February 25, 2025 School Board Meeting

001e e good evening go ahead and call this evening's meeting to order uh Tuesday February 25th chamers of school board board of directors regular meeting uh please rise and join me with a pledge of allegiance and moment of silence pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and jce for all thank you um last Tuesday the board did meet an executive session uh uh actually it was a dual session it was executive session for contract NE NE iations and a workshop session last week and then we met again this evening prior to the meeting uh in executive session again for personnel matters um so item 2.03 uh approval to adopt the agenda for tonight's meeting motion and

002second please motion to approve second motion by Mr hack second by Dr Diller any questions amendments revisions to tonight's agenda hearing none do a Voice vote all those in favor signify by saying I I I oppose eyes have it so move item 3.01 superintendent report Mr bger y thanks Mr Norcross uh March 14th and 19th are now school days uh we hope this 50° weather we're seeing this week is the end of delays and cancellations uh pending no additional weather days we are on track to maintain graduation on May 30th and um certainly um um we won't have to make up any additional days hopefully uh staff will come in certainly on June 3rd and 4th to make up inservice days that were lost throughout the calendar um even if we have one or two

003more weather days graduation is not changing we have some strategies to be able to make up hours if we have to so at this point we don't see graduation um having any changes to it May 30th and May 30th is graduation both 29th um 29th is usually the CMS yeah y thanks for pointing that out uh we have two presentations tonight as we continue down our path on schools of Distinction so I'm looking forward to the midyear data update and the special education presentations for tonight we also have a downtown Center ribbon cutting event this week on Thursday uh which you are all invited to um so I hope you can attend or at least come down at some point and check out the downtown CEC Center uh our hiring process is going very very

004well I want to thank everyone involved from HR to the hiring uh principles and administrators uh to Kurt and everyone who who made this possible we started a lot earlier this year we started in December essentially once we approved positions and started the process in January and I will say Curt and I highlight of the day are uh meeting the new staff and certainly welcoming them to the district on the same day they interview so they're very excited to know on a decision whether they're being hired or not um and it certainly has made a difference to get to know our staff so thanks to everyone as we get ahead of the curve uh on hiring uh newsletter went out digitally it'll go out in print to all residents um in the coming week um

005and we also had an updated website that was released last week as well do want to thank everyone involved in all of that work um those are not easy lifts specifically the website um U was a big big lift uh do want to let people know there was a communication that went out this week and we'll continue we're finally uh updating um all the technology breakages and past bills people people owe so we apologize for being a little delayed in getting those out but we are cleaning up some of the past with technology breakages so if you get a communication or an invoice uh most of them were under $100 many of them were around just having the blocks and the Chargers but we do have some ode bills so we're working through that process

006um and I do want to thank the tech department for spending a lot of time in detail and getting invoices out accurately and to folks uh starting this week U last item is we'll continue to have um informational sessions so in March we'll have caralis which was a new program we started last year along with the school counseling update and the pay survey our Architects will be here next month as well to give us updates on the consolidation and grade configuration related to facilities and then we get into April with the proposed final budget we'll revisit the 1% resolution that has helped us look at grade configur ation and consolidation uh we will also have a proposal come to you about the teacher pipeline starting with juniors in our high school all the way through

007teacher prep so we're excited to bring that information to you and then the final one up through April will be the Food Service C of moving everyone to lunches in secondary uh free lunches in secondary because we're already there for elementary so we have a very busy spring agenda with informational sessions coming to the board um before I release uh Kurt has a few updates for you uh one just a little bit more on the Chambersburg engagement Center Mark's going to be bringing you the flyers that uh folks will get at the ribbon cutting at 1 p.m. uh we do have uh a time frame where we're getting some pictures taken and there is one photo op that any board members that come we'd like you to be part of that so that starts at

0081:00 downtown uh the second thing that I have tonight is kind of a fun thing the root tyan in town they purchase uh a book a hardback book for each kindergartener in our entire School District but also cand Valley Christian School monor Corpus Christie and Shalom um we have most of the schools filled out with readers being rotarians but we have four schools in our district that I didn't find a rotarian for so I was hopeful that we could get some of our board members to do that I have fville um Hamilton Heights South Hamilton and Buchanan no pressure you guys I I already saw saw I paused a minute cuzz I saw two hands go up already Hamilton Heights could really use two people cuz there's four classrooms there's over 100 kids fville you

