgeted expenditures for the next year so even though cyber charters have a very different cost structure than brick and mortar public schools and less regulation they use our expenses to determine what the tuition rate will be there's a forum called pde 363 after we approve next year's budget we'll take the numbers from that budget we'll put every line item
075in there are a few exclusions that you take out of of the calculation and it spits out a number currently that number is eleven thousand dollars for a regular ed student that goes to cyber and 21 000 for a special ed student that goes to cyber or brick and mortar charter so this number on this graph where we spend 13 000 per student does that include our special ed students or would they be spent higher or is that part of the average if we were to break this calculation apart there there would be a difference there this is an aggregate per student so it's sort of a blended rate if you want to look at it that way i do have one more question and this might be for rod can you go back to
076the slide please with the tax percent increases so i suppose i want the question i'm trying to ask is and forgive me if this doesn't come out correctly were these other schools in some respect playing catch-up to the revenue side so in other words all these school districts went up um there was a slide earlier on in your one of your last presentations where school districts went up like 20 to 30 over 10 years correct yeah that's correct most school districts went up all school districts went up by 20 to 36 percent over the last 12 years were they okay and so was our base already high enough do you see one trying to ask our base was higher if you go back if you go back to that if you look at the beginning
077of that chart we were at the higher end on a millage basis but that's it's not apples to apples that way it's not to say that our this is just a raw beginning point of tax millage each school district has a different calculation of what their millage is and their assessments what really matters is that the trend of the lines we were at the high end though of the millage and by the end of this we were at the low end okay that makes sense thank you jeff i'm careful with that number two because of the assessed values we have five of the top six in this entire area of assessed value so ours are like say 17 19 20. there's only one other community that's even in that mix at the same time i'm
078going to say out of all our school districts we pay the highest tax rates of of everybody else we're in the we're uh five of the top 12 of of tax rates so yes our millages and our tax rates were higher to begin with over that whole course so you can you can get a little confusing here with the data and what and what this chart tells us is all the tax increases for these different school districts it does not tell us the school district's budgets what their spending is what their balances are what their deficits are so we have no knowledge i mean i i haven't looked at every other school district that's listed here and just either budget so really all this information is is saying to us what other school districts did
079as far as raising taxes and you know i think it's very important for us to be mindful of our budget um as it you know you can compare but it you can't really compare them because i have we have no knowledge of what their fiscal uh you know balance is at an at any level yeah i i agree the value in the comparison though is it's a pretty good sampling of 10 other school districts in the last 12 years we've raised revenues three times and the next the next one from us is seven and that's only one school lakeland and then all the other schools are eight or nine times it's a dramatic difference if it was one i wouldn't say that it wasn't a trend but it certainly seems like and i and i
080wish i had data for for a much bigger sampling than this my understanding and through my discussions with administration and with others is that it's it's not at it's not abnormal and this is some of the stuff that i want to get into on the last page so if i if i could go to that last page so one thing that i think that people have to get their arms around is that when a school district raises taxes it's not the same as when a state government or federal government raises taxes we have an asset-based tax we do not have a sales tax or an income tax that goes up with inflation so the only way for us to move the needle other than the other stuff in the revenue boxes right we can hope
081for real estate transfer taxes we can hope the state and the feds help us we can hope that the assessments go up uh the only way we can move the needle is if we physically move that needle as a school board um and we have 75 of our expenses payroll and benefits are escalating this is where like it does like you can complicate it but you can you can also make it very simple seventy-five percent of our expenses go up every year by over three percent because it's contractual staff administration and teachers um and that's normal that's not abnormal everybody in the world that works you know typically has has throughout their career those kind of escalations ours are contractual and then the rest of our budget escalates by inflation that's been pretty low for
