001Order for Tuesday, April 8 of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Prior to this evening's meeting, the board of directors met in executive session uh to discuss uh personnel matters. And following tonight's session, we will return to executive session and continue our work. Um so with that, 3.01 superintendent report. Mr. Bigger. Thank you, Mr. Darcos. I just shrunk my seat so I feel small. My last name is bigger. It's not working for me. You got you got you you got the trick chair. I do. Uh but I'll I'll do it anyway. Uh we did receive some formal federal communications over the last couple weeks from the US Department of Education and it's currently being re reviewed by Pennsylvania and
002we're waiting for our local solicitor in Pennsylvania to provide guidance. The three areas we received communication around include federal civil rights issued to us on April 3rd on state certification that we're following certain rules. We received another communication on March 28th about uh ESSERS funds and making sure we've spent them. There are currently extensions out there for folks and they're at risk if they've extended beyond uh the original date. Fortunately for us, we've expended all the monies on the date now or prior to. So that one won't apply to us. The third one was a letter uh dated March 31st about Title One funds for schools and schools choice. So, I'm not going to go into great detail, but I did receive my first official communication regarding that. We're waiting for final guidance from Pennsylvania
003and our local solicitor to make recommendations on what we should or should not do on signing anything to follow at the US Department of Education in the state budget and state uh impact in in Chambersburg. I do want to give a lot of credit to Pennsylvania in general for the ad adequacy gap funds. Most people aren't connecting the dots, but when the state supreme court said our funding formula is uh illegal and outdated, um the solution was to create the add adequacy gap funding for Chambersburg. If you remember my second presentation, that was $ 8.2 million in new state money for us. Uh that does not mean every school in Pennsylvania received that. So the more need you have, the poorer you are, uh the more difficulties you have in educating students, basically the more
004money you received. So there are about 160 school districts in Pennsylvania who receive no adequacy gap funds. So they're certainly complaining now to the state wanting their fair share. Um but the ade adequacy gap money for Chambersburg at 8.2 2 million and a proposed five more million for next year has been substantial in our thinking about updating our schools, providing a better education, providing options for career tech, more interventions for struggling students. Um, I could not be more proud of Pennsylvania for providing that to Chambersburg. It's making a difference in the lives of kids and it's not a small dollar figure. Also, we're able to potentially deliver on our grade configurations. It's why we have PFM here on our architects to continue with the grade reconfigurations on our building facilities. And the best part certainly
005the community would like to hear is it will impact less our local tax dollars. There is no way we would even consider taking on a challenge like we're considering with local property tax dollars only. Without this money, we wouldn't even consider it. We would be looking at Cam Cam South renovations only and that's it. But because of these state dollars, uh the impact to Chambersburg is significant. It is impactful and it will change lives for students and I'm excited about being a part of that and I do want to thank the state because they never get thanked. I'm not sure I've thanked them too many times in my 27year career. So there's a first time for everything. So thank you to the state for those monies. Um other areas of the state budget are in
006discussion are around basic education funding which would be a additional money if we were to receive any and also special education funding if we were to receive any. Also, we're hearing the PCCD safety money is pretty solid and we'll continue to get the safety money, which again has helped us across the district improve the safety of our schools. The one area that they're still debating and is a heavy discussion a little bit from our meeting last time is cyber school reform, cyber charter reform. So they are still discussing that law trying to flatline the cost for cyber schools across the state at that $10,000 range number which would be another million dollars in savings potentially for Chambersburg. So thank you again state appreciate the budget work and also the impact to Chambersburg. Uh we still
007locally here continue to work through two negotiations with our support staff and teachers. So we hope to have agreements here before June 30th for board approval to keep us competitive, increase our recruitment efforts and retainment of employees. Uh last but not least, we had a first public forum related to the calendar was last Tuesday. 37 people approximately attended. A third of them have watched the video or looked at the calendar before attending. We will have two more forums. One is scheduled for next Tuesday at Cashes at 6 p.m. April 15th and the last one April 29th in the boardroom. There is a Q&A on theformational section of the agenda along with the video and the calendars from the first session for those who want to watch that prior to coming to the next public forum.
008Uh last but not least, uh I have two more topics. Uh in my career here in Chambersburg and other places, I will say there are two things that have worked in in scenarios for school improvements. One is collaboration time. whether it's collaboration with teachers, collaboration with administrators, collaboration with you, the board, and collaboration with the public. If we do that, we succeed. And the second is if we focus on the classroom. If you combine those two, I've seen results every single time. So, collaboration, focus on students, we will get results regardless of the strategies we're working on in the district. Uh the last item I have um I attended a session about accountability and it really struck me from a board level view. There's two types of accountability. One to prevent and one to improve.
009The prevention is a policy that we put in place that says hey let's make sure our teachers are certified. Let's make sure they do the mandatory training. Let's make sure that they are um properly trained and onboarded before they start teaching. And we do a lot to prevent problems, but we don't do a lot to encourage solutions. So the second area of accountability is around innovation, change, taking calculated risks, and being creative. And I do want to thank the board for encouraging me and our school district to be a little more creative, to be innovative, and to take some calculated risks. We're really good at the mandatory policy ones, and they feel good by saying, "Hey, we're going to have this policy, and it's going to fix everything." But the latter one and the innovative
010one is something we don't encourage enough. So I know my team, our team and our district is working to encourage more creativity, more innovation, and more calculated risk for the school board and the school district. So I know that was a little more than my usual, but thank you for that. That ends my report. Board members, any questions for Chris? Okay. Well, I'm going to be short tonight. um talk a little bit about upcoming PSSAs, right? We're all going to be going on Easter break here pretty soon and you're going to come back from Easter break and voila, it's in the PSSA. So, I know the staff u and the students have been really in go mode for about the past two months or so preparing for this. It's a year-long endeavor, but I think
011you really step it up, Mr. Woodman. After after Christmas, it steps up a little bit more intense. and we had snow days which is isn't a good thing for us and doesn't matter how many days of school we put on at the end of the year because we take the PSSAs at the end of April. So, uh May is just a different type of learning or or something. So, uh with that just appreciate everyone keep working hard enjoy your Easter break and good luck to everyone on the PSSAs. Item 4.01, proposed final budget. Mrs. Staler I think this is on Diane. Oh, thank you. To learn the technology. Okay. Thank you. Good evening. Diana was so kind. She put a stand up here so I don't have to work multiple hands at the same time
012and try to get things moving. So, uh, for tonight, we're going to present to you our 2526 proposed final budget. I do want to just remind the board that this is just the proposed final. We will see some changes in numbers prior to the final being brought forward uh for vote in um June. So, in looking at this slide, I'm sorry, I'm going to be taking my glasses on and off. Um, Chris said we need to start with what we're going to end with. So in in a general summary, when we're looking at the 2526 proposed budget, we have a total revenue of just a little over $29 million. This is a a milestone in that we've break broke the $200 million mark. And our total expenditures will be uh $212 million. We are forecasting
013um a deficit just a little over 1% of 2.9. That will leave us with a U fund balance at the end, an assigned fund balance of a little over 20 uh million dollars. I do want to point out to the board that we had multiple inner fund transfers currently this year and you see that represented in the uh lefth hand column where we transferred 3.5 million to healthcare, 4 million to our cap reserve, and four million to our future debt service. And we do anticipate additional interfund transfers prior to the end of this fiscal year. Oops. Okay. So, what went into the expenditures? Um, you guys have, most of you have heard me present before. We normally start with our expense side. Uh, projected pay increases for all positions, including the new positions that were
014board approved a couple months ago, is about $4 million. We're looking at projected benefit increase of a little over $3 million. We've also built into this budget some additional positions uh that were not yet board approved. One is an FTE for special education and this is a result of the recent audit that special ed went through. Um the athletic program is in need of a few coaching positions, an assistant golf, a head and assistant cheerleading, and a head and assistant girls wrestling coach for an estimated $56,000. Looking at adding a third NJOTC instructor. uh we're estimating that that's going to be costneutral due to uh expanding the program in the county and also the federal dollars that we receive to offset that program. And additionally, we have eliminated two administrative FTEEs. This is due to
015the grade reconfigurations that are going to be happening and also some of the programmatic realignment that Mr. Bigger has done. So, some big hitters. Uh, this budget does include the 1% tax resolution that we have voted on a couple years ago. That transfer for 2526 would be $4.5 million. And we've also included additional debt service in an attempt to build up the debt service fund for that future debt that we're going to incur. And you're going to hear Mr. Fry talk about that a little bit later on. So, we have a line item of $5.5 million. Again, additional debt service. It will be money going into the debt service fund. There were some inflational and contractual increases. That's just about $3.8 million. And then additional programming needs of just under 400,000. I did want to
016point out to the board, I don't normally include this in the uh general fund budget presentation, but we have in our assigned fund balance earmarked money for curriculum, technology, and um instruction. And so, Mr. Dr. uh Whidman and Dr. Long have identified a few things that they would like to be able to expend dollars on that will come out of the assigned fund balance next year. And you can see that breakdown um as it's listed there. The total is 1.83 million that will be coming out of that assigned fund balance. Okay. So for revenue sources uh for the purpose of this budget, just a reminder, our act one adjusted index is 5.3%. I was asked to build a 2% uh tax increase budget that will generate just about $3.2 million in additional real estate taxes.
017We do have a 1% growth in the assessment base forecasted. We are not quite there yet. Um we monitor that monthly and it it looks like it's going to hit that level. 98% collection rate. We're looking at the mill rate for this year to be 135.1428. And of course you can see the uh value of the mill and the value of the collected mill. So total uh real estate taxes collected would be 88 million. And this of course does take in effect the um the EIT money that we use to offset um the homestead farmstead exclusion. Looking at um the additional revenue from the local sources. Just pointing out right now I'm not going to go through lines one through five but line six. Right now, we do have a forecast from earned income tax
018of 24,500,000. That's ex what is in today's budget. Um, I'm comfortable with that. I'm hopeful that the economy is not going to go too wonky here, if that's a good word to use, but things are a little unstable. Uh, normally when um if the economy starts to recede and people start to lose jobs, that's the number that we start to have trouble hitting. So, we're going to monitor that as we go throughout the rest of the rest of the summer. So local s sources in total around 122 million thou 122 thou I can't talk tonight 122 million um okay moving on looking at the state sources um just going to highlight here what Mr. bigger said uh the governor's budget does have an additional $5 million built into the adequacy and you can see that
019in number four which is the ready tolearn block grant. Uh we have included that in this budget projection. Um that's a little bit out of character. Normally the last two years we've been more conservative and said we're never going to get that kind of money because we've never had it before. So we're a little more confident that it's going to come this year uh than we have been in the past. So, state sources are just under 74 million. Federal sources, they don't change a whole lot. Of course, this doesn't take into consideration anything that may come down the pike. Uh, right now, as Mr. Bigger said, we're kind of getting notices coming out, but it's pretty much been status quo. The big change on the federal sources is we did receive the U BSCA grant.