009could you could probably use two with all the they have three kindergarteners plus some other special ones so if you want to how about see me afterwards uh uh it's the cat and hat it's kind of a long book you can take one home to practice if you like as well tough words so yeah but uh I I have two so far so I'd like to get see get two more people okay come see me afterwards we'll figure it out thank you end of report okay thank you Mr burer um you mentioned the plus 1% I going to bring that up and I will just for the board members when we get down into new business item 12 uh he's going to bring that up and so I won't put it in my report next

010um as I mentioned earlier um last week board met for a workshop session uh one of the items we discussed in Workshop is a potential for a new a different student calendar uh nothing is said in stone it's just early discussions uh some possibilities that would be it may look like same start to the school year longer school days possibly uh not as many of the traditional holidays uh half days would probably go away uh and then there' be more Fridays with no student days uh and then probably extend the school year another week lots of variables in that in those discussions but just uh want to get it out in the public as we communicate um some of our Workshop session topics uh the other thing for tonight uh tonight's meeting will look a

011little different because it's only one meeting this month uh due to Winter and we canel last time so normally for the past year and a half we've done the first meeting as a committee of the whole all presentations no voting lots of questions or more questions and then at the voting meeting uh it has led to less questions when we vote tonight it'll be a combination probably of questions and voting so it'll look a little different tonight but that's just because of what weather did to us two weeks ago and the other thing uh I talked to Mr Whitman in the parking lot uh if he gets caught on the video looking at his phone he has my express permission because he's going to give me basketball updates today so with that uh item 3.03

012njrc report please and welcome back we haven't seen your your group in a couple months Commander oning period y four times once a marking period okay for three Navy guys all right all right thanks for having us um you know our jdc unit has had a very successful year so starting off November 1st 2024 we visited ahac or the arage Heritage Center down um I believe carile we had we did a um Color Guard there had speeches by retired military members he had his breakfast there it was pretty good and be honest and you know know their presentations by World War II veterans and we got two other facilities we're just there to show us moving on November 11th they do an annual parade with it honors veterans and active service members annually we do

013a like a drill ceremony kind of so we're much on the parade have a color guard have a platoon do drill there show some support for veterans and active service members November 12th Lieutenant Teresa Hicks the area manager of our area presented our unit with a distinguished unit award for the 2024 school year to our Cadet Commander then November 13 2024 we visited Penn State mon Alto got a tour there did a um little ceremony with the color guard again very good food November 14th 2024 Cadets Natalie almond Jameson Jacka and Cadet keg were NE were recognized by the national soulj owners for participating in a Valley's Forge Camp over the summer so this is our cadc commander or um Cadet Holland head she got PR to Lieutenant Commander and then November 23rd very busy

014day very successful day we had a drill meet consisting of I believe four or like six other schools they came over did a drill and then of course we had help from Mont zumas Meadows cabin Green Castle and food donations from everyone else then right after the drill meet the chamers will to do an annual Christmas parade we went there again did another platoon there showing off a drill and all that then December 6th the Marksmanship team went over to omj Robert High School down in what is it down in New Jersey uh Place fourth place overall very successful then the next day after actually did a drill meet in new Manchester New Jersey played second place overall again good December 11th we then had a winter formal where Cadet could come together get pictures

015we just hang out and then December 13th this year we started a saber a cyber Patriot team consisting of about six Cadets and they ended up placing in the silver tier which I believe is the first tier in the tier list and yeah then December 20th we hosted a Christmas party in the classroom for Cadets to get together as a reward for hard work and for the year that they have done December 27th 28th and 29th the high school does with the Trojan with the wrestling team they did a wrestling meet there and we helped to volunteer help out there um very successful a lot of work done then January 10th ns1 Squad drill we start up a team because usually it's second year and above Cadets we can be like on the drill team

016and go to like the drill meets so then we give the ns1 a chance join a team and they can really just like get what it all is about then January 18th we hosted the national qualifiers for our area um as a unit we ended up placing first place overall qualifying us to go to Nationals in Florida Pensacola later in April this year that we're the only School representing the entire state of Pennsylvania then January 24th our cyber Patriot team ended up placing second place in the silver tier at a competition and then January 25th 2025 we hosted the area 3 Marksmanship Championship we going to place in third place overall I'm going hand it off to C to the iest is an annual community service event for the JTC volunteers manage their ey the

017ey Slide by helping kids on sleds and ensuring their safety while they enjoy the experience cashes cadel also perform sanitation duties as a community service project K Keir finny was recognized as a semon for her winning essay in the American Legion essay contest and took first place in the area now she will advance to the original competition this year freshman orientation was different because other student at the school participated in helping us give tours to the Freshman meanwhile master sergeant and two other cadetes were giving presentation to recruit some new ANS for next year and you are all invited to the annual pass and review on March 5th at the chimur Area Senior High School Fieldhouse time is at 9:30 a.m. and you are all also invited to the red robins food sale it's going