082the last 30 years until six months ago 12 months ago and now it's really high so if we have a budget of expenses that have those kind of contractual escalations in it that that's why i get to my second point where it to me it seems based on what i've and and i have not looked at all 500 school districts but it seems like it's common and normal for school districts to to gently not buy the full index every year but to gently raise taxes to keep up with their costs a lot more frequently than abington heights has in the last uh 12 years um we have very significant projected deficits not just this year but in future years um the the fourth one on the on the point of facilities which you mentioned miss
083tierney i i and i don't want to get too far into this because we have a deficit problem without the facility needs we have massive facility needs based on the feedback from our community and our surveys and based on our discussions as a board and we have no way to pay for them other than 4.4 million dollars in our capital reserve because we have structural deficits we have no way to pay for them unless we increase revenues and as mr mirabelli said we're now at a point because we have an index that you can't go higher than we are going to be very hard pressed to find revenues to support the type of facilities renovations that that we might get back from the study but that i just let i lay that out here as
084as a point because it is something that we need to fund but um even without that i think the rest of this holds water and the last point and i'll turn it back over to everybody else that i want to make is when you invest in your school district even if you don't have kids in the school district you get a return on your investment if you look at the best school districts in the state go look at the real estate values in that community not just our state every state now go look at the worst communities that have the toughest issues and the lowest taxes their real estate values don't move they're stagnant so nobody likes the tax word i don't like it right um but and i'm you know i'm uh still getting
085deeper into these numbers but uh you know i do believe that there is a major return on investment for advocacy knights to remain excellent and i agree with you ms tierney we are and and what i what i am focused on though is not what we are and where we've been it's how do we stay there so mr o'donnell if we don't do anything just say we say status quo and we get the facility study back and we get the police study back do we have any money to do anything from a safety standpoint so from a from a safety standpoint i think that goes back to that that the 4.4 million estimated left over um is it enough um i i don't i think i i think when the facility study and the related
086estimates come back i think that would be that will pale in comparison to what might come back and get recommended based on some other facility studies i've seen in the past and just observations of the conditions of things but that's anecdotal okay my observation anyone else i have a couple things i wanted to share but when we i guess just for the general public when we're when we're hearing 3.4 can you give us some idea of of what that actually looks like because we're hearing like oh the max the max the max but in terms of like spending what what does that look like for the average let's say family so the the median assessed value is uh 20 thousand dollars in abington high school district so the when you apply a 3.4 percent increase
087on top of the current taxes you would get a number about 84. if i'm if i'm remembering correctly from my last presentation about eighty-four dollars additionally but uh the other motion on your agenda this evening is the homestead farmstead uh exclusion uh which the state for the first time since inception has uh provided more funds toward homestead farmstead credits uh to the tune of i think uh 38 dollars so that would net against uh the increase and and bring it down to it would blunt it to somewhere between 40 and 50 increase uh in this this current year and that's not to minimize the the impact of a tax increase i'm just to the to the taxpayer they will also see um the credit coming off as well as any increase that is decided upon
088a year correct that's for a year not a month per year per year yeah oh that for a year yeah and be careful 20 000 assess that's the median so i mean you have people that are a lot higher and some people that are lower so you know you can do that okay anyone else oh god mr modesto i mean i i just want to say like you know to increase taxes is not something that i think i can't speak on everyone's behalf but that i don't think we take we take lightly um you know and as school board directors you know it's our duty to do things that are fiscally responsible um you know and like mr azar said you know we want to keep property values up um you know and and there's
089other variables that we can look at you know we're always looking at grants we can look to community and corporate partnerships to increase money but all of those things are are unknowns um and when we're looking at the money you know it's it's definitely concerning and you know i have said since day one as a as a new school board member i have a lot of respect for the you know former board and administration for the fiscally conservative um decisions that they made but now you know and as a new member you know i have a different perspective as a parent and having a background in education and i've said to i think almost every school board um other school board director that i never want my opinions or perceptions to be seen as me