020I'm going to look at Kirk because I can't remember what it stands for. Yeah. Yeah. So, we've built that into the line item. So, our federal sources are up just slightly to around $6 million. Okay. Uh, so just kind of reflecting on where we landed. Um, if you recall last month, we had um Mr. Kevin Stout for no relation relation to me, just full disclosure on that, we're not related, come in and do the financial audit. Um, I just wanted to give the board a reminder of where our fund balances are currently sitting. Um, if you look at the non-spendable and the restricted, you can kind of just put those on the side because they are exactly what they say. You can't really use them for anything other than what they're intended for. So, not
021really discretionary in terms of how we can spend them. The committed fund balance, I'm going to spend a little bit of time on that. Um, at the end of fiscal year 24, the committed fund balance was over $9 million. That is money that is earmarked for future taxpayer relief. And how that gets into that committed balance is when we collect more earned income tax than we budget. And under act one, there's a percentage that has to be used for future taxpayer relief. So we haven't pushed that out. We put it in a committed fund balance and we use it for future. If you recall from um last year's budget presentation, our homestead farmstead exclusion was over $900. We upped it by $100 by using the committed fund balance. and we'll continue to do that to
022kind of get that built down. It'll also help us in those years where we've budgeted more earned income tax and we don't collect it because in that case we've already pushed it out to the PA taxpayers but we didn't bring the revenue in. The assigned again this was sitting um as of the end of 2024 had just under 40 million. Uh total general funds you can see were just under 53 million cap reserve very happy and proud of this. we had at uh 10 million almost $11 million. We do have the capital projects fund which was the bond that we issued uh in anticipation of doing uh CAM South sitting at just around $8 million. And then the special revenue fund currently at the end of 2024 was sitting at 205 um,000. So total funds
023were just under $72 million. Okay. So again, just as a reminder, uh we're looking at a revenue of 209 million, expenditures 212 with an anticipated um deficit of around 2.9. And again, we're looking at the ascend ending assigned fund balance being around 20 million 21 million. So give you an idea of what the tax increases uh could be. uh just from a discussion standpoint we can show you the ranges there between 0% uh because of the growth of the base we will generate revenue just because the grace base is growing more people are paying taxes the high ends up at the 5.3 at just around 6.5 million and again we are estimating a 2% right now so just around 3.2 2 million. These are the corresponding uh deficits and you can see that we project
024a deficit until you get to about 4.5%. And with that uh amount of tax increase, we would be presenting a zero balance budget. So, I'm not going to spend some time on these um unless you really want me to. I've done this in the past, but they're there more for your u understanding. Just one thing to note is that we are starting to see just a slight shift between the local and state and that's because of the additional money that we've received the last uh couple years. So this slides will just provide to you a breakdown of the major funds and it could give you a comparison uh year-over-year and then we show expenditures by u major objects. Again just pointing out that the majority of our budget is wrapped up in people. So either
025salaries and benefits or contracted services 82% of that is represented by people and then um also just to kind of highlight here this is the major functions of our expenditures and you can see 61% goes towards instruction and under the support services where it says 25% again I'll just point out that is not just administration that includes transportation technology nurses counselors so a lot of those services go directly towards our students. So, where are we? We're here today on April 8th presenting. We will bring forward an item on the uh 22nd board meeting that will be for you to approve a proposed final budget. We'll then put the budget on display, advertise our intent to adopt. On May 1st, we received notification from the state of Pennsylvania about the amount of gaming money that they're
026going to provide for us for our homestead farmstead. We also receive from the county at that time the uh homestead farmsteads that have been approved. So then Danette and I do some crunching of numbers and come up with the number that we can present for the final budget approval in June. Any questions? I know I went through that pretty quickly. I'm sorry. I'm trying to find the the slide that it was on. Anybody else has something? Uh, yeah, I've got a comment. Give you a little more time. Yeah, I just want to commend the administration. I often hear um people talking about, well, the administrative staff is just way overweight. There's too many administrators and not enough teachers. So, I just heard you say we cut two administrators and we're putting those assets toward teachers
027where they're really going to matter with the students. So, I say I commend the decision to do that and thank you very much on the capital the capital reserve and capital projects. Um, so what slide number are we on? I'm sorry. Uh, is that slide number 10 on the fund balances? Yes. Mhm. Does that come back to what we did with the uh the plus one? The plus one is definitely definitely impacted the cap reserve. It did. That's where that money is going. Uh the capital projects like I mentioned was a bond that we issued. I believe it was in 23. Thank you, John. Uh and that was in anticipation that we were going to move forward with one of the CAM's projects. So that money is sitting in there and we can use that
028towards whatever we do with the grade reconfigurations. And that gave us a better situation with the with the uh with on the loan. Uh well, yeah, it will. I mean, it will help our credit rating. Um, that's one of the things that when we issue a bond, we'll go through and they look at a lot of numbers and John might be able to speak about it a little bit better than me, but they definitely look at your fund balances and they look at the trends of whether you're going up or down and it impacts your credit rating, which will impact the rate that you get on the on the borrowing. um you know just and and you all have probably heard me say this before when I started in this position in 18 the cap
029reserve had $900,000 in it and it it was one of those things that would keep me up at night because you have so many facilities to maintain and so we Oh, I thought that was my timer. Okay, the chicken's done. Chicken's done. Oh boy. Okay. Um so a few years ago when the board put that resolution forward, we've been pushing money into the cap reserve and of course uh coming out of COVID, you know, we did have some surpluses. We've tried to move money into the cap reserve and also into um healthcare to offset some of those ongoing expenses. Well, to that I wanted to say kudos to the board who was here before and to to uh Ed Norcross for actually bringing that up that that one that plus one because I realize three
030years ago where with the position that has put us in today and the decision that we made back then has you know put us in a much much better position today. So yeah um you know Mr. Baker and I have spoken you know we need to have a line item transfer for the cap reserve into the general operating budget every year. Um, it's healthy to be able to do that in order to maintain your facilities. You're going to hear Mr. Varner is going to present here a little bit later on about a plan and how do we bridge that gap till we get to this golden year called 2037 when the debt falls off. Um, but most organizations, at least my experience outside of education, you have a line item in there going over to
031your cap reserve. You need a way to fund it. And so the plus one has allowed us to do that. We have that on the agenda a little bit later on to talk about, you know, right now it's accumulating. At some point you're going to say, okay, what's the ma magic number? You know, do we get to 4 million a year and have that reoccurring and that's enough going into the cap reserve or do we continue to bump it up by that 1%. So that's another discussion that we're going to have. And I wonder if you might elaborate just a bit. So where does that money come from that goes into that one plus five? So the plus one is basically saying if say we do a 2% tax increase, 1% of that is going
032over to the capital reserve. That's where that money comes from. So it's basically coming from the local tax revenue. Right. And uh we're going to discuss that specifically at a few more items down. Right. Yes. So I'll hold any comment till then. Okay. Yeah. I think I know the answer to this, but I'm gonna ask because I like to ask for clarification. You know me by now. I know. That's awesome. So, if you do the 2%, then we would be at the $2.9 million deficit. If we decide that we're not going to raise it any higher than that, where does it come from to balance that budget? Well, it'll come out of the fund balance. So, it'll come out of the assigned fund balance. Um, and again, I do want to point out like these
033numbers are going to change. Like the numbers you're going to see in June are going to look a little bit differently. Um, because we know some things are going to come out between now and then. Um, it's April 8th. We have two months to go before I doubt we'll have anything from the state. I think you're hearing it might be pushed past the July 1st. So, it would come out of that savings account, so to speak, is how I like people to refer to the fund. Okay. Fund balances as That's what I thought, but I just wanted to double check. Thank you. Yep. You're welcome. What's What's the rationale for not going higher than 2% and trying to get that number down? You Oh, you want me to take that one? No, I'll take it.
034I'll take it. I'll take it. Go ahead. Well, because that's I was going to be my question, one of my questions or my comments. Go if you want to go back to that slide, Tammy, that probably be best for everyone. I think it's 13. Okay, I'm going the wrong way then. Historically, and spoiler alert, I am conservative if you didn't know, but u historically we've been very conservative with this chart. And I think I applaud the staff for that because I I think that's the way you should budget. Uh you can't I don't believe in budgeting right to the nth degree because that's how you get in trouble. Like some of our neighboring districts are now in big trouble. I won't mention any names. Uh but we've historically beat this and I think every year
035we have beat this. So this this I mean this harbor was a great question and it it gives you pause when you see a number in red darn near 3 million. It does give you pause but uh if we put last year's slide up here like that it was very similar. Mhm. It was uh Yeah. And at the end of the year, of course, Dette, I know it's not audited yet, but if we go back, she's nowhere near the audit yet. If we go back a year and a half and you look at the the budget from from that time frame, well, with the audited results, we beat it. And we beat it by a bunch. So, I just for keep that in in line. And then, Mr. Mr. Hock, we are going to talk
036about it shortly, but the the plus one the way and and Mr. Leonard's was a big help with this also. Um, you know, finance was his forte. U, but the plus one that we enacted was really and it was plus one. We would look at this as our operating and then the plus one and often I've said plus X because it doesn't have to be one. And if you look at Mr. Fry's presentation, it looks like it's higher than plus one, I think. Right? Uh but it's it's plus X that then it is in addition to if you look at this as operating the cost of doing business the way we always do, you know, with just the cost of living, it's normal cost increases. The plus one is the extra. At the time it
037went to uh capital projects, but the plan was eventually it would come to uh debt service because back at that time, if you remember, we were looking at two projects in the neighborhood of 3540 million a piece. So, we were trying to get enough money banked to have an $8 million uh borrowing program, $80 million borrowing program. Now, we're double that. Yeah, that's a good point, Mr. Norcross. Um and and he's true. I'm very conservative. Um I get a little bit of flack on that every once in a while, but that's that's the relationship, I guess, between superintendents and business manager. Um, the thing that I would point out about this budget and and I do think all we probably will not have a deficit, but we're we're forecasting every position being filled from day
038one. We're fully staffed. All of that uh goes into play. The only thing that is different with this this year is I am including the governor's proposed dollars, that $5 million. Um, if I didn't, you'd be seeing a much bigger deficit. But again, like I said, we're much more confident than we've been in the past couple of years just because of what we've seen. Um, and of course, if we don't get that five million, then we may have to back off of how much we put into the cap reserve or how much we put into additional debt service. So, we've got a little wiggle room on on some lines there, if that makes sense. What are the two big cost drivers that were um projecting larger increases maybe than than we wanted? So like healthare
039healthare healthcare is is and it's it's not good. I'm just going to say that uh during our act one meeting that we met with our consultant he was projecting around a 20% tax or sorry 20% increase. We just met a week ago and it's now at 24.2% of an increase year-over-year. Uh we've had significant high claims. Um and we are seeing ouries drugs go up. A lot of it is the weight loss drugs as you know is driving that. Um so you know we're kind of looking at some things that we can do with that program. So that's one of big cost drivers. The other one is charter schools. Um you know we're going to come probably next month or maybe in probably in May um with a request to move money out of the
040budgetary reserve to pay the charter school bills through the end of the year. Um so I think we put 1.5 million more. I'm looking at Dette for uh cyber charters into this budget. Um and and special ed. I mean we are still seeing significant increases in special ed. Used to be we talked about peasers. Peasers is killing us. Keyers is killing us. Now it's these three components are probably the biggest ones. Yeah. Thank you. So is there a way to build this out a little bit more? You're anticipating this changing. Is there a way to build those? Hey, we anticipate this being, you know, this this number that we're being presented with right now of 3 million. You're expecting that to come to be zero or something close to that come May or you know
041it it won't be zero when what I when I refer to it being zero would be when we end the end of the year. So you mean you mean once the year June 26? June 26 year end. Yeah. So, you're saying you'll find savings of $3 million over the course of maybe savings is there's a better way to say it. Yeah. Her worst case scenario planning doesn't come true. Yes. She plans the worst case scenario that we'll see another $4 million in healthcare increases, another 1.5 in cost. And that may not be exactly true, but she has to plan for it as if it would. Yeah. The and the other the big area too is really our um you know, our attrition rates, you know. So when we do the budget, you know, I'm looking
042at who's sitting in what position today. I don't move that as we move out throughout the year. So I don't know who's going to retire, who's going to come in at a lesser cost. I don't know how many positions are going to remain open for two months, four months, half a year, or not be filled at all. So when we forecast, they're in there 100%. They're here from day one. So there will be some attritional savings. Yeah. Uh, I just want to say that um I I too appreciate um the experience of board members who have been here many many years before I arrived and their sense of conservatism. I'm I'm probably less conservative, but I reflect on how I live my life and my finances and I realize there's a bit of goodness in
043every conservative decision you make. But I also fall back on um something that Mr. Bigger said almost on day one. says, "It's not how much money we're asking for, it's how we use the money we get." And I'm convinced that everything that this superintendent has done thus far has always considered the cost, the value of those decisions and what's right for the kids. So, I'm I'm comfortable that he's found a way to balance those two um ideas at the same time. So, uh, thank you very much for the experienced folks and for the administrators who are doing the great job they're doing. Now, another question I had, uh, what's the rationale for taking on more debt rather than trying to address a percentage of that through, you know, right now we're I think, you know,
044as is we're leaving 3.3 million or something like that on the table. Why why not reduce the amount of debt that you're taking on and try to cover more of that on the front end? I mean, you know, you could do it a variety of ways. But are you asking me why not raise the tax rate, bring more money? If you're at 3%, that'd be another million dollars that you wouldn't need to take on as debt, right? Yeah. And and every year after I think so. Let John Fry from PFM talk about bonds, rates, interest rates. um influence you a little bit. I I think also you we can't say in my mind um get $8 million from the state, maybe another five and then and on top of that go to the taxpayers for
045continued for continued. At some point those state dollars are to help not tax the local folks, right? And that's that's the justification on why the two you you won't see me unless we're in dire crisis go above a two or three unless we have some substantial absolute need that we cannot cover with our current programming and that's so that you're you're not going to see me bring a budget at two or above two or three. Last year was three I think and we had the plus one. This year it's two with the plus one and that's mainly plus x plus x. Yeah. John's not done yet. Yeah. Correct. And so that's because the state is continuing to be more confident on that adequacy gap funding. I mean, I don't want to get people excited, but
046so far, if you remember the public forums when I said I don't like to overpromise and underdel. It's first time in my career, I had to have a plan for the district in case we would receive additional state money. And so far, many of those plans are coming to fruition because we are receiving the state money. The adequacy gap funding is projected for seven years to catch us up. So those communities who could afford and got basic ed money basically they're not getting adequacy gap funding they're going to their local tax dollars are payers we don't have to as much so if the promise of seven years happens with 8.2 and five and if it's even if it goes down slowly over time it's still seven years of significant dollars. So I don't feel comfortable
047um going down that road. Now, if we weren't getting state money and we wanted to build the buildings, we wouldn't have much of a choice. Yeah. And I'll follow up with that and then another comment back on this on just the operating side, but the 2% does not include the plus X. So, don't forget that when you're looking at this chart. No, it does, Ed. I'm sorry. Yeah, if you Well, it does include it. It's built in. Yeah, I built it in. Um where well let me see where I'm at. So it's a 1% plus a 1% tax. So if you look at the capital reserve transfer the 4.5 million that's the accumulated 1%. So we put it in as a line item. Okay. Again it's proposed preliminary. So but then back back to that
048slide my that that helps my next question or my I I'll talk about recent history instead of 10 or 12 years of history. Uh last year when we looked at this slide, it looked similar. Yeah. Mhm. Uh and it was based on not receiving any additional state funding. Correct. And then we ended up with 4 million 8 million. We ended up with 8 million additional dollars. Again, 12 months from today. Go back 12 months. This was negative. We ended up with 8 million additional dollars and we're figuring another five million additional dollars and an additional 1% in just operating. Well, right and honestly, let me go ahead. I'm sorry. So, if you go back to that slide, my concern is here a tax and spend philosophy. Okay. We have eaten up eight million dollars of
049last year's money, $5 million of this year's money, and 1% and we're still at an annual a proposed annual conservative annual deficit. So, we're eating up money revenue pretty quickly. So, let's be careful with tax and spend and everything we do then implies, you know, so basically we're spending 13 million more dollars this year and we're still negative year over year, 12 months. But let me point out two of the big drivers of that are me get back here this slide is I'm putting almost $10 million going into cap reserve which I didn't have that last year and the debt service is going to go up by what we need to pay by 5.5 again building up that debt service fund. both of those lines. I'm going to say this, if we don't build the
050buildings, you probably don't need either of those lines in your budget. But 10 million of that three 13 million that you're pointing out is those two lines. But and then healthare future debt service has been captured with three years of plus one. No, the plus one is going into the cap reserve. Um I'm trying to think. I'm looking at Dette. Normally what we've done the last few years with debt service is when we've done bond uh refundings, we would flatline the debt service as if we didn't and then we take that difference and we'd move it to cap reserve. That's one of the ways that we helped to build that up and excess would go into cap. Correct. At the end of the year once it's audited then we would move excess into cap reserve.