018to help us we get % we get 20% of all of what you purchase it's on March 2nd 2025 from 400 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at 9:21 Norland Avenue chinburg PA 17 that's I I would just like to say that that this pass and review is something that as board members anyone who is able to needs to be there but also the community it would be great to fill that fi housee with people for that pass and review you just don't know what you're missing thank you Cadets um Student Government reports uh CMS uh Miss Richardson good job all right well hello everybody usually you see sah her up here however I am taking over now so I am Katarina Richardson also just as a side note I have pastries in the back from the

019coffee shop standard by year house if anybody wants any they're back there for you guys afterwards come back anytime just as a little side note but um of course I'm going to be representing I am president of the student school board at K Magnet School so since January we had a PTSA fundraiser so PTSA is a top provider at CMS they provide us a lot of money throughout the year including graduation prom and a few other projects throughout the school year so right now we're doing a um fundraiser with PTSA it's going to be as you see on the screen Marana Subs um and pizza so of course orders are due March 14th so right now students are raising money for um and selling subs for the school and then this money of course is

020going to provide us for future funds so since um PTSA they don't have their big fundraiser they usually have which is the um at the VFW this year they're not doing it so this is going to be a substitute for that for us to raise money throughout the school year so they can provide us with funds in the future and of course for their Club as well and then coming up we have CMS car's day CSD minithon and then prom planning um this presentation is going to be a little bit shorter right now we're kind of in our Calm before the storm with graduation CS full and everything at the end of the year so there's not a lot to really talk about but CMS cares it's something that we're doing um bringing more into

021tune with the school we want to make sure that we're taking care of our school and also the students there and showing them that everybody at CMS cares about each other so that's an afternoon of academic support volunteer projects um activities and community building so we're doing small things like the gardens around CMS we have green houses that we're um rebuilding and planting stuff in for the school we are doing just different things last time we did um Valentine's Day cards so we're just kind of doing small little things just showing people that we care we've done things for our teachers other students um counselors we're just planning different things just kind of providing support for the school and the students that are there and then also we will be dejing minithon this year CMS

022our um DJing Club has started back up so we will be DJing minithon on March 21st and then um we are forming committees right now planning for spring events so whether this is graduation um our senior sendoff which is a big event for our seniors of course and then um just smaller things around the school that we're planning just for of course course and then CMS full as well is another big thing that we're planning right now we're getting shirts in order and everything like that and that's about all just small presentation because we're kind of right now in our calm little area but yeah that's all I have to present thank you thank you teddy hi everybody my name is Carly scol Tedy um I'm our Student Government president um at cashes so today

023I'm going to go over our minithon so it'll be taking place March 21st um at the cat's Fieldhouse it's going to be going on from 3:30 to 9:30 in the afternoon um our minithon is a fundraiser to raise money for the four diamonds and the mission of the group is to conquer Childhood Cancer by assisting children and their families through care support and research so last week on the 20th we had stall day so during periods 1 through three um students can bring in spare change and it reques as teachers to have to count all the change um which stalls our first three periods of the day and all money will go to minithon this year we raised $ 5,121 67 wow impressive um so our Trojan care fundraising um couple weeks ago we had

024a during a game we had a Trojan care night and we had a donation table set up online and in person and also a halftime game which a bunch of little kids came out and played and we raised $36 um we also are selling shirts right now to the faculty at cashes and I'm not sure how much we're raised I wish I was on here but we've been doing pretty well in that and we're also looking to extend it to the rest of um oh my goodness the rest of Chambersburg sorry um other things that we're working on that aren't on here is planning the back balarat for caches and um color day and prom so that's all thank you thank you okay thank you for the student government reports uh section four of our

025agenda again this would normally be uh the cow meeting where we'd have these presentations but we're having one meeting this month so uh 4.01 and 4.02 Mr bigger yep I think we have um Mr womman up for both of them he's going to kick off and end I believe both presentations so um Kurt and teams um looking forward to the presentations and they practiced a few times before tonight so I'm excited to see what they bring to the table we got uphill battle Mr Norcross it's 2113 after the first quarter just okay just letting you know all right so uh Mr bigger pulled the board uh this is for Community knowledge uh things that they want to hear a little more information on and uh the number one topic was Data related to our goals