090being critical but i think you know when you bring in new people you're bringing in new uh perspective and ideas so and i don't think you know it doesn't really serve us well to you know look in the romero and say this is what should have been done i think we just it's our duty to look at you know what are the needs what are we what decisions can we make that are reflective of what our district and our community as a whole needs now and i know you know in the past we um from administration cut teaching positions and i was so happy to see that they were brought back i know dr mahan referred to um i guess the set as something along the lines of staff light so i remember hearing him
091speak in a meeting last spring that that philosophy you know it really was apparent during the pandemic you know we always have gaps in learning gaps in needs and that gap was exponentially bigger my concern is you know we want to be able to sustain what we have and i think adding those 10 positions last summer and adding the positions that we are for next year are critical um and you know we're talking about having to cut positions you know that's a huge concern um i'm sure not just for me but for others but as a parent and someone with a background in education you know i've you know i'm in the buildings i've you know run a non-profit empowerment program for girls in grades third through eighth grade and the difference in the needs
092of our students it's dramatic difference you know these kids are struggling families are struggling you know and i think we just need to continue to make sure that we're investing you know our goal is to educate the whole child you know making sure that we're continuing i think we've done a great job this year looking at curriculum but continue to look at how we can improve those academic enhancements and support them on a social and emotional level and i just think you know as a part of that is we need to be mindful of when we're supporting our children it's a matter of making sure that we have adequate staffing and that we're supporting our staff um and i just think that we that's something that when i hear like oh we we're gonna have
093to cut staff that's that's a huge concern because i don't think we would be serving our children well um and doing that so like i said you know a tax increase is not something that any of us you know necessarily want but at this point you know i think we just need to make decisions that are going to help sustain what we have um and just look at how we're going to invest in our community and the district as a whole so thank you anderson mrs tierney gretchen i appreciate your thoughts um thank you for um complimenting the former board and the hard work they did and as a former board director and a current board director i really appreciate your point of view and your newness it does help us to collectively make a
094team decision to get back to the topic of annually raising taxes unfortunately the way our state funding is formula is is out there is it does make it so most of us board directors in different districts across the state of pennsylvania if we think that we are being fiscally responsible we should be raising taxes every year just to keep us afloat that was a philosophy that we worked very hard in not doing to become more fiscally responsible in finding ways to never cut because we don't have the funds but to cut because it was an efficient way to make our programs better without the expense if you could and it's a balancing act and every year it is harder and harder to balance that we put the task to mr mirabelli every year to come
095back and give us take from here do from there do this do that it is very difficult in my opinion to raise taxes when you have the solid funds that we have i know everyone thinks differently we are a very sound school district we have never been delinquent do we need facility updates you bet we do we have to be fiscally responsible and plan so fortunately we have a feasibility study that we are in the process of doing we hope to have the findings of that by the fall which will give us enough time if we decide on doing major projects to apply for a referendum you talked about the needle there are other ways you can borrow money you can put up a referendum if you qualify in the right time and you let
096the community vote on whether or not they want what we're asking for and then you have a capital campaign where we go out and the district goes out and we work with corporations to raise funds there are different ways to continue to annually tax our community because we need to keep up with inflation we need to keep up and come i personally find that really hard to do i look each year it is a different year and this year i believe because inflation is so crazy gas prices are so crazy we can afford to stay where we are right now without raising taxes i had earlier in a month ago suggested that we negotiate and maybe not go to the full index no one bit on that so i find it very difficult for us
097to to raise taxes at this time we have had a deficit balanced deficit every year for the last five or six years and we have been able to pay all of our bills and transfer funds and be able to be afloat and we are a solid fiscally responsible school district thank you mr obama no no no no i'm good i decided mr modenski mr azar uh your data is very good and that's one data point but i can also say and reverse that and say well maybe the higher cost for student doesn't mean better all the time because i look at the school distance districts are in there and we rank as in the top 10 of the state now i'm not saying we shouldn't spend more i'm not saying that i just believe it's