051Exactly what we felt we could do. Um, so in the 2526 budget, what we've done is we've put what we know the 2526 debt service is going to be, and I don't know the number off the top of my head. I'm going to say it's around 11 or 12 million looking at net. We've added 5.5 million so that we're ramping up for those future bond payments. And you're going to see John uh present that in a little bit. Additionally, what we're doing is until we get to those outer years, I don't want to steal his thunder. If we keep that 5.5 in there and we continue to ramp it up to get to the level that we need to do and I think it's year 20 30 28 28 somewhere around there we will have
052a debt service line that can support the borrowings. So those are two big two big variables that have been built in that we made choices uh you know talking with Mr. bigger. This is how we feel we need to get to being able to borrow uh 200 plus million dollars and afford it without having to do that. You can't sustain a budget can't sustain bumping up debt service by $12 million in one year or two years or or three years. It it just can't do it. So, any other questions? Thank you, Mr. St. Thank you. I'm gonna leave all this one for you. All right, Mr. Fry, we've we've set you up a couple times now. Yeah, sounds like it. Uh, appreciate it. Nice to see everybody again. Um, so just as a recap, a
053short presentation tonight. Uh, I know you have some kind of uh probably more interesting uh topics right after me on the projects themselves, but wanted to um give you another overview. I know I was here last June and again last November to kind of keep talking about bond issues with the board as you can contemplate your uh your projects. And so that's what I'm really trying to do tonight, another recap and try to look forward a little bit. So just briefly on the uh page two on interest rates um certainly uh anybody following the news in the last week uh the volatility has been you know something that's pretty much unheard over the last couple decades. Uh the interest rate chart I have on the bottom here I think I did last week since then
054it's just gone up 20 basis points and then oh no down 20 basis points in the last two days it's gone up 60 basis points. Basically, every bond issue in Pennsylvania this week has been postponed. So, just kind of to show you volatility right now, but I don't expect that to continue. It's shortlived hopefully. Um, but the big picture for the board as you contemplate is interest rates right now, they're going to go up and down, but they're about historical averages. You know, if you look back over the last 30 years, they're about historical averages. Uh, but we'll continue to monitor that. And again, um, I'll talk about this in a little bit. you don't need to worry about interest rates until we we intend to borrow a small portion uh call it $10 million
055uh relatively small uh later this year if the board would like to start uh funding some of these projects. Uh on page three just a quick snapshot. This is just your uh debt service uh just for reference uh the bond issues from left to right u going back these are your outstanding bond issues. Most of them were done for refinancings as Mrs. Stafford had point out some for new money and importantly they add up to the top right blue box of about $12 million a year and it's about $12 million until 2037. Then you can see a a pretty substantial uh drop in that. So that's where the debt service payments would go down giving more uh opportunity for um affordability of future projects. The next page is um one you've seen from me again
056in June and November just uh updated uh based the biggest change is in the top right corner based on the most recent estimates were um instead of I think last time I was here in November we were borrowing a net amount of $175 million. Uh I've been advised to increase that to $200 million. Again these will all change and be refined as we go through time and and get better estimates. But again, just to try to keep moving uh a little bit more closer to the refined numbers. So, we show uh four different steps to get up to the $200 million. Again, we can adjust the different the size of the steps, the timing of the steps. Uh on the far left in column uh or in the blue, we're anticipating for now sometime this
057fall. Obviously, it's your pace. Uh borrowing approximately $10 million to get some more money into your um account so you can start paying for architects and design and you can get things moving. Uh it also starts to lock in interest rates and diversify some interest rate risk. And then we would borrow, you know, some pretty substantial borrowings over the next couple years in 26, 27, and 28. The biggest things to take away from this page right now are in that the um in the in the red uh I put a yellow highlighted box basically as Mrs. Staler say we're basically going on from these are payments these are estimated payments to bond holders. Okay, we'll get in the next page kind of how you can budget for them. But you can see they're going to
058go from about $12 million to about $26 million roughly over a six sixyear period. So that is a substantial increase. they are starting from a low uh spot. If you look at the uh on the on the right hand side of the in the black, if we look at as as a debt service as a percentage of your operating budget, uh it's rel it's, you know, low. A lot of people use 10% as kind of a threshold they like to look at. Right now, you're below 6% and you can see in a couple of the years you would be pushing a little over 10%, but it was only it would be short-lived. I have a graph later on to to illustrate that, but short-lived above the 10% because as your budget continues to grow, and
059right now this is only growing at 3%. So, if things continue to move the way they've been, these will all be refined and probably grow more than 3% as your operating expenses grow. Uh but again uh just to continue to try to to uh plan ahead and and I'll show you on the next page how perhaps again on a macro big picture level how the affordability of going from 12 million to 26 million over six years and how that kind of equates to more of a a tax increase picture. Pardon me, John. Yes. Um would you be kind enough? I'm not familiar with the distinction between bank qualified and non-bankqualified. Could you explain that please? No, it's a great great question. Um, it's a small distinction and most it's it's a distinction when it's the
060tax code. So, you borrow t all your bonds for projects are borrowed at taxexempt interest rates. So, the investors don't have to pay interest on it. So, you get a lower interest rate than say a corporate a corporation. Okay. But then what within tax exempt there's a classification IRS gives called bankqualified and non-bankqualified. And what that means is if it's below $10 million, if you borrow $10 million or less in a calendar year, local governments get um what's called bank qualified. So the investors get a um they get a tax break, tax advantage. So basically, if you're borrowing that amount or less and they're bank qualified, you get a slightly lower interest rate, but also and sometimes the bigger uh influence of trying to stick to that is you also get a better refinancing date.
061So all these bonds, if you do it at bank qualified, you'd be able to refinance it in about five years. If you did it non-bankqualified, once you get to the bigger bond issues, the market will want more like a seven or eight year call. So all else being equal, if you can borrow $10 million or less, it's it's advantageous to do that to get a slightly improved uh bond issue. Thank you. Any other questions at this point? Um, so page five is a new page. Um, to try to take where we just were, that highlighted box uh from the previous page is now on the top left hand side. Those same numbers again, payments to bond holders, again, just estimates that you would owe bond holders $12 million next year, but ramp up in over
062the next five or six years up to $26 million. And that would be, you know, a very significant increase, right? if you were starting from 12 and going to 26. But as Mrs. Stafford just pointed out, the good planning the administration's done and the board has done and and the advantageous position you've gotten from the state funds put you in a position where you're already, if you budget, that extra amount that you just went over. It puts you in a position in this year that the estimated um dollars budgeted for debt service would be closer to $17 million. So while you owe bond holders $12 million, you're starting to set aside reoccurring revenue of $17 million. So now if you look at column six there, what we're trying to figure out then is how then
063over the next six years to go from that that change is from 17 million to 26 million, which is much more affordable than if you're going from 12 to to to 26 given the in indices the index that you're restrained to every year. um which we don't know what the future of that looks like um potentially with any kind of recession that could cause that to go down. Um so what this chart is really a to do is it's not trying to show you exactly what we think is going to happen but it's just trying to show the basic math on you know if you have to go from 17 to$26 million and given a couple assumptions on the value of a mill and your millage rate and so forth. If you in column four
064put in about 2.2 2 mills each year. And again, this is just a for instance, I'll be working with the administration and the budget office a lot on trying to refine this over time. Um, but this is again just the math behind those bond payments. You would need tax increases or millage equivalent increases of about column five 1.6% a year just for debt service. That's the X. That's the plus X. And so that so in some years you can see what what we try to do is to smooth this in. We're trying to do that kind of on a smoothed out basis so you don't have big spikes. So in column seven you see sometimes there's years where we have a surplus and then we use that surplus later on where there's some deficits. Okay?
065So we're able to smooth in these increases. You know over time you'll I'll hopefully have some pages you know as we get more into the project where you have some operational efficiencies that can help all the operation side of things. This is just the debt, you know, just trying to figure out how to pay debt service. Um, but we'll have more refinement later on actually, you know, what you really need for um tax increases. But this again is just to try to show the equivalent tax increase to just make those bond holder payments to and and again, you wouldn't be the position that you're in now is much better than it would be if you were starting from scratch at the 12 million. So, the budget that you're looking at that that has been laid
066out before you uh just a little bit ago, that extra amount that you're putting in is putting you on a better glide path to get to where you need to be. And again, I don't want this is just a big picture. We, you know, it's just a kind of a tool to help all of us kind of think about what the kind of ballpark magnitude of this looks like. But again, it'll be refined over time. And the next two pages are just some kind of illustrations and graphs just to show you. I think it is kind of dramatic when you just graph out what I just showed you in numbers. You can see that there is an increase for sure over the next uh several years. It flattens out. Then there's a big drop. If
067we continue to borrow money on a level uh payment, basically like a 25-year mortgage, if you will, on all these, you can see see you're still maintaining that really big drop off in 2037, which gives the school more flexibility uh in the future. And then finally, the last page is a new one, just a percentage. It's that graph of that far right um percentage I showed you earlier, the debt service as a percentage of operating expenses. And you can see there's only about five years where it goes slightly over the 10%, but as your budget continues to grow, that kind of comes down nicely um as far as an affordability um kind of measurement. Um so again, I think I think the board's seen most of this before, but we're just trying to refine this
068as we go along. It'll continue to be again as as you move forward and I'm I'm in touch with Mrs. Stford uh a lot and uh as as as things progress over the summer, you know, if you would like, we could be in a position to to borrow some money later this fall um to to continue on, you know, on your the process of getting the money you need for your project. Happy to answer any questions. Questions for Mr. Fry. Just want to say it's very helpful. Okay. Good. Thank you. I have one Mr. Fry and maybe and then and this would go for the board. So when you look at this page five sheet five if fiscal year I I'd be curious what this graph would look like if for fiscal year end 2026
069there was a 1% in column five what that would make this look like just just for comparison purposes and future discussions. I know I know the 2% that we just talked about with Mrs. Staler is incorporated in that 5.5 million, but this is my this is my hypothesis. If the 2% that we just talked about went to operation and we did a plus X of 1%, what would this chart look like? I mean, I think in round numbers, correct me if I'm wrong, but the 17 because right now what I did that you I'm really what I'm really interested is what's the impact in column seven, right? That's that's the end. Oh. Uh, yeah. So, I think so you can see I I left those the column four and column five are blank for this
070year because it was kind of easier to do it that way and just kind of say from the business office they told me put in $17 million and that'll change over the next month or two depending on your budget. But if if all of a sudden you made that $18 million, right, that would go to $18 million. You'd have more of a surplus which means you'd be able to lower and smooth things out even better. I mean, you know, it goes without saying. I think the more you can do when you can, it makes the outy years a little easier. Um, but eventually the delt eventually we need to get to $26 million. It's a matter of, you know, how to phase that in. A value of a mill is value of 1%. No, one
071mill is 900,00. Well, it Yeah, kind of. I mean, one one mill. And John and I had a long conversation about this today. Um, it gets a little tricky because when we do the mills, it actually would generate at 135 about $106 million. 1.6 $106 million. Okay. But because of us being an act one school district, we then back out the portion of earned income tax that we have to offset. So, we're going to collect about 88 million. So, our collected mill rate is around $881 million or $881,000 for one mill. Yeah. And 1% is 1.3 mills, correct? Sorry. 1% is like the equivalent of 1.35 mills. Uh I don't know. I'd have to we'd have to calculate that. That number varies. Yeah. So, it's like one So 1% is about 1.2 million, I think.
072Yeah, that's about that's about right. I I did want to weigh in here if I could just a little bit, Mr. Norcross. I think to your question, one of the things that I had done and showed Mr. Bigger is the debt service fund. Like we already have a balance in the debt service fund. And so we are anticipating at what I did um and again we would have to super fund debt service out through the next few years but we would end with a balance at the end of fiscal 29 of about $17 million that could be used to offset future debt service or we could swap out and and maybe use that for an additional build or something like that. I don't know if that that helps or if that makes more confusion but
073right we we'll be refining you know interest earnings that you earn on your bond proceeds all those things will be weighed into to this and this is even showing a surplus in column seven in the outy years which you could use for either um reducing the final bond issue that is needed for the project or using for other capital I do as back to some of these other comments we had before each time you do a bond issue you have to get a credit rating and it's much easier for all of us to get on the phone and talk to to Moody's, your credit rating agency, when we're able to show them that your savings account is still healthy. And so spending your savings account now for projects and try to is is less advantageous.