026uh so we are narrowing it down a little bit this time we are going to focus on our first goal uh all students Reading Writing comprehending by the end of third grade so that's what we're going to be talking about this evening a little bit later you heard a lineup of information the high schools are going to be talking a littleit about what's going on there at a later presentation right after this presentation is another topic the board want to hear more about uh special ed by the numbers and cost drivers so that'll be the second presentation right after this one I do have two folks here uh this evening helping me with this presentation Lindsay Breslin and Dr Sarah Herbert so thank you to them for stepping up and helping out this evening so

027this is our midyear data report on the path to schools of Distinction you are that that's definitely a theme that you're hearing from our CSD blueprint committee and when I wrap it up I'm going to uh specifically talk a little bit more about our blueprint committee and and it is not moving for me no it's on yeah so I needed oh did it okay all right so the second slide here uh all students will read and comprehend by the end of third grade so we're going to discuss tonight how are how we're going to get there and how we know if we have arrived since we will discuss the current data what metrics we are using to measure the skull what data we use to measure and why we also look at where do we

028stand midyear and year over-year so how do we compare it to the Past uh we will discuss how we're currently attacking the goal and finally we will end with where we need to go to disrupt the status quo spoiler alert although we are seeing slow growth and some growth year-over-year it currently is going to get us to where we want to be by 2030 and that's all students reading and writing by the end of third grade so let's get to the presentation and we're going to start with Dr Herbert so what you're looking at here are three different ways that we are looking at measuring how do we know if the kids have gotten to that goal um do they need to reach all three no they need to get two of those three so

029what are those one is called nwea map and that stands for Northwest evaluation Association measure of academic progress so nwaa map is kind of what we refer to that as um and that's an assessment that's given three times a year the next one is aadience learning and that is a measure that is given to our kiddos in grades K through three uh and then finally I'm sure you all know what the pssa is if you haven't heard that yet um we can certainly give you a quick education on that one as well um but that is also given to our kids um in grades three through eight so that's a quick quick uh overview of the three assessments that are are given again two of those um are what we're looking to see um as

030far as kiddos achieving to to meet that goal as long as it advances I'm good sorry this is a new tool for me all right so I'm going to start by giving you a little bit of an overview of map which is our first measure that I just mentioned um for some of you this is a new idea you probably have not heard about it before it's a little bit of a an anomaly so map is an um a nationally normed assessment tool that we use to gauge students um achievement and growth uh and our students in grades first grade through 8th grade are assessed like I said three times a year um and basically this gives us a general overview um of of their abilities at the district level it helps us to get

031a programmatic sense of what's working and what's not at the building level it helps us to understand their instructional needs in the classroom level it can help us to understand from a uh an instructional standpoint from a a whole group learning perspective what we need to maybe adjust and then we can even drill down to the individual students to see what they may need to to have um improved upon and what's great is there are are actually parent reports that we can share with parents um at conference time as well so a lot of different tools that come from map that are great for us to share um and then there are three instructional areas that are associated with map that we can look at a little more in depth that is Reading literature reading

032informational text and vocabulary acquisition and use all right okay so while it has all these fancy reports it didn't have exactly what I wanted to share with you tonight so I took a lot of information Lindsay worked with me on this to compile a more historical look at um what we felt was more important for you to as a board get a sense of how our kids were doing um so we decided to uh to create these these charts so to speak that that you're looking at um now even though the kids in grades 1 through eight are the ones that we assess what you're actually looking at in front of you we've only given you up to grade three so I just wanted to point that out um to make sure that that that

033was clear um so on these two charts in front of you you're looking at growth for our district um for middle of the year on the the the left side and then end of the year just so you can kind of get a sense of where we are on the winter assessment and then hopefully where we're headed at the end of the year so that's why the the last blocks are blank we don't have the 2425 yet hopefully we're getting there and can get that filled in for you at the end here um just a couple things to to point out to you um that I noticed when I was looking over this chart um I don't know if you noticed but in the the orange the cohorts started out really strong with their growth

034at the middle of the year but then it kind of slowed up orangish yellow sorry it was orange on my screen when I was looking at it um and the same idea kind of happened with the middle of the year for the pink um they started out really strong and then they kind of uh teetered off there as well um so it'll be interesting to see we're kind of seeing the same Trend there for end of the year um with the the yellow group and the pink group so when we get the end of the year data it will be interesting to see if that Trend continues so just some things for us to kind of keep track of as we're looking at that growth all right and then the next chart that we pulled