098one data point there's a lot and you commented on it it's our community it's our parents and how we perceive what we need to do for our kids to make them better and we have great success in that respect so it is not just how much money you spend for the student there's a lot of other factors in there and i think that's we should continue those discussions because there's maybe there's other things we can do to even promote some of those things just wanted to to mention that the other thing i wanted to mention was and some of the other long-term board members may remember this but when i first came on the board the gloom and doom of the next several years and that chart going way down i've we have seen that
099in every budget discussion and i was like oh my god we got to raise taxes because we need money every year we see that you know the status quo and how that analysis is and and again to michelle's point we look at it every single year and every single year changes and the data is all changed uh the last two years were unbelievable what we had to go through to make it but we we tend to be able to either break even or close every single year and i i strongly believe we'll be able to do that again this year because you know what the figures are and they don't stay the same for month to month it's it's like things get accrued but i don't believe we're going to be in in a hole
100now next year that could be totally different so but uh i don't get too concerned when i see that that downward slide because we've seen it every year and it really hasn't come true any of those years mr bell i'm good this is henderson um you know i hear the the doom and gloom piece but i also think you know what we have in front of us now is different than what it has been several years ago i mean we need to make we have the facilities study out and we don't know what they're going to come back with we have some guesses you know and our goal is you know we have to improve building safety we want you know to send our kids to schools that are the safest possible we want also
101want to make sure that our children feel safe when they're at school and you know one way that the district was able to save money was not investing in the facilities and i know mrs tierney spoke about investing in the facilities but i think when we come back with that report we get that information back it might be shocking you know there's there's a lot of stuff um i agree that we need to invest you know there's several buildings that are leaking rain water you know we have trash cans collecting water and i don't think that's you know i don't want to rub anyone the wrong way by pointing that out but i think for me like walking into an abington heights building that was shocking so i get the doom and gloom piece and
102i'm hoping that the doom and gloom is not quite as bad but i also think that we're faced with some stuff that has been compiling year after year after year and we're going to have you know some major major investments that we're looking at sure about the one thing that confuses me is everybody's blessing mr our business manager over there about how great he's done over the past 10 12 years in administration and they've listened to him and they've done everything that they said and everything's been fine but this year they're suggesting something different so now this is the year we're going to decide to go against what they're suggesting okay then i misunderstood that i stand corrected okay miss carol um one of the things that we're talking about right now is facilities but
103that's not really what i learned from the two budget presentations we just had what we saw was a significant decrease in staff to the point where we were so lean that during coved we did see issues arise that we hadn't seen before and that's what we're looking at so when we talk about something like class sizes for instance when you put all those kids on a zoom screen and you're trying to teach a first grader to read and then we see okay we have a reading gap how are we going to fill that we need specialists we need we need staff members who can do these jobs and i think that that's really i don't think the conversation is are we raising taxes annually if we did you know i think part of that chart
104and there are difference in county in real estate assessments for each of those school districts we did have a graph on that and a lot of them did increase most likely from commercial bases or other reasons if we kept up with inflation we would probably would raise taxes right like the price of milk goes up and we keep going we're not doing that what we what we've seen and what the administration has shown us is that during covert we saw major gaps and we saw what's hard for me to articulate is how much of again our cyber charter crisis you know that budget that bill going up so high wasn't just due to health does that make sense what i'm trying to imply there as a parent i have four children in this district and
105one of the most impacted years were children entering kindergarten in 2020 during the first you know during the initial pandemic shutdown i've seen the benefit of the staff members that came into these buildings what we will see if we continue on without going back to the lean years where we and we had a graph up where we saw enrollment numbers and we saw staff numbers and the staff bar chart i think dr schaefer you pointed out was something like three and a half kids per teacher yeah the i think the chart that you're alluding to i believe craig may from wrong jim over the last 12 years we've cut approximately uh 13 staff and subcontracted out maintenance custodial um and and whatnot and that was done in in large part to balance the budget okay