074You'd rather be able to show Moody's we got the cash, we're borrowing, and then at the end of the project, you can say now we're going to downsize our last bond issue. So that's usually we'll try to refine that as we go along. Um and in this case, we're still showing surplus in that um column seven. Thank you, Mr. Fry. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 4.03 Capital Management, Mr. Varner. This is 2%. All right. Good evening. Uh, tonight I'll be presenting a document that outlines the district's projected capital needs from 2028 to 2037 along with a strategic plan for managing those needs while continuing to invest in major building projects. Um, I hope this presentation provides clarity on the capital needs of our existing facilities uh and helps guide and inform decision-making for
075future investments into new facilities. Matt, before you go too far, I want to highlight you have a handdrawn uh slide that I made from John's that basically highlights his presentation on the risk analysis. If we borrow certainly a higher amount that puts us closer to some of our debt ceilings, what's our risk? And so he's presenting on what's remaining schools are are the needs. So what you don't want to do and we've I've been through this enough is spend money that have no money left to fix the schools you have. So that's we're risking that analysis saying okay can we afford to fix schools with existing dollars based on what Matt's analysis is on the risk. So that's what this chart is. Make sense? Okay. Okay. So the first step of our process involved uh
076completing a life cycle assessment of our facilities. Um this was based on input from our B&G team uh Ashray's median life expectancy data, life cycle assessment tools from the American Institute of Architects, uh as well as our uh Chambersburg area school district building roof assessments. Um you'll notice the assessment does not include Buchanan, Luren, Guilford, Falling Springs, Grand View, Cams North, or Cam South. um as we anticipate those projects the the upcoming projects will impact those facilities. Um so as you see in the document across the top we have the buildings listed um and down the side we have the proposed uh capital needs. Um this list includes items like turf and roof replacements to full system HVAC uh system replacements. Um in gray at the bottom uh you know this this is um identifying
077um projects that have been identified as potential needs to ensure comparable facilities at the elementary level. Um on the right hand side of the document highlighted in blue uh are our support buildings. Uh we're continuing to study uh support and education or athletic consolidation opportunities with RLPS. Um while the facilities do possess some capital needs, those buildings along with the comparable facilities projects are not included in the upcoming uh budget analysis. Uh so next um I use that um life cycle um analysis to project capital needs based on end of life cycle dates. Um this is the data that you'll see on the next two pages. Um, our goal was really to limit capital projects to about $2 million a year. Um, I will say there is flexibility in this plan. So, Ashtray will tell
078you the life expectancy of a chiller. Uh, the median life expectancy of a chiller is about 22 years. Um, that means at year 21 or 22, you should start planning for replacement. However, that might last 24 or 25 years. um maintenance practices and environmental uh environments infect overall equipment lifespan as well. Um there may also be some unexpected failures that are not accounted for on this list um that could require some capital funding as well. Um you can see on the next page um capital needs could exceed $36 million with approximately 32 million of that expected from uh 2028 to 2037. Um in the latter years maintaining that $2 million a year goal gets extremely hard just because uh we have to anticipate HVAC replacement at the high school. Um next we'll take a look
079at the financial side. Um, as you look at this chart, you can see in green, um, that would be deposits or transfers in. The red would be capital projects out. Um, and then the yellow column would be total cap reserve. Um, current to date, we have just over $16 million in our cap reserve. Um, we also have just over $2 million of capital projects that were approved uh back in the fall. Um that brings top right our total cap reserve currently to just over $14 million. Um as you can see um in the 2025 2026 year uh Miss Staler hit on this in her presentation um we are projecting or scheduled to deposit uh just over $4.5 million um into the cap reserve. Um, this is based on the 1% board resolution that we spoke
080uh an awful lot about tonight. Um, we do understand that we cannot continue to fund the capital reserve at that level um especially as new debt service for new construction um projects is being added in. So, um to support the $2 million annual of expenditures, this presentation proposes funding the cap reserve at $2 million per per year. uh beginning in 2027. Um as you can see, this approach ensures that we can meet all the projected capital needs while still maintaining a fairly healthy um cap reserve. Um without continued funding, um the current cap reserve could be exhausted by 2033 or 2034. Um I will note that the interest earned on our accounts are not accounted for in these figures either. Um, next I just want to kind of end um I want to highlight a
081few potential cost-saving opportunities that could lead to long-term sustainability for our district. Um, you know, the first one there is reduction in administrative costs and uh optimized staffing consolidation in our elementary schools. Building a new 456 and moving to 178 model um will likely provide opportunity to reduce administrators um and to more optimize our staff. Um this number has not been quantified yet um but early indications is it could be a pretty sizable number. Um reduction in operation and maintenance costs. Obviously if we reduce the number of facilities um we will reduce our operation costs. Um this will also a reduction in facilities would allow us to more strategically schedule our operational uh folks or staff. Um energy oper energy efficiency through cost effective technologies. Again new buildings are generally more efficient than older buildings.
082Um, but along with the new construction projects, we're able to look at new cost-effective technologies or green technologies, um, you know, similar to solar or geothermal, um, to help with long-term utility consumption. Um, a reduction in property costs and potential revenue through generation or potential revenue generation through sale or lease of unused buildings. That one's pretty self-explanatory. Although no decisions have been made on the future of the consolidated facilities, um there does appear that there could be uh you know, opportunity to generate revenue through those facilities. Um long-term investment in the new schools by increased property tax. You know, investing in the new schools is investing into the community. I mean, typically new schools um promote uh higher property values, which in turn generates additional revenue through tax collection for the school district. Um and
083lastly, I just want to highlight the Pennsylvania facilities improvement grant. While there were a few grants available in 2024, um this was the largest grant for school improvements. Uh Governor Shapiro allocated about $175 million to this grant in 2024. Um, many of you recall Plan Con or Plan Con 2.0, um, which was a reimbursement program for construction of new schools, additions, and renovations. While that doesn't appear to be coming back, um, competitive grants like this um, seem to be um, you know, the future uh, for the state investing in school facilities. Um, last year we were awarded $750,000 through this grant program and we anticipate that this could potentially uh continue into the future. Um, and the last page I have is just a little bit more information on that grant and what eligible projects
084there are and what the funding limits are. So, that concludes my presentation tonight. Um, I would be happy to answer any questions. I want to thank you for putting a human touch on how the buildings and what what is needed really affects staff and students. That's really important. Thank you. Thank you for that, Matt. I know I stepped through that pretty quick, but I promise to be concise tonight. Yeah, I've got a question, Matt. Um, it's a great lay down. It's nice to see a plan. Um the question I have though pertains to playgrounds which has been a topic of discussion from time to time in this venue and um technically I believe it's considered to be a capital improvement and I'm wondering uh since we're going to increase the length of the school day
085potentially it's even more important for kids to be outside and also playgrounds are an opportunity for the neighborhood take advantage of that asset when school's not in session and I'm just wondering why that it would be a relatively minor cost driver I would think but why that isn't included in the uh report. Yeah. Um historically we have not used uh well we have done um I don't want to say we have not used capital funds to to do playgrounds. We have included playgrounds in new building projects. Um, short of that, they've typically been funded through Roritans or local agencies or PTAs um, funding them through uh, you know, fundraisers and other types of of uh, earnings. Um, we had um, talked about putting that on a capital project plan list here years ago. We had
086some discussion amongst board members um, and at that time it was kind of decided that we did not feel that that was a capital expenditure. Um, and we would continue to to do that through PTO's and PTAs. And then just taking off from what you just said, I guess would be useful to know what is the definition of a capital expenditure rather than, you know, whose opinion is particular, you know, right at the time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is there is there a definition? capital expenditure means thus and thus yeah you know well I was just going to say fundamentally playgrounds again new builds we would fund the playground after that it's not I think the PTO's and the PAG group have talked about if we do consolidate schools we have a bunch of equipment
087out there we might be able to repurpose or reuse so there are opportunities as we move forward to improve our schools our playgrounds but fundamentally every school district I've been in it's the original build and after that it's up to the PTO's to maintain whether it's just your basketball court and paved area and foursquare and some mulch. Sometimes that's usually the bare minimum that we would do and then they would add the equipment afterwards. It would be a change strategically for many school district to say we're going to continue to take on um that approach. Thank you. Very helpful. Thank you later. get my papers back here. Good evening board and public. Um, right now we are going to have a presentation through our partners at RLPS. They came to us in March and presented
088um about north and south, but I can tell you that we have been um discussing a lot of different things within our governance team. Um, and an option came out that we would really like to present to you tonight. Towards the end of the the presentation, then Matt and I will come up for a little activity. So, you have a paper looking like this that we'll use for our activity then. So, Mr. Chris Linky and Mr. Andrew Bladen, please come. Good evening. How you doing? Good. Good. How are you, Chris? that activity report really sounds like you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Uh thank you for having us here tonight. As uh Dr. Long said, we are following up on and we're going to build upon the presentation that we provided last month to you
089regarding your 78 middle school uh building. Um so tonight we will um do a quick overview of what we presented last month and but then we're going to take a a deeper dive on testing a new middle school at the CAM South site. So just a quick refresh um the study that we're doing is for a middle school 1400 to700 students in grades seven and eight and we are testing the existing buildings for their worth and then we also want to test new buildings. Uh at the meeting last month we did a deeper dive into the existing buildings and we did some hypothetical talk about new buildings. So tonight we're going to get into a little bit more hands-on for the new building. So um last month when we talked about the existing buildings, we
090talked about additions and renovations at Cam's North and additions and renovations at CAMS South. Um we were similar in approach at each of those buildings where the blue shows a new addition to the Cam North building in the front of the building. Uh the gray block is the existing building which would be fully renovated. Um we also went back and uh looked at the site tried to improve the circulation kept the bus circulation on the right hand side added and changed the car circulation on plan left to make uh longer stack stacking lines. And we kept the front of the building as visitor and staff parking only to separate those two cir types of circulation. Um, we also were trying to get between the two sites, three playfields, one of them being a turf and
091at Cam's North, we just happened to have a track around the turf field. The other part about this one was there is very little demolition happening with this. This is all new construction in the front of the building. For Camp South, again, like we said with Camp North, we are putting a new addition on the front for this one. the circulation was staying pretty much the same. Um, we have the car circulation coming off the bottom part of the site and we have the bus circulation coming off plan left. We able to work on three fields with the turf field being in the lower right hand corner. This one was a little bit more intrusive into the existing building with the auditorium and the front part of the building. We had to tear more down
092to get this site to work. So we went through a long expedition uh last time and then we went through this evaluation sheet. So we had the additions and renovations at CAM North addition and renovation at CAM South and then we had a hypothetical new middle school. Um as we said last time the new middle school especially if it was on the CAM South almost checked all those boxes we had um we have 12 categories up there. The first three are just project information. 4 through 11 were our evaluation and 12 was our budget. Um for CAM North and CAM South just evaluating between those two. CAM North was a stronger scheme except the big hold back was its location that it wasn't located close to the existing high school. So there wasn't a sharing
093of facilities if you put your middle school at the building north. As I said, today we're going to do a little bit deeper dive into a new building at um CAM South, and I'll let Andy run through that. Thank you, Chris. I appreciate everybody having the allowing us the time this evening, and I'll grab the uh marker here. So, as uh Chris, Mr. Linky just said, uh we are going to talk about uh two potential options for utilizing the asset that you have in the property at Cam South. again, location uh being a uh primary consideration. Uh but there's a lot of things on that existing site. Uh and so we were charged with testing the site with multiple concepts. We're bringing with you two to you two concepts this evening. Uh a concept A,
094if you will, and a concept B. I think the uh the simplest way to describe the difference between the two is that concept A contemplates a two-story classroom wings which are applicable to your current CAMS north and CAM South buildings and concept B contemplates threetory classroom wings which you'll see as we discuss the site affords a lot more opportunity for usefulness of that site not only for the middle school but potential to support things here at the high school campus. And so just to remind ourselves here what your existing site plan looks like with cam south in the middle. You of course have bus circulation plan north and parking visitor circulation car drop off circulation plan south off of East McKinley Street. The bus is coming off of Staler Avenue. I 81 to the uh
095plan uh east or or rightand side of the plan there. And you have multiple grass playfields and a ball field on the property now. And so the first concept is that two-story classroom wing. Uh and I think it's also important before I go into that just to also touch on uh while time does not allow us to get into contemplating phasing and how you might utilize the the site as you're constructing a new building that has been considered as we've been testing the options. We could touch on that briefly. And so the first concept A contemplates that two-story classroom wing with your core facilities for that new middle school for grades seven through eight, 260,000 square ft. Hopefully in the center of the plan, you can see the outline of Old Cam South and you
096can see where the new building is constructed on the north side of that site. Um up near up adjacent to uh Interstate 81, you see those core facilities, a new gymnasium, a new auditorium, uh performing arts spaces, and then as you work plan left, you see the new entry with an administration and STEM steam areas, technology areas for your students. That that administration area is located in the center of the building. And hopefully you see with site circulation that allows an equitable entry for both your parent drop off as well as your bus drop off. Moving to the left hand side of the the scheme then you see twotory classroom wings. You could operate those as one wing being seventh grade, one being eighth, one floor being seventh grade, the second floor being eighth. There's
097a lot of different operational flexibility built into a plan like this. And those plans are connected at the end uh with your learning commons kind of the academic heart of the building connecting those grades and those classroom areas together. The remainder of the site of course is occupied by different site features. Uh still on the plan right side of the field with I 81. You see two grass playfields. Uh as we move plan left then we still see parent pickup and drop off of East McKinley Street. And that is uh paired with the bus drop off still off of Staler Avenue there, just oriented a little bit differently than what it is currently, bringing bus and then car riders into the same uh entry. And last but not least, you see contemplated there a new