106so i so tonight i think the median age of our buildings is 61 years old and we're not even on to facilities yet like that's a conversation in future and we will need to talk about alternative revenue streams because i don't think raising taxes annually is on the agenda tonight what i think we're discussing today and correct me if i'm wrong is how we address the what the gap that kovitz showed us and what investments we make in the classrooms now moving forward and again to rod's point with these reasons to increase revenues as a taxpayer property owner business owner these are all great logistical reasons as a parent who also has a background education i can see it within the classrooms and i see those investments that that we made paying off and i
107see the investments that we're going to have to continue to make and you know some of those that we made this spring which again we did efficiently was having our buildings fully staffed having a principal and a school counselor in every building so um i just want to in terms of my conversation on the budget tonight and what my opinions are i think it's important that we go back to those original two presentations and really what this was about facilities is a big elephant in the room i don't know what the right analogy is here that's coming on the agenda but this budget presentation that we receive from from mr mirabelli and from dr shaffer was really about making sure we staff and invest in the classrooms and the students and the education thank you
108mr mr fleming well first of all i'd like to thank you mr azar for for your presentation and especially for the the fair and balanced way no pun intended the way you uh presented it so i do appreciate that i personally think we should be proud that we have kept tax taxes in check over many years in this district and it really hasn't had no impact on our success as a our student body the extracurriculars you know having said that i do recognize that there there are areas that we need to improve we need to spend money i don't think we can raise taxes um to prosperity you know it's going to make in the scheme of things it's going to make very little difference raising taxes 3.4 percent and i think there's still too
109many unknowns with this budget to say definitively that we needed an increase you know everybody keeps throwing out the facilities assessment i think that's really the elephant in the room you know and uh and it includes not only you know the physical structure but the infrastructure the safety issues associated with our district which we know are many i'd prefer to wait until we get the facilities assessment completed and we prioritize those those projects and i'll really understand what we're up against and then put it out as a referendum let the community decide do we want to pay more you know to for our publicly owned school district i don't feel comfortable raising taxes uh on behalf of the uh the community at this point okay thank you mr funny mr abdullah mr maribelli real quick
110the budget without the tax increase deficit is i'm sorry three point three i believe it's about three point three weeks and the budget deficit with the tax increase is 2.5 thank you i should've asked you so the the tax increase is just getting us into a lesser hole is that accurate to dummy it down yes that's there's there's a projected deficit in this budget now right so the recommendation on increasing taxes now it pains me as a taxpayer and the architect of a lot a lot of these initiatives to cut costs here pains me to you know come to the table with something like that but when you recommend a tax increase of that nature um we're thinking about the 10 or so teachers that we hired with stimulus funds which will be expiring two
111years from now actually actually next year half of the funds buy expire the other year the other half so there's a structural problem we also have the act one index limitation on what we can do you can't make up that kind of revenue in one year's time i also think about the professional stack contract that we agreed to that's uh that steps up by about six hundred to seven thousand dollar seven hundred thousand dollars annually so that's additional expense that will go up and up also looking at a job market where we used to have an outgoing step 15 teacher uh be coming in with a bachelor's degree step one we're not doing that largely anymore we're stealing from other districts because the candidate pool is so much different also looking at the charter school
112expenditures that exploded by a million dollars that we haven't begun to start to pay for yes we paid for it out of reserves but that is a structural problem unless we can bring that down permanently and we aren't sure that we can do that um so there are there are a lot of factors that go into this structural deficit when we come up with a recommendation like that we take it seriously uh and then you know you know when there is no additional revenue in years where um the the board says uh zero tax increase well that tells administration what they have to do and that largely is an austerity type situation where the task is to cut costs wherever possible so just to give you some insight into what the administration's exercise is when
113i say status quo that means maintain what we have that is that's the genesis of where we're coming from with this budget and the tax increase doesn't even get us to status quo because we're still 2.5 million in the hole and that's the projection but the other thing that happens throughout the year is efficiencies are sought costs are cut during the year we we don't just say we're going to spend this and then go spend it right so we look to find efficiencies throughout the year every year knock down costs maximize revenues wherever possible the extent we can and that's what we do so i would be very disappointed if we come in with this kind of a deficit at the end of the year right we'll we'll work on that i can't guarantee you
114that it will eliminate that kind of a deficit though okay thank you thank you so um did you have something to say and jim budgets very conservatively yeah as you should as you should exactly um so i before i i do have a statement from mr acker that he asked me to read he's on the phone but he's actually out of the country and was not comfortable with the reception of the call so he asked me to read something before i read that to finish our discussions i you know mrs miscarem asked is it really relevant the facilities work that might be necessary and some other people talked about it as well i do think that even if we had brand new facilities right not brand new but even if we had no facility issues
115right now that were major and i think we do um i do agree that we have structural deficits projected that are not going to go away but i i don't think you you shouldn't include the the facilities issues in the at least in the discussion because i don't personally think that we should be relying on a referendum to solve our major facilities needs a referendum is extremely difficult last time one was successful in pennsylvania and i was just told this week by a superintendent that was involved in it that it was the only one that's been successful so there's been one referendum in the state of pennsylvania if that data is correct and if it's not correct it's a small number it was state college in 2014. and a referendum is when for people that
116don't know what it is it's it's if you have to go above the index in order to pay for a bond deal so ms tierney mentioned there's other ways to to pay for facilities needs bonds are a referendum if we issue about let's say we have 40 50 60 million dollars it could be bigger could be smaller whatever the number is it's in the tens of millions i've seen that i've seen the buildings my kids are in them so we they're old and they need work some people would think we need a lot some people would think we need at least a little it's a it's a significant number and whatever that number is if you issue bonds if you go out into the municipal bond market and you issue bonds you have to pay
117for them over let's say 30 years it's a few million dollars a year if you do a 50 million bond deal now unfortunately a couple years ago it was a lot less because interest rates were lower and that's another issue we face getting that approved you have to have a majority vote in a primary election which is very difficult and i think that we can do it too i want to try it not because i actually want to try it i don't think we have a choice i've looked at the numbers and and and i don't see how we we do other than fixing what breaks which is sort of what i've seen happen in the school district for the last 10 years other than a couple of really nice projects the turf was great
118uh the field are great but it's mostly been when things break we fix them i don't want to rely on a referendum to pay for what i think are going to be bigger facilities needs and i that's that's a contributing factor at least to me when i when i think about these numbers so before i read mr acker's message i'll give everybody a chance since i spoke one more time yeah i just want to reiterate what you're saying and and make sure everyone understands that these are options these are not clearly my opinions these are just different options that um you know that are upon us to be able to make decisions if we you know go forward with large projects so it's it's not like i'm in favor of it i'm just saying that
119these are just the different options okay thank you anybody else mr ack are you still with us yes all right you still want me to read this give you one more chance okay great um dear rabbit this is from mr acker so i won't put my mask on for mr acker to make it look like i'm speaking but um dear mr or dear aberton high school board members and members of the public i am sorry i cannot attend the board meeting tonight which includes voting on the budget for the coming year i've asked a fellow board member to read these comments when the motion comes up this past year has been extraordinary for all of us covet masking political turmoil changes to the board and administration at abington heights adding challenges and stretching district capabilities
120to the maximum in the last year teachers in our administration have performed incredibly well and our students and families have shown a reliance i'm sorry resilience i suspect they did not know they had they've been patient with us and helped us get through the year thank you to the whole abington heights community there are some good things that have come out of the past year we recognize the need for better communication dr schaefer and his team have made changes we all hope improves the transparency of the process along with a better flow of information we recognize the need for increased learning support and counseling personnel to help our student body deal with the coveted fallout additionally we responded to requests for more nurses counselors and principals in every school we have started the process to