098artificial turf field uh with a track. We're showing a a a track here to make it applicable to the development that already exists at CAMS North. And really as you reimagine the site or have the opportunity to reimagine the site, you can see you have the area to contemplate including that as a feature for your middle school students as well as supplementing things here with the high school. So that's the proposed plan for concept A. Just going back briefly to the existing site plan again and then we go into that's how I like to do it, right, Mr. Bigger? And just go back into uh concept B then to reenter ourselves. This is different than concept A. I think the first thing we hopefully we all can see is that those three-story classroom wings. This
099is the same 260,000 square ft conceptualized building, the same size core spaces, but going up that extra story gives you some efficiency on the site. It allows you some additional flexibility to uh orient and and restructure the site for uh car and bus drop off as well as your playfield considerations. Uh this building here would be built in the uh kind of planned southeast corner of the site. Um when you construct the building there, you still have the opportunity to bring a a drop off off of East McKinley as well as one off of Staler Avenue. We're just showing the opportunity to maybe switch that up where you have the buses coming off of East McKinley with a little bit less of a queuing area. The site now allows you additional queuing off of Stafford
100Avenue for those car rider lines that we all know are a consideration during site planning. Uh also notable where the other scheme uh impacted the bus drop off circle a little bit during construction. This scheme right here uh impacts the initial driveway of the existing building coming onto the site because the building new building is being built there. But during construction, your other driveway off of East Miklly Street would be open uh or contemplated to be open for you know car riders and students. The same core areas here oriented in a different way with athletics, your performing arts with and your cafeteria, kitchen and administrative area. A similar dual approach there with the entry and the sidewalk bringing students in. STEM and tech in this particular scheme and the learning commons are form the heart
101of the building at the intersection of those two three-story classroom wings. Um and that rounds out the building. What's interesting about this is that as you look at how the site is planned out, then the tur proposed potential for a turf track and field is located up in the uh north uh east corner of the site adjacent to uh I 81. Uh it's kind of feels good there from a space planning standpoint, site planning standpoint related to the surrounding structures. And that affords you the opportunity to have your additional two grass practice fields and maintaining the existing ball field on the site. Uh and so that really rounds out uh concept B then and how you could use uh Cam South site to support the construction of a new building while CA cam south was
102still in operation. Uh just briefly in summary here uh having a concept A and concept B. Uh again, simplest way to designate the two a two-story versus a three-story concept. Uh with the three-story concept of of concept B, you certainly have a smaller building footprint. There is the opportunity or the necessity maybe to reorient some vehicular circulation and it locates the larger venue of the track and artificial turf field um on the back of the site, if you will, away from adjacent development. concept A on the other side of things. We can al I'm sure see it's a larger footprint just out of necessity with the planned building size. Uh vehicular circulation ends up being similar to what you have existing as far as driveways entering and exiting the site and the location of the
103turf and track field. Um I think Mr. Dr. Long and uh Mr. Barner it's it's your turn now for the activity. We're going to do a little activity. Um, absolutely. We're going to do a little activity and public, please join in with this. Um, be thinking we have two buildings on two sites. Uh, the one building is 65 years old and the other building is 50 years old and they're rounded numbers. We're going to have a big claw and remove those buildings from the those pieces of property. And we're just looking at the site right now. just the site north is out on Scotland Avenue. Um it's on the north end of the burrow. Actually on the other side of that, not too far is the end of the burrow. We have the south site
104where that is on the east side of the burrow. Correct? Or the west side? East side of the burrow. And 81 is the line. So I I get east and west mixed up sometimes because they all meet, right? they all come around to meet the next way. So, uh but we want to look at some things that really if you if you look at other districts, you look at uh reading and some of the u opinions so to speak on in architects and also in from superintendent. So, um educational location compared to your high school and I put Cases because Cashes is our high school. It's right across the street from here. And what is the educational location from these two sites? What can we do at north that is beneficial and what can we
105do at south that would be beneficial. So which site would be more beneficial and you need to put a plus or a minus where you have benefits for being close in proximity to your high school. Let me give you some examples of being in proximity for education. Uh you have some very gifted eighth graders. um they could take classes at the high school um that would will enable them to move forward um in in their studies instead of being locked in at the middle school level. You have other things that the high school has in their building that the middle school doesn't. And let's just pick science. So science could be easily those kids instead of getting a bus, they could just walk over because it's less than a mile to the high school from
106um south. Some sites like we were just at Mannheim Township, they were 100 feet from their high school. So it really makes a difference and they were the superintendent there was showing us how proximity really makes a difference. The second one is transportation. Right now we currently have school three schools and we're running buses between all three of those schools just for the secondary run 6 through 12. If we had two sites, yes, we would be down to to two schools. So if we looked at north, we would be 3.5 miles away from the high school and south is less than one mile. So um which one would would save you money as far as fuel and time as well. Athletics um athletics is something that we're looking at as well. We have 800 students
107uh in our athletic programs each year. Um this year it's 792. So I just rounded to 800. But with that, uh, what kind of things could you do with another turf field that's very close that could allow the high school students to be in one area and maybe the the JV team in another area, but also instead of having our lights on until 10:00 at night for practices, these students could be getting home a little sooner just because we have a a field close close by. Project phasing. Um, this is for students. Um, you know, if we we get contractors and things like that, um, they will do the project just as much as we want, but we want to make sure our students are taken care of during the school year. We don't want
108to have them in quote unquote little Baghdad like we called the high school when the high school was being renovated. I don't know if any of you were over there at that time. I know Kurt Kurt and I were. We walked through and it looked like a bomb went off. I mean, there was wires hanging down. The kids loved it to a point, but what school would be able to do that? What site would be able to do that? I should say easier. And I know that what they showed you tonight on the screen, um, CAM South could be completely run without any bother while they were building. Um, and then when they would demo Cam South, then they could move into the new building while they finish the site. So, that's what we're looking
109at there. And then the my last one is site acreage. When I look at these two sites, I look at acreage. I when I I'm looking for a a site for my my daughter right now um because she's getting married soon. Um she wants to buy a little piece of property because she doesn't like to mow where I like to get a big piece of property because she has two dogs. Well, we have a thousand dogs in each school, so to speak. Okay. and the one site is 25 acres and the other site is 39 acres. So you have more more space for those thousand students to run. You have more space to look at expansion and also more things that we can do with that as well. So great mark your sheets as far
110as the first five and then Matt you can do the last five. Well thanks Mark. Uh I guess I get to discuss these last five uh items on the list. Um so obviously the next one um you know for comparison is location within the burrow. Well both schools are located in the burrow which is a more central location and when I think of central I think central as compared to central office um our warehouse our operations um you know so you kind of get the gist there. Um access to Memorial Park. um this is kind of a no-brainer, but you know, is this something important? Um you know, you think about the aquatic center, um potential for field days, potential for um combined recreational events with the burrow, um additional parking, um and another one
111could be a viable reunification site in the event of a school emergency. Um and then we talk about future building expansion, which site um and thinking the next renovation ahead for future, you know, if we were to do a renovation to Cam's North um what does a future expansion at that location look like? Which site is more beneficial and which building would um be more beneficial without disrupting the day-to-day function of the school? Um so something to think about there. Um you know, this one, convenience for families. Maybe that's not important. Um, but you know, you think of shared athletic facilities, um, and parent pickup. I know selfishly I've been a parent over here at 9:30 at night picking my child up from sporting events. And, you know, we have a large family, so we
112rely on older siblings to commun to, you know, provide transportation for younger siblings. And, you know, does one site have benefit for another there? Um, and then this one kind of t ties back up into uh my first one, operational efficiency. I mean, closeness to, you know, our um Chambersburg police force and response times and the availability to have administrators and, you know, so, you know, just thinking about all of those things as we look at um both sites and we, you know, make, you know, for future decisions about which site is is better for the the new middle school. So we wanted to present this in a in a comparison but also a little activity for you. Um when we to be very honest with you when we were looking at this we were
113looking at just showing you what we thought and we felt it would be a much better to get your thinking about it. Uh is there any questions that you want to ask about this activity and maybe where you're at with this and your thoughts? Go ahead. What was the site acreage? 25 for north and 39 for south. First of all, if we were doing renovation, I think that north was the better renovation project. However, if we're doing new, I'm 100% in agreement that South is the better option. As a matter of fact, some few of you remember a couple years ago when I kind of put the brakes on the whole south uh renovation project by thinking outside the box so to speak of the closeness of the two etc and so on. And so,
114um, as say because of the structural issues at South, I was not at all in favor of the, uh, rebuild or renovation or whatever at South, but I can see a lot of benefit to South with a new build. Um, I know cost is going to be significantly higher. Um, but one of the things that I've noticed over my lifetime is that boards have often cut corners at the beginning and then regretted it at the end. An example being the Maran Elementary build, you know, should have been three deep, not too deep. Um, wrong location, wrong time. I forget what the slogan was in the opposition to even building there. Within how many years was that school filled to capacity? The board that made a decision to build was fighting a battle even to get
115a too deep. We need to make sure that we're not cutting our nose off despite our face. And I will say each one of these builds um we were looking at our current and 1400 but we've also built it to go up to 14 or 1747 for 1750. So with that we do have um the expansion available for additional students for sure and that's going to take us out quite a few years to reach 1750. So yes, is there any concern from a safety standpoint to being so near to Staler Avenue in the first first of all, I like the three the smaller footprint, but it's very close to Staler Avenue. And one of the things that I've read is that you want to have your buildings away from um streets and so forth because
116of safety issues. And that one moves it real close to Staler. It's It's closer to McKinley on that one. Or McKinley. Yeah. Right. Can you guys help me on that one? Yeah. I have a related question. Is is there also an option to do a three high at the location where the two high is like? Can you is there? Yeah. I I would would would that address? Yes. Our effort was just to show right. Yeah. Two different scenarios, two different locations. you can take the best of all of those and put them where it needs to be. And and I I think it's a good point about the location out towards McKinley that having it back off the site. Uh what you say, they like to see people that are coming towards the building. So
117having them back off the road would be a safer way to go as as far as the safety and security guidelines go. The other question that I had has to do with the structural differences. Um, are you looking at brick uh versus metal as far as you know there's a big difference in cost if you're going to brick versus there's a lot of buildings now that are most likely we would do a combination. We still want the most durable down around the ground, but when you get up off the ground after a story, we like to mix in metal for the efficiency and the cost. What does the new build do to what we need finance-wise then? Because that'll change your numbers if we decide we're doing a new build, will it not? And by
118and by how much? That was the reason we went we put it at 200 just to consider that. So that considers the new build money. Yeah. Well, it does, but we're still the the estimates we're at are still estimates. You won't know until actual midday what the number comes in at, but we were forecasting a little bit further down the road. So we we 25 million answer the question at 175 million to 200 million. Yeah. We wanted to test we wanted to test the theory and I'll use Kurt Whitman. He said I don't want to look back 10 years and say absolutely why didn't we pick south over north. So we're testing this. Can we afford it and also is it possible? Right. I'm not criticizing last architect either but they said don't build on
119south new. And we're like well let's challenge that. Let's get a second opinion. And you know they're coming with some options for us. So the numbers that Mr. Fry presented this evening include what it would be to build new on South roundabout, but we don't have numbers for the 4 to6 building yet or Grand View. Okay. So, we have real big estimates like first look at it. So, if you go to both numbers, yeah, we'd have to do the two plus cash on hand. Okay. Can I just I I just wanted to say that uh at the uh one of the previous meetings it, you know, we we talked about North and and and adding on to North and and so forth. And I specifically said then that it would be good how are we
120going to sell to the public that we didn't build on South because it is near the high school and comments were made well it's only across town. However, as you sit and you look at it educationally, you know, we're here for the students and the students having the campus together makes so much more sense with your your athletic fields. you know, kids being on the athletic fields at 10 and 11 o'clock at night getting home is just is not is not healthy. There's so much interaction plus students being able to go to the high school and that that walking distance, but then it comes down to what can we afford. And so, you know, and and what we can afford is going to tie into all these other builds that we do as well. you
121know, I'm sitting here, okay, what's going to happen if what's going to happen to um North? How are we going to use that building? Is there any way of using that building? Uh, you know, like what's the next? But it makes it really does make sense educationally for students to be able to walk back and forth between these buildings. Also makes sense for staff, but it but you know, 25 million, that's that's a that's a lot of money. But I do think down the road pe people would say if you're over on the other side of town even though it was said well that it's just across the town it's still across the town and you and as Matt said picking up kids and having kids at different schools and so forth when you have
122them right here together at the high school it does if we're looking solely at the education for kids it makes sense to have have this the these two together. uh the sharing of the facilities, you know, high school coming over, or even high school mentors coming over, kids to mentor at your middle school or middle school kids going back and forth. Uh and and you can put them in a little van and just take them over at different times of the day to get them. And educationally, it's just it's more sound. Yeah, I've I've got a couple comments and a question. And um first the property at Cam's North to me would be very attractive to Meadow Haven or Wellspan or somebody else to mark make that part of the expansion of their campus already.