121take a critical look at facilities and the requirements for new programs the results of these efforts will be complete later this year or early next year no doubt it will tell us of a need for substantial investments just to stay current this is all good however past increases in the number of personnel contracted increases in personnel salaries and related benefits and increased migration to charter schools has create has created a structural deficit in the district budget in years past the district has been able to overcome deficits through cost savings staff reductions outsourcing and deferring non-essential facility work i do not believe we will be able to do that again truly the well is empty personnel costs which account for 75 percent of the district expenses alone are increasing at an average of three percent per
122year in order to balance the budget we have to start looking at the revenue side of the income statement currently average heights generates the eighth lowest revenue per student of all school districts in the commonwealth of pennsylvania admirably in the past we held taxes steady when other districts in northeastern pennsylvania raised them but it is my strong belief that we now need to raise taxes this year to the allowed index this will not completely solve the structural deficit but i believe we it will have a positive impact about heights needs to build on the work started this past year and provide the support our children need unfortunately this has increased the cost structure of the district respectfully warren acker thank you mr akron okay there's not anyone else i'd ask for a roll call mr
123robson yes mrs tierney i'm not understanding this question this is stating to approve the final budget as contained with a tax increase of what amount 3.4 3.4 correct no mr abdullah yes mr azar yes mr fleming no mrs henderson yes mrs karen yes mr merdinski no mr acker yes motion carry 6'3 okay thank you everyone excited on our list yeah we're just looking for the new thank you very much mr azar to ask that the board uh consider a motion to approve we already did uh the athletic edr positions that were amended in the beginning of uh this session for 2022-23 so moved second on the question roll call mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr madinski yes mr robeson yes mr acker
124yes 9-0 mr razor i'd ask at the board consider a motion to approve the 2022-23 homestead in farmstead exclusion resolution see item 10. second on the question roll call mr abdallah yes mr azar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs karam yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr acker yeah nine zero mr azar as the board consider a motion to approve the agreement between abington heights school district and joshua and oak hill of acorns to oaks consulting llc items 11. so moved second on the question um i missed this one what was this one about this one is about evaluations special for special education sorry mr razar yes mr fleming yes mrs henderson yes mrs carram yes mr madinsky yes mr robeson yes mrs tierney yes mr abdallah yes mr
125acker yes 9-0 is that the last one yes that was it for action have any new business i would like to say a huge shout out to all of our graduating class of 2022 all of our administrators and teachers district-wide who participated it was a absolutely wonderful night we had beautiful weather and i just want to give a big shout out to everybody involved this is something that you know was was something we really took for granted and as an educator and a former high school principal i was really bummed uh the last couple years with how high school graduation was so it was nice to kind of get back in it have the sun shine on your face and see kids running around throwing up their hats so thanks thank you dr schaefer the
126steering whole business any old business um can i get an update on your summer program that's going on first for students do we have is there a summer are are you talking about extended school year for students of special education yeah how's that going so that would start the week of fourth of july and it lasts four weeks and it's monday through thursday oh okay okay thanks a lesson next month um i don't have exact numbers of what the enrollment is right now i believe we won't know i mean parents commit but then and once they start we have an idea because sometimes people change their minds and don't show up so the students that you identified that had coveted issues that were slower in the process of education was there any summer programs offered
127for our for our regular ed students that were identified as having uh you know some cognitive issues with catching up with with their classes so we offered a summer academy last year for to help close that gap and then we had a significant amount of supports in the schools this year to help close that gap and i spent a significant amount of time looking at our benchmarks at the elementary and i'm really confident that we've done a really nice job closing that gap but we'll continue to work on it oh that's great to hear that's beautiful so congratulations for that great year great thank you dr vitale anyone else have a motion to adjourn all right good night everyone thank you you