123Um second, um getting across town these days is not like it used to be 20 years ago. Um, and then the question I have though is, um, if you go from two levels to three levels, I know you got to satisfy ADA requirements and seems to me if you put a ramp in that takes up a lot of valuable space. So, we're talking elevators. You're already going to have an elevator in the building at two stories. So, it's just another stop. It's just another level on stairs. So, so the cost, the accessibility and the cost for that cost is negligible. Yeah. Thank you, Chris. When we're talking about location, why are we always talking about location within the burrow? Why don't we talk about center for the entire district? Everyone says how close it is
124to the burrow. It's, you know, you can't get across town. Well, what where's the center part of the district? What's the population on that though? Yeah, I think if you look at population, it would be near where Cashes is probably. You think? I don't know. If you Yeah, I don't. Transportation would probably be the best in-house department that could answer that question. Right. I've been here a long time and I can tell you each board when they said about the center of the of the district, they always considered the high school the center of the district because that's the pinnacle school. So they always looked at that as the center of the district. So that's what we're looking at. Probably is. Interestingly, whenever I uh was hearing that concern for the Green Village location for
125the new build there, I sat in the parking lot at sheets across from where the new build is and I put in addresses of various people that I knew and driving time from all points were almost equal. But that's driving time, not distance. And there's a big difference whether you're talking about being able to go 81, the various ways to get to that site. I think that that site for what we're using it for is very central. Even though it's on the north end, it's that driving issue that it has an advantage. Um, but the junior high, senior high working back and forth is a whole different ball of worms. I think too looking at it from a um safety and uh if we were have have some sort of you know god forbid any
126kind of situation uh I think north is is a little harder to to maintain if you're talking about evacuation or whatever else you're talking about uh staging areas you have obviously the the the uh the park that's right across the street um maybe even some of the parking lots that that may be you right behind there uh where the professional buildings are at. Also, I'm looking at too um like after practices or whatever else my all my kids are gone grown and out of, you know, out of house or whatever. But it was real it's real convenient when you're having to maybe stop at a store rather than having to run all the way over here or whatever else and you got these two plazas that are right down the street. Whether that's rural king
127for whatever you're looking for horseshoes, I don't know, or if you're or or I mean there's restaurants and all that. There's stuff that's actually more walking distance, so to speak, you know that um I think that that's one of the other things that's probably more advantageous too with the with the with the south. I think um one one hard part about all this, it's not typical for boards to look out 20, 40, and 60 years. It's really hard publicly, you're used to, hey, what's the next project? And I think one of the big differences for me is the renovation at North and addition will get you 30 years, but it won't get you 50. Your history has shown that when you do a new build, it lasts 50 years by example. So, I think that's
128part of your decision financially is a 30-year look versus a 50-year look. And I think that's hard to do and nobody can, you know, have an oracle um to look at that. But that is a big difference for us when you do a major renovation addition. It's probably 30 years and something on the infrastructure you're not fixing. You're renovating it. Yes. Fully, but infrastructure does begin to fail over long periods of time. So that's a big difference. So 30 years from now looking back or 50 years looking back, that's what you're, you know, we be judged on most of the time. You know, new boards. So the hardest part for any board is to set the next boards up for success. So really think about what are you setting the future boards up for as
129far as their success because it can really build once you get concepts and ideas moving forward. So that that's a big picture for me on a 30-year look or a 50-year look. And I'll just add um thank you for saying that Chris, but I'll just add that the sequence of things that we have and it's not necessarily in order is a Grand View, a 4 to6 building, a 7 to8 building operations consolidation of operation departments, athletic department needs, and then a high school programming like the Ignite. um if we do this right, we can knock off athletics with a build and be finished with two of those right right out of the starting gate. So that's what we're trying to do in planning. That's why we were looking at this little activity as well. So
130I just wanted to bring that up again just for to remind the public, but also to remind everyone, am I thinking straight here? uh if if we were at rather than two right now we have 2% built into our budget 1% of that is allocated towards capital right if if that was a so it's really a one plus one if that was a one plus two there's your 25 million right spread out over 25 years if you're up a million yeah I have to ask Tammy and John for the exact math but yeah basically if we is that is that right and and you could you could say well we're is going to fund half of it that way, right? If we went to 2.5% this year, one 1% for education, 1.5% for capital, then
131you have half of your $25 million increase covered, right? That way, that's an approach that we could take. I'm not saying we should, but I think I think the task for the the board for me is say, "Okay, 200, go build what you can build, what you can what can you do with that and come back to us, you know, and and so I've said this all along. It's not the plan that's the wrong idea. It's just how long it's going to take. Some will go faster and then you have to pause and wait. Um, others can move ahead, but you have to do some form of seven, eight, and six, you know, because you're removing sixth grade from the the conversation. Um, and so, you know, we've thought of contingency plans that, and if
132we did the 78 first and it was more expensive, worst case scenario, you do the 56 but not the fourth initially, but build for the wing. So, you do Grand View and a 56 as a relief valve, right? Um, just to buy yourself some more time. If you do it the other way and do 46 Grand View first, then you come back to 78. It's harder to do. So, I'm not liking I'm not liking saying that out loud. But whenever you worry about, you know, the dollars, you have to figure out where your relief valves are. But I think the task is what's our budget build number and then we go figure out what we can afford. And that was the litmus test. I think the small number of the middle school estimate was 110
133and the upper end of the renovation was 91. Correct. 91 for the renovation at North. The upper estimate number. So your 91 to 110 is your gap between renovation at North and new at South. Could we close that gap? Who knows? Who knows? And so, we're definitely still considering Grand View. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're all on the table. It's just how fast, right? And am I right in Am I correct in thinking that a three high would be slightly less expensive till it's all said and done? That's correct. You're building up less. It comes down to you have less footings. Is that like 1% 2% less? I I I think you're probably talking of savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay. Minimal still worth something. It's still Yeah. So, as far
134as uh you know, next steps, I'm sure Mr. Bigger will give us uh some of those as well, but you know, looking forward to responding to your feedback from this evening and then working towards that recommendation. Uh, and then also keeping the eye on the prize when it comes to operations and facilities and your athletics to get everything wrapped up for you on that end of things as well. We appreciate the analysis and the speed in which you've helped us, you know, at least evaluate things. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Item 4.05, teacher pipeline. This is Mrs. Ltoner. I like teacher preparation program better than teacher pipeline. I read it right off my agenda. Thank you, Mr. Women. You do have a couple seconds here. Diana is switching some things over for us. Um,
135thank you. Definitely hydrate. Hydrate. It's been many presentations. I am your brain break for this evening. I will not make you think millions of dollars. Threetory buildings. No. No. We're just going to talk kids. We're going to talk programs. Thank you in advance for that. Good. Yes. Maybe shake it off a little bit. Okay, so Kurt has been around. He has been uh giving everyone a handout. This is a little different um than a normal slide presentation this evening because what I want to have at um the conclusion of this, which this is a work in progress, um it is a draft. It's really anformational guide. It's it's going to be um a document that we can share with individuals as they are thinking through their next steps as to, you know, working on a
136teacher certification. Um so we're looking at, you know, how do you do that? What are the ways to do that through Chambersburg School District as far as a grow your own teacher preparation program? We've had this conversation many times. It's been a topic that's come up um whenever we go to school visits uh looking at the CASD blueprint even way back the comprehensive plan several years ago talked about this um and you know into schools of distinction. Key points from the discussion were around uh teacher recruit teacher recruitment um developing interest how do we develop interest in teaching through our current programming or even how do we expand programming to be able to do this? Um and then of course our prioritization of career and college readiness pathways. So I know in your travels and
137in different presentations you I'm sure you've been hearing about these topics and this sort of stems from that and has been discussed through um you know different meetings and um events that we've been to and looked at. This is a group effort. Um I have been working with HR. I've been working with district administrators, building administrators um to research programs in other states to look at uh existing experiences that we have, existing coursework that we have to be able to weave what we have currently into what makes a successful program that you see in the research that you see in other schools. So that we can create a path to teacher certification. that's for our students and our staff. And the guide that you have in front of you is really that attempt to capture
138the work not only by me but um you know other groups, other departments and other administrators in the in the district. So that's just sort of a little hint of what's to come. And the first page uh of the document you have, you also see it projected up here is an overview of that teacher preparation program. Now, I'm not going to read all of that to you, but it really just hits the what, the why, and the who. Um, so what is it? We're really about developing or recruiting educators from within the district and our local community, but also being able to provide that assistance, provide that aid, provide that guidance that it's not always really easy when you're working with PTE. you know, how do you you go to college, you get your coursework,
139but then there's also other things that goes into getting that teacher certification and um being able to have that support for our staff and or our students u moving forward. Why create it? Definitely teacher shortage. Um let me just come down here just a little bit. Uh teacher shortage is always that was even on the news this morning. um you know discussing that not only in uh Chambersburg but across the state. Um recruiting from community also strengthens the student teacher connections. So another key component of you know our students within our districts but then also um our individuals within our community and being able to recruit them that um our students will connect to people that they know in the community. And even some of the research is talking about cost effectiveness. And then the
140last piece there is who's eligible. So prospective staff members with a bachelor's degree. Um HR works extensively with individuals that have bachelor's degrees to get them emergency certifications. Uh pair of professionals and teaching assistants. You know, all individuals that are already working with us and how can we, you know, get them to teacher certification. And the new piece, the new piece is high school students. So, I'm going to talk briefly about our current employees, but I really want to focus the rest of our conversation or the look at the document around what we can do for our high school students. So, we're going to go into page two. if you're following along in the document there. And I was sort of expanding my learning a little bit by using a different tool to create this.
141Um so bear with here a little bit as I um zoom in and out. So this page two gives you the overview for uh three main groups within our district. Column one are high school students, column two parah parah educators um also teacher assistants in column two and then column three those individuals with bachelor's degrees. So, just to direct your attention to column two, column three right now because I'm that's just going to be a quick overview of those two work groups. Um, the process for the individuals that would fall into these two columns really already exists for them through either the support staff bargaining agreement or the CAEA bargaining agreement. So, those individuals already have a process outlined for them to be able to get coursework uh reimbursed and how to um or where
142to take classes to get credits that would apply to a teacher certification. When you look at the parah educator, the teacher assistant column, those individuals um are usually starting at the beginning. So, they are going to be working on undergrad coursework. The individuals with a bachelor's degree, they're going to have more of graduate coursework as they go through. And even, you know, because they have some credits under their belt, it might not take them as long. So now, I did add a page. This is just more for the presentation tonight. Um, the next page really just is what we wanted to look at. And I'll zoom in here a bit on high school grow your own. So very first box, what's happening here? These are high school students taking classes, taking their academic coursework. These
143are the classes that they're going to need for high school graduation. Then they're going to have the opportunity outside of academic coursework to take dual enrollment courses. Uh the dual enrollment courses could be college in the high school where they're taking a class with our teachers and getting college credit for it or it could be a dual enrollment course where they're taking a a class on a college campus with a professor at um a local community uh like a Wilson College or a Shippensburg. So this first box, step number one, is really what the students are doing right now. We have students doing this um at cashes at CMS. Um as far as the academic coursework and getting some dual credit for that um the change here would be or the addition here would be
144the teacher preparation coursework for grades 10 through 12. So in combination with the academic coursework and the dual enrollment coursework, um the students would also be provided starting in grades 10 and 11 the opportunity for classroom observations, getting out there doing some um shadowing, those kind of things out in buildings. Then their senior year, their 12th grade year is where they would move into actual classroom placements and um having what's called a student internship. So this is really that um focused piece where they're getting intensive experience with a teacher and students in a classroom that senior year. And what you want to keep in mind here, you know, we do have it's not like none of this exists. We do have some of this um in play right now in our um coursework academically. More
145of the work to get some of the teacher core courses is what would be we what we would be doing into the future. Okay. So now for the what I think is just sort of exciting. um gets me, you know, sort of geek out on this part when I I think about program development and what we can do for our students. Not to downplay anything that's happening with the coursework in step number one because that's some pretty neat stuff happening there too with our teachers and with our university partners that we already have. Um but when our students leave us, okay, so step number one is complete. They've had their classes their senior year. They've had this key student internship with a classroom teacher in a classroom in the district. Okay, all of that has
146happened. Now, they're going to leave us. They're going to leave us and they're going to go to college and they're going to finish. They're going to get their teacher certification. They're going to work on their degree and they're going to get their teacher certification. There are really two options here in step number two. It's the traditional option that you're probably used to. Undergrad coursework. They go out to a college or university of their choice. They leave us. But what's different is now because of this program, they're leaving us with some experience. They're leaving us, you know, with a little bit of that magic of being in a classroom under their belt. And they're going to go and they're going to do their dream of being a teacher at their university. They're going to graduate in
147four years, maybe a little less because some of the dual enrollment work that they've been doing in step number one. Um, but they're going to go out, they're going to complete that degree and then end up with their teacher certification. Now, the new option, the next piece that is sort of like um in development and a little different is being able to take that um student internship continue that with Chambersburg school district. So, they're not going to leave us completely. They're still going to go to college. They're still going to pick a university of their choice, but they're going to also still have some part-time hours with us as a CASD employee. So, that internship their senior year turns into a part-time employment opportunity so that they can go to school and work with us
148and be in the classroom. So while they're learning new techniques in their college classes, they can come back and practice those in the classroom while they're, you know, having that employment opportunity as a teacher's assistant or they are, you know, a teacher's assistant and they have some real world experience and they can connect that to what they're learning in the classroom when they go to college. So, it is a really unique opportunity that starts in step one, that senior year with the student internship that when they get to step two, they're still going to college. They're again maybe not taking as long because they have some dual enrollment classes under their belt and then they're going to finish and they're going to graduate just like traditional just like the traditional student. But now we have
149a higher probability of bringing them back to us after they have that teacher degree, have after they have that teacher certification. um and being able to uh hire them either as a pair professional, maybe they're not quite ready ready or maybe we don't have a position just yet uh wherever they're specializing in um but they would be able to transfer in or be hired for a pair professional or if a position is open then we can hire them as a teacher. Um so a lot of amazing things that are happening there while they are you know in that sort of concurrent um ability to do both college and some employment you know tied together. So after then you know they graduate oh and I don't want to forget about the the traditional pathway. So they
150aren't working for us. They're out and about. they're going to get their certification, but now when they come back because they participated in that pathway, maybe when they go through that interview process, they get a priority over others in that interview process because they participated um in our program to do that. Just want to make sure I didn't miss anything. Oh, and the key piece too with that um TA position is getting some tuition reimbursement because they're an employee. they're they're connected to that support staff contract and they can get some tuition reimbursement to help them with um you know co college costs and then just step number three everybody knows you know you have those certification exams your clearances just some of those extra pieces that they have to So, next page. I've been
151talking an awful lot about coursework. Um, but just wanted to give an example. Now, this isn't set in stone. This is just looking at some classes that we have. Um, as a student or, you know, families trying to decide what do I want to do? Is this a pathway that I want? What what am I going to have to work through for four grades? Um, you know, ninth grade is pretty standard, but with uh the teacher preparation piece, we could get some mentor time in there for those students. Um, and each area is broken down into the academic core and then the teacher preparation core. And then when you see grades 11 and 12, this is where the teacher preparation core has, you know, those key pieces of the observation hours, um the pre-apprenticeship or
152the internship in the classrooms, um or even a co-op experience, however we can, you know, build that in for the students. The last page is really just the overview again of employees that already work with us. what are the courses that they would have to take and what I really just want to highlight is here at the bottom these two boxes your par educators your teacher teacher assistants um you know they may not be coming in with any coursework so they are starting from the beginning and that's where you see the 120 plus credits required um they may not have any dual enrollment classes so it might take them four years to you know complete that a postback somebody that has that bachelor's degree Uh again, credits will vary because they have some of that
153completed. And uh the accelerated program is what's sort of nice for these individuals because what is happening now uh Wilson College has that accelerated program in place for for those folks with with bachelor's degrees. Um and we currently have employees that are taking advantage of that opportunity. So, just in closing, um that's really again this is a draft uh not set in stone, but giving you a framework of what this could look like as um we continue to number one, what do we have, what what's in place now in Chambersburg. Uh we don't want to forget about the Tiny Trojan Lab classroom, uh where they're getting, you know, some of that experience. Um, we don't want to forget about our awesome co-op program that are getting students out into not only elementary schools but middle
154school and um, you know, other opportunities for co-op uh, shadowing and mentoring. And then FCCTC, they have the uh, early childhood program. Uh, currently we have six students. We had three in the first semester and three in the second semester. Yeah, second semester. Sorry, I'm dry. Um, with uh, the FCCTC program. Um and again when you think of the number of students just this year alone um Shippensburg University had a Aspire summit that was geared towards teachers, counselors and social workers and I believe we had 20 students that participated in that. So when we see that we have six students that are in FCCTC, we know we have work to do. we have students in the pipeline and how do we, you know, continue to develop that interest um in them or with them to
155get that teacher certification. Step number two, you know, what do we need? Anytime you see teacher core in those boxes as far as coursework, that's what we need. We're going to have to build that either by ourselves or we're going to have to work with a university partner to have that as a college in the high school or dual enrollment opportunity. Um and then step number three to really make step number two happen is to have that uh community partnership with higher ed. Who can we get to work with us that will make this a seamless transition from high school student intern through college through to that teacher certification program. We have part we have neighbors. We have people in our backyard. We have colleges and universities really close. Who can we get to be
156that partner? um to make this happen for our students. So, those are sort of the the three next steps that we're going to continue to do um to frame this out even more over time. So, thank you'all. And any questions? Yes. Uh this is a fantastic program. It's going to really pay dividends if it comes to fruition. I'm happy to support it any way I can. Um, my only question is, uh, how would it work for a student that goes to a college that's kind of not local with the teachers assistant? I mean, with their schedule concurrent with ours, maybe would they be able to participate in the summer or how would that work or is that just really not practical? Well, I think that those would be questions we'd have to look at. we
157would have to see, you know, where a, you know, if a student's going to Pittsburgh to get their teaching degree, then they would be on that traditional route, they would go, they would complete that, but we would have documentation of them being part of the program, grades 9 through 12, um, really intensive part of the program, 11 and 12. Um, and then we we could figure out a plan on how we could give them priority when they graduate and and apply for a position with us over others who did not have a teacher preparation program. Thank you very much. Um, you would there would there be a commitment for the people who complete the whole education program, get the certification that they would come back here? Well, and that is definitely um a topic that
158we've talked about. Yeah, I'll jump in there. I mean, we want to incentivize our graduates to go through the program and come back and work for us. And that's financial incentive. So whether we help with some of the dual enrollment or college and high school or when they return to us, maybe we reimburse some of their tuition if they went away. It's very common in healthcare. It's very common in military that if you complete our program, go and come back, we help with reimbursement with some of that. I just So will we be looking to do that to incentivize them to come here? I just I guess I question and maybe it's my personal thing. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I was that age. And when I see you mentioning
159starting a curriculum in ninth grade going all the way through, sometimes students change their minds. Sometimes they change their minds frequently. Um, what's what's the workaround going to be for that? I think this sounds wonderful, but I'm just thinking I would hate to see us be disappointed. And it sounds like you already have a solution to that. Yeah. I mean, definitely looking at grades nine and 10. That's fluid and flexible. So many of the academic courses that they're going to take in those two years are really going to apply to a variety of career paths, not ne not necessarily just a teacher preparation pathway. Um, and that's where the mentoring comes in um into play. really important in nth grade and not just nth grade. I mean I have it listed there but we really
160need to do that the whole way through um to have those conversations with students and you know understand where they are at that point because like you said I mean I have um a soon to be 21 and I have a senior that's going to graduate this year and I've watched them both change direction um the four years through high school. Uh so knowing not just with the teacher preparation program but um many of the programs we talked about with Ignite and you know what that pro what that building or opportunity could be. Um it really has been and Brad and I have talked about that you know even at the the other content areas or the other programs that could fit in there that you know that flexibility is in nine and 10 that
161if they change their mind it still fits where you're really getting you know into it and you know that intense focus is going to be your 11th and 12th grade year. Thank you. Y is the goal for the um teacher preparation core in 10 11 12 that they would get college credit for this if we can nail down that community partner. You betcha. Because that really could you could shave off a year of their bachelors or or more uh with that. And uh that that's a lot of incentive. And I think um when you look at the second page um the boxes for the high school, I believe I put in there, you know, potential credits. And I was probably a little conservative. Um I think I had 15 credits or 20 credits. 15 to
16220 15 to 20 credits in that top box for the high school students. as far as college in the high school or dual enrollment. Um, but if students are aggressive and especially with a block schedule and how they take their courses and and summer opportunities when when if we can get that key community partner and they can do things over the summer as well. Um, I think the opportunity would be there. We we were hoping I mean when Chris and I started this conversation at the beginning of the school year you know we were really hoping that there would be a way to have you know one year ready to go and then they only have three to complete when they get to university but you know that that may be a little aggressive at
163the beginning. Um it takes time but uh you know we have local universities they're already providing some of these courses. What we saw at Ignite which was really interesting it wasn't narrowing it just to be a teacher. They said hey how about you be in the education profession. You want to be a speech pathologist, you want to be a psychologist, you want to be a teacher, early childhood, you want to be a researcher, you want to work in like just get into the education field, there's all kinds of options for you. Yes. So, it was more about just getting him in the field and then we find out where they want to end up. And I really like that Ignite did that. They said many kids start out as, hey, I want to be a
164math teacher because I love my math teacher and then like, no, I don't want to do that now. I want to be a social worker. more about the field the the you know even though I mean I labeled it we labeled it teacher preparation the courses that you see there are foundation foundational so they will apply to a social worker a counselor um I'm not quite sure on the school psychologist I actually have an FCCTC student that is um with me right now in a classroom she's being an intern we have her in a classroom um at Stevens I uh and she already has decided she's going to a university to be a psychologist. Now I have to sort of dig into all right where where does that align because school psychologist versus regular psychologist
165um I would have to get into that a little bit more with the university to see what we um offer and how that ties to them. So somebody that gets in maybe a little bit more specialized that way may not have as many credits, but it would there would be something there for them and it still keeps opportunities open um for the really just education pro profession in general. This this is a great guideline. So thank you for putting this together. Yes. Yeah. Well, again, we're going to have more to add to it. Um, like I said, the team that we talked with, you know, we want to add in, you know, some other pieces about scholarships, um, and different things that way to, uh, really round it out for for individuals so that when
166we get this the way we really like it, then, um, you know, counselors can hand it out to students, HR can hand it out to folks who are interested in, you know, future employment and get that, uh, you know, kind of guide of, you know, we start here to get here. Now, what about students? A lot of students are doing online education today because uh would those students be able to do the online education and still be uh you know in the program you know you know you know because a lot are earning their bachelors I mean you so many universities the online programs bigger than the on campus. Yes. So I mean the key piece is going back to the university of their choice. I mean, so we don't have anything um saying any
167one university at this time. So like and especially if you're that traditional student and you're not coming back to us, you know, you're going to be able to pick one of your choice. Um, if you're doing one online and you're housed here, um, yeah, that then you could potentially do that part-time thing like what we were talking about with, you know, the new opportunities of, you know, being a student intern, staying here, working part-time, and then you have, um, an online university that is, you know, offering a teacher degree. So, they are out there. Um I would there I will caution and this is only because part of my job is to work with our individuals in house to approve their coursework. Um you know there are some that uh have better credentials than others.
168Yes. No doubt. And so, you know, I do try to work with individuals and to look at where they might be, you know, um looking for their degree and helping them understand that type of credentiing to look for for, you know, um a nice program that's really going to give them what they want. Okay. Thank you very much. Yep. I have I have a comment and a question. Uh, I like the fact that you added these numbers in here so people can kind of see what what it's what it's going to uh add up to as far as credits and and uh uh per it's always changing but yep but I get you get a kind of a ballpark on that. That's that's great. Um, one of the other things I wanted to know is
169is especially for for us we're we're um and I think my colleague Mike had mentioned this a couple months back about uh minority teachers. Are we doing anything with our with this this student body to maybe uh encourage uh uh the the Hispanic, black, Asian uh uh Haitian population to maybe go down these the these pathways? I I saw just recently I think it was I don't know only 10% uh well I think it was on the news this morning that just for Pennsylvania alone 90% 90%. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. And so that that for me that is that's very I think that's especially knowing the way our uh minority populations are growing. I think it uh uh when you're talking about um representation and and and teachers in spaces that can kind
170of grasp a hold of and understand what some of their students may be going through, right? Um I think it's I think that's vitally important to have I agree and having um Maggie Hoover as the um college and career adviser between the two high schools. um having car and I think that's the other component to you know having this type of document is to bring those players together within the district um you know Maggie uh the counselors HR and how can we you know be proactive in getting you know a variety of individuals interested in the teaching field. um just going to Shippensburg, it was it was also neat to see the um the male population that you know you you see so many female teachers out there and I was like wow there's a
171nice representation of um male students being interested in teaching that um I haven't you know been seeing lately but nice to see that at Shippensburg in that um program or you know that event that they had that today. Um, but to your point, definitely work that needs to be done and how can we, you know, use this as that springboard to bring individuals together and I know Maggie works really hard to like get the word out about these kind of events to, you know, going back to the initial point of, you know, driving that interest in the field um, and getting that out to everyone. uh the young lady that I was saying that is right now a student intern from FCCTC. So she's a Chambersburg student and then for her co-op for BECH um
172I was able to place her in our classroom and um she's Hispanic and at Stevens and can speak Spanish and they love her there and she's the one that's going for psychology. So, you know, the principal there, we're, you know, trying to think how can we maybe keep her and start this early and see how that works to, you know, help her out with some tuition if she wants to work part-time and go to either Wilson or Shippensburg. I can't remember which one she was picking. Yeah. And just a just a bit of historical information. Um, you mentioned male male teachers. I know that uh part of the in some unintended consequences I think of some of the things that when we when we when we put fix things or we we're trying to uh
173when we had the desegregation years ago uh that was one of the reasons why we lost a lot of uh uh African-American teachers especially male teachers if you if you look that up uh some of the unintended consequences of of desegregation and to this day we're still hurting for uh uh African-American teachers especially uh male African-Americ American teacher. So if you look that stuff up, don't take my word for it. But these are some of the things that we're dealing with now because of some decisions that we made in the past. And so I think it's vitally important that we we make the right decisions now so our future isn't adversely affected. Y agree. Absolutely. I'd just like to say that I was so excited whenever I saw this because this is what I've been
174looking for. And um as far as people changing their mind, that's a positive, not a negative because I have more experience in health care. But I have seen so many registered nurses graduate with limited experience in the field and then they have all this money spent on an education and they hate it. Mhm. This is giving them an insight into what they're going to be experiencing. The likelihood that the ones that changed their mind would be teachers who really weren't dedicate. I don't want to say dedicated but it would not be their passion. But there are people as I've seen in health care who have no option but to continue on the pathway that they really don't like because they are making good money doing something that they couldn't make that money someplace else or
175they start over and it's hard to start over when you're that far in at times. Right. Exactly. So, I think it's a wonderful opportunity. Um, and I can just see that potential. And how soon is this going to start? Well, those are, you know, meeting tomorrow, don't you? Right. Yes, we do. Yes, we do have a meeting tomorrow um on the higher ed side to to look at that partnership. Um, but, you know, like like I mentioned throughout, I didn't want you to to think, you know, this is we're we're at ground zero. We're not. We're not. You know, we have pieces of this in place. and the six students from FCCTC. I've been working with them as interns in placements this year and seeing how it's going with them, how it's going with the
176teachers. Um, and I'm going to talk to Chris to see about is there a way that maybe we can keep them on over the summer and then maybe even, you know, if they're interested to do, you know, part-time and college and see if we can work on some of these pieces with that uh second option. Yep. Well, thank you. I glad you hung in there with me. Thanks, Crystal. It's been a long night. And if you have questions, just email, Diana. I'm not sure. Thank you, Mrs. Lton. Thank you. All right. Consent agenda items. Uh Chris and your team, do you want to talk about any of the items 5.01 01 through 5.11 and we'll ask board members if they have any questions on any I don't have any I'm looking at the mark and
177Kurt do you have any The only thing I would like to point out is that um 510 the example of the uniform is back in the back corner that is the back side of the uniform the front side is just blue with a zipper it's really um intricately ma intricately made because uh right now we have uniforms that have to be altered ed through sewing. And inside the sleeves and inside the pants legs, there's snaps and they're every inch. So, they just snap them then for the and then iron the bottoms of them and they can last a long time with the snaps. Okay. Nothing else, Chris? Nope. Board members, any questions on any of the items 501 through 511? I don't have any questions, but I'd just like to say that I was thrilled
178to see the uh students who have early um graduation and the variety of reasons for early graduation. They're all cashes students if I remember correctly. And that was one of my comments some time ago that it seemed like all of our early graduations or most of them were coming from CMS. And so I'm thrilled to see that we're getting some early graduations from um caches and the opportunity for these students who are going into the job market. their option might have been dropping out because those needs for finances were spoken to in their comments. And um having a high school diploma makes all the difference in the world down the road. And so I I commend everyone who had any input into that. And I personally sent a thank you to U. Brad Oer because
179I know that he has been instrumental in some of those students lives. Other questions or comments because I have two but you all go first. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, go please. Uh this is in conjunction with 701 partially. I'm curious to know if any other board members think that we ought to take a look at 501. Yes. And shift that tax increase from 2% to something slightly more or am I the only one that but but I also think the discussion about seven. We'll get to we'll get to seven next might bring clarity on that. So um wait we'll get to seven next. Okay. So for five, am I the only one that thinks we ought to consider something slightly higher or does does everybody else feel like where we're at is great? No,
180that was actually going to be one of my comments, Mr. Rivers, so I'll jump in here now. Well, let me just add Well, I'll finish first, please. Okay. I thought you wanted other comments first. Um, yeah. So, one of my comments on that, uh, and I wrote the notes as we've had a lengthy discussion on items. I would suggest for 501 that for fiscal year N 2006 we move two million to capital reserve instead of four million. Okay. We keep the 5 a.5 million to debt service. Okay. And I am concerned with the 2% and the reason I'm concerned with the 2% historically and you all can badger me for my history lesson. Love you dad. He was a history teacher. Uh but historically anything under 2% for operations we fall behind. It's probably closer
181to 3%. You know there's been history about previous boards and some of the infinite wisdom of some of those previous board members. Chris, I think you were in the audience one day on a final budget vote one night. They decided to change the tax increase from 2% or from 3% to 1%. Poor Steve Dart, you know, had a week to change it. And uh we paid for that because that is a reoccurring. And you look at operation and if you go back and you look at our budget, I'll bet you that that operational increase, the cost of doing business is about 2 to 3% increase every year. So, if you don't do 2% operational increase, then you know, then you're going to have trouble. Mr. Bigger, I appreciate your point that, you know, with all
182the other money, you know, it shouldn't be higher. Well, then take it out of somewhere else. Okay? We're not going to tell you how to spend it. You decide how to spend started. As far as the $2 million deficit on capital reserve versus a four, you know, 2 million instead of 4 million, I'm going to say do it the oldfashioned way. Right? If the money comes in, if the revenue comes in or if the expenses are less, then we do it the oldfashioned way. At the end of the year, there's an excess and you move the excess to capital reserve. That's the way we've done it for years and years. And I don't like the idea of budgeting that much capital reserve. I like the incentive to the administration that all right put all your
183coins in the piggy bank and at the end of the year you can move your piggy bank to capital reserve or anywhere else you want to move it to but don't just we can't budget for everything. It goes to my tax and spend. So that's what I would like to propose for that it' be a 2% it' be a 3% 2% operation and the X is 1%. And I'd love to see Mr. Fry's number with that 1% in fiscal year 2006 what that does in column 7 that we looked at. So I would be at 3% to answer your question Mr. Raver. I think if the cap reserve ends up if the piggy bank ends up being full fuller than or as full as we hope at the end of the year that's your 25
184million till the 25 years are over. Doesn't that make sense? You can put it anywhere you want. Exactly. Right. Put it in capital reserve. You can put it in debt service. You can put it in health savings fund. Wherever we have to move it to. That's an administration's decision. But I don't like just moving four million there right off the bat. Mr. Haydock. So, did I understand you say that you would be willing to see a 3%? That's I've always been about 3%. Yes, sir. I concur. I concur. Yeah, I I agree too with the caveat of it's not a tax and spend. It's not a if we go to 3% well now we can do more more more. We need to stay with the plan% and aim to have that extra at the end
185not aim to spend it just because we have it. Yeah. I I had actually sent a note to uh Mr. Staffer this afternoon saying what if we had 2% go into that capital reserve that you know little set aside and only with the consent of the board could it be spent on anything other than what we initially put it there for. But it's operational cost that's another story. We got to really have a debate on that. uh setting aside and if we were having a natural disaster, we'd be concerned how it's going to affect our district or we're having a national disaster with what's going on, decisions made about tariffs and how it's going to affect the economy. So, we got to be conservative, but at certain point, we got to take care of oursel
186here because we can't count on the federal government so much at this stage. Maybe that changes tomorrow, but we'll see. Actually, the fact that we added uh the 1% the last couple years has really set us up nicely for going into a building project. So, that's why I I I am okay with the 2% with the 1% going into helping us with the building project. Another 1% it' be that additional million plus. I know you already put it in there, but that Yeah, it would be two to debt service. Yes. Two to debt service. Other questions, discussions? 5.01. If you have anything else on that one, Mr. Raber? Yeah, I mean one thing we can if if the public asks us questions about it, I think it's fair to point out that the Homestead Act
187has been generous increase every year the last four or five years, something like that. And so that offsets any increases we're having anyways. I mean, I'm I I looked at my own stuff and I'm paying a$136 more per month than I was five years ago. So, it's because of Homestead, right? That's um in real estate taxes. So again, I'm a I'm in favor of 3% this year. I will caution, you know, I I don't subscribe to that rationale on homestead because there's those who don't get that credit but then still get the repercussion from their landlords. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Any questions, Mr. Staler? Thank you. Well, just confirming I'm I'm hearing build a 3% budget to bring in as the final budget, 3% tax increase and change the 4 million transfer whatever to 2
188million. Yep. And add 1% on debt service transfer. Did mention that it was going to be fluid. So, we didn't we did Thank you. We didn't wait till the June meeting. Well, and I I I greatly appreciate it because I actually remember that meeting and I I remember Steve was in a sweat because it was very difficult to try to run those calculations. So, I thank you for that. It happened to be an election year, too. I think you could be right. Uh 5.08, just a little bit of context on that. Is that Mr. Whitman, Mr. Bigger? Um Mark and I can can take that one. Uh I did sit on a presentation on his behalf. Uh the ROC program is certainly very distinguished and lots of people want to participate. So if you read
189any of the background knowledge or background information there, they're ready to increase numbers. So 150 was the cap before by adding a third instructor would go to 250. Also neighboring districts or cross enrollment, it's called would send more students to help offset those costs. Uh the last component, which wasn't the primary component, we do have two instructors who are short-timers. So, we do want to make sure we get another one in as one is uh or two are going to set to uh sunset or retire in the next three years or so. So, they're a little bit worried about succession planning and maintaining the quality and uh so this was somewhat of a very easy decision for us uh because it's costneutral as long as we get the cross enrollment students. How many do we
190have enrolled this year? 10 or 11? 10 or 11? No. For cross Oh, Chambersburg students. Oh my gosh. What was the presentation he gave last month? I think he said like 136 somewhere in that. What's that? Like 136 I think is what he said. Because is it is 110 the minimum? There was there's a minimum number. 100. Okay. And there were 211 students interested this year for next year just from Chambersburg. But it always dives down. It does. Just like the the 136 today was probably 150 back at the beginning of the school. I think it was 190 the previous year. It's 211 this year. So we're saw 20 more kids. What do the other districts what what is I don't know is it a tuition or what's what's the agreement per student for the
191other districts? Go ahead. So for this year we will be billing the other districts um if the students there for the full year $2,000. Um, we will prorrate it based on an ADM calculation. If they came in for one day and left, we're probably not going to do that because it would be really cents on the dollars. But if they stayed a month, we will bill them for that month. How about malage or anything like that? We they transport them. We don't do that. They they come here. We don't we're not transporting them. And our and our staff does not have to leave district as far as I know. I very little. He'll do some recruiting, I believe. Okay. Yeah. The the other component to that would be um I have to work with the
192county superintendent. Uh we have a meeting next Thursday, confirm the agreement with the increase in cost and make sure that they have students that are interested. So once that's confirmed, then the agreement would come here um with the new criteria. And just as another history lesson, love you dad. Um, right. These instructors that their salary is based Department of Navy tells us what their salary is. Yeah. They're not per the CAEA. Correct. Correct. It's a it's a minimum salary and we get reimbured per the Department of Navy. But we get reimbured. Yeah. 50%. See what happens when I miss when you miss a meeting. Mark, I have to remember all that detailed information. Thank you so much. Okay, any other questions, comments on the consent agenda five series? If not, there'll be one vote next
193will the budget be a consent or should that be its own line next meeting? Well, that's a good question. Um, we we'll do our best. I think we can get it updated before the 22nd. I think we should have it as a separate item because we're changing it. I agree. Thank you. Okay. 7.01 the resolution. Uh I too have some comments on that but Mr. Rabber you started it so please you're first. I have I mean I think I'll pass it right back to you. Oh okay. Sorry my mic was off. No that's fine. I mean for the for the most part really just some maybe some minor suggestion tweaks on this again from when this was born it was born at a set 1% and born specifically for capital reserve fund correct uh just
194looking at Mr. Fry's presentation which in 2027 I think it's 1.63 63 and there was discussion tonight about maybe higher than 1%. Should this be more generic instead of specifically saying 1% basically a percentage basic I don't know how you would say that but each year the board would decide what a percentage would be. I don't want to call it a variable percentage but so in 20 in 2027 if you go Mr. Fry's report it's 1.63% 63%. So, we have a resolution that says 1% and if we follow the script that we saw tonight, it's actually going to be 1.63% a year from now. Well, the wording in there says to make a minimum recurring ann annual transfer equal to 1%. So, to me, if I read that, it says at minimum you do 1%
195which gives you latitude to go above that. What's the new one say? This is the old one. So, so the new one and again I just put proposed language based on discussion with Chris. So that one says equal. This is the new one. Yes, equal to. Why was that change made? I think that actually the one that we have on there may have been the Oh gosh, did I mess this up again? I think you did. I think I might have put the wrong one on here. Yeah. Oh, sorry. It's okay. It's lots of p pieces of moving parts going around. It would go back. The really the intent of the change if anything that I did with this document which I will go back and use the other document would be to give us
196flexibility of whether or not that 1% goes into the capital reserve fund or it's used for debt future debt service. That that's really all I intended to do. That was going to be my other comment. And again when this was born it was born for capital reserve thinking that eventually it was going to be debt service. And one thing with the resolution this board or whenever whoever whenever there is a different board you the board can change this resolution at any point now that we are getting closer to you know September four months five months for first borrow for first borrow that should this not just say uh debt service fund and take capital reserve fund out of it completely for now and focus on the debt service fund. Again, capital reserve, fund it the
197oldfashioned way, what's left in the piggy bank and then go to capital reserve. I got to think about that a little bit. I I I do like the flexibility of it being one or the other. Both of these funds, once the money gets in there, it has restrictions. So when I put money in debt service, I can't pull it out for a capital project. I can pull it out to pay off debt service, right? You know what I mean? So what I would be able to do in future years is offset that reoccurring expenditure. I think actually putting it in the cap reserve gives you more flexibility, right? And I I would say as you think that through, let's say we get to a point where the debt service is now funding the projects we
198bring to you, then you change your resolution. Well, you could you could change it or we can just continue and say, "Oh, now we have Matt's plan to get us through those gap years. We're going to move the 1% over to the capital projects then, which would fund those gap years or that risk assessment." So, yeah, we can bring it up to change again or you can leave it more general. We have we have a balance in capital reserve now and one of my primary motivations here is the focus needs to be on debt service. I think we need to really start putting a a focus on debt service and take the gray water out of it, if you will. And my reason being I don't know that 200 million is going to be enough.
199Yeah. The the only other change to that was we did put the revenue also. Before it was just the dollar value. We now added the tax revenue that supports the 1%. That was another change because the old resolution didn't indicate directly that the revenue went with it. It was just the dollar. I just I'm sorry. I just reread this. This is right. It does still say make a minimum reoccurring annual transfer equal to equal to 1% or Yeah, that's the board's preference. I mean, I think we can work within both structures. Yeah. Um, you know, I I think again with with what John and I presented tonight, um, the important part of the debt service for me is getting a reoccurring line item expenditure in the on operating budget because having a balance in that
200fund is going to offset something down the road, but I need that number to be there every year annually. So, um, that's that's probably the more important thing from my perspective. debt service. not necessarily moving this 1% into debt service versus the capital reserve. It's more of getting that reoccurring line item in the operating budget. So that 5.5 million of additional debt service is going to help me. It's going to go into the debt service fund next year because we don't have that debt service. But as we go on the out years, it's going to be used to cover the actual cost. If that makes sense. I like the flexibility of this current resolution because you can then al it means we don't necessarily need to talk about this every year, right? You can just
201handle it the way that you see fit and we trust you with that and you're still going to present to us. So, correct. I mean basically we would go through the same process we do now at the after the end of the fiscal or even maybe before we would come to the board and say okay based on where we see the the fund balances are we need money to move here. You're going to have the authority to approve it because we can't do it without your authority. Um and you also have the authority to to do more than what this is saying. This is just guaranteeing we're doing the minimum. Yeah. Again, I'll say my final comment. My again part of my rationale is it's a little more incentive for the administration. If you want
202debt service, save it somewhere else. That's just my rationale. Okay. 8.01. So, I'm just going to clarify. Am I moving this forward then? change that minimum part. It's It is actually in there. I I reread it. It says to make a minimum reoccurring annual transfer equal to 1%. So that to me says we have the ability to do more. Yeah. Thank you. 8.01 policy second reading of policy 815.2 2 administration any comments? Nope. Board question comments. Privilege of the floor. Some of us have to go to work tomorrow. Mrs. Jordan, you good evening. Uh, thank you, Mike, about the uh tariffs because I've been agonizing over them personally. Um, and maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and one gentleman in DC will say zero tariffs and one will continue to say 104% tariffs because everything in
203this room is going to go up in price if we stay at these high tariffs. and I hope we don't for everybody's sake in this room. Um, I'm glad the project is going to keep going. Uh, I had anxiety about that because I know costs are going to go up. Um, I'm going to still read what I sent to you so the public can hear it. And, uh, tonight, Superintendent Bigger, you said social worker. And I know AP sociology is a social worker. About a week ago, I sent you an email requesting you reconsider your vote on AP sociology. And tonight with uh Mrs. Lawnger's teacher pipeline, that segus really nice into you reconsidering it. Six of you voted no to the course. Under reconsideration of Robert's rules of order, you you can rethink your
204votes. Why do I want you to rethink your votes? In fact, several of the administ um because the gifted and talented program saw no increase in its budget for fiscal year 2425. In fact, several of the administrators budgets saw no increases, including yours, Superintendent Bigger. Talent is talent and should be fostered here without too many questions asked. Then there is the serious matter to bring to your attention, which is the tariffs. Suddenly and without warning, all our lives in this room were un upended. We are faced with at least a 30% increase of products and goods, but I'm not so sure it's 30% anymore. You have several school construction projects you have already undertaken, and I'm glad you're going to undertake them. Please don't stop and I know you won't stop. move forward with them.
205I know you're going to move forward with them. Why? Because children deserve nice surroundings even when they may not be faced with nice surroundings at home. Children notice a new floor mat. And someone told me that when it is replaced, children notice a lot. Mrs. Jordan notices a lot. Mrs. Jordan also likes nice surroundings. And I have one more comment. Wrap it up. Mrs. Jordan, I I am. It's 10 o'clock and the board board has work to do yet. Okay. What good is item 11.01 is for information only. There's a district enrollment summary out for any board member. Your three minutes are up, Mrs. Jordan. 11.02, calendar form questions and answers as an or an information item. And now I would like to go to item 12, new business discussion for any board members. Any
206new business this evening? Okay, we'll go to it. Yes, ma'am. Okay, you you got it. My com building I don't think it's on for those who are listening on uh online. Okay. You said about 30 to 50 years for a new building. There you go. Yeah. Um, why are we only looking to increase the size at Cam South if that's where you're building new 300 students? Then, how is that looking at 30 to 50 years for that building to be um in use for with only increasing its size 300 students? Thank you. No, thank you for your comment. I'm glad I looked up. My apologies. Uh, new business discussion. Any board members? I have one item here, but you all go first. Real quick one. I just have a note to read from Bev. Uh,
207remember that the communication workshop is Monday, April 28th, 6 p.m. So, mark it on your calendars, please. That meeting adjourned. Thank you.