035um we wanted to look at achievements so that was growth and this is achievement and I should mention when we were looking at um growth let me go back a second actually I'm sorry I did want to point this out when we were looking at growth we were actually looking at um kids that were um not only meeting their growth but exceeding it so these were kids that um were closing the Gap um so this is uh this is a group of kids that um were really achieving um growth at a much greater rate than many of their peers so that's actually what we're reporting here so this is actually a really good thing to see like in the um 22 23 that that group that got 50 % half of our kids in that

036that first grade group um were growing at a really great rate so I I did want to make sure I pointed that out all right um from an achievement perspective again we pulled this information from map because again wanted to give you that his historical data um these kids again are achieving at a slightly above average expectation um so we're again we're trying to give you that perspective of the kiddos that are are doing a little little better than what um than what we would expect um if you look at that sorry yellow not orange uh middle of the year they're Fair fairly steady in their cohort as you look down um and then again in the end of the year they had a little bit of a drop off um the pink again they

037started out strong and then had a bit of a a drop off so again we're we're just trying to start to watch these Trends and what's interesting is now that we have started these data these charts it's going to be interesting to add to them over time and see where those Trends lie so that we can make further adjustments to our instruction so this is kind of a a new piece that we've just tried to to start adding to so it'll be interesting to see how everything comes together in the next couple years as we continue to add to these charts now the next thing that I'd like to show and share with you is the projected proficiency piece and this is actually what our um measurement tool is based on um when we were

038talking a few moments ago about the metric and um as you look at these two charts it's showing that we have roughly 52% of our kids projected to be proficient or Advanced on the pssa in 2 2 23 and 54% of them to be proficient or Advanced on the pssa in 2425 based on their middle of the Year test um and that would have been what they had just taken in January so when we're looking at this about half of our kids could be proficient or Advanced based on what we're looking at right now and what's interesting is map actually had done a a study in 2021 where they correlated PSS save results with their their map assessment um to see if there was an alignment so we know this to be a pretty valid

039um study so at this point when we say that there's a a projection it's uh it's a little daunting to look that only half of our kids are there but that means we have work to do um and that leads us to the plan that we're working on all right so on to Ian good evening everybody so I'm going to talk about the second metric this so this is the second assessment not the second metric the second metric measure so Sarah talked about the map assessment I'm going to talk to you about the aadience reading assessment because this is metric measure number two remember our students have to meet two of these three metrics in order to be considered uh reading by the end of third grade so our metric for this is that on

040the aadience reading composite score they need to be at Benchmark or above Benchmark by the end of third grade and that's a 301 or higher I'm going to explain that a little bit more so aadience is our Universal screener this is our assessment that um every student K to3 gets three times a year and for the parents in the room this is like a wellchild checkup so every student takes that screener at their grade level three times a year and that screener measures the basic reading skills and behaviors students in that grade level should have at those three different times of year so this is a great way to say if you were you know as a student this is showing how do I measure up against where I should be as a second grader

041when I take the second grade test or first grade or third grade and it it's worth mentioning too that the acadians test I we're going to from a district perspective look at the reading composite score because the aadience screener itself is made up of a bunch of different little tests so they test a bunch of different subskills the reading composite scores the overall number so we test things in aadience at different times of year like oral reading fluency nonsense word fluency comprehension measures so these are all within the test and they change throughout the year for students so the test that a first grader takes at the beginning of the year might be slightly different at the middle of the year because they're ready to move on to the next measure so um I want

042you to keep that in mind when we look at the next data slides so aadience doesn't have as lengthy a history in our district as map does we've only really been using this for two years so what I'm showing you here on this screen is the data that shows the number of K to3 students that are at or above benchmarks so I have 23 24 on the left and then I have 2425 on the right so you can see where they start at the beginning middle and then where they get to at the end of the year but I would caution you this is what we caution um we talked about this a lot with our principles this year I want you to look specifically at let's say first grade um the first grade test

043is very difficult to look at and say okay at the beginning of first grade in 2425 they were sitting at a 39% at or above Benchmark but at the middle of the year they were 44% that's definitely applaudable however the test adjusts and change so the power becomes looking back at what we were doing at the middle of the year last year so we were 44% at the middle of this year last year at the middle of first grade we were at 46% because we're comparing like assessments there the assessment was the same for those students this data is very interesting and very telling um if you look specifically there's two things there's a couple things I wanted to highlight for you so if you look at the 2324 first grade um beginning of the

044year you can see that we started the year um at a 38% but if you go over to 2425 and look at your beginning of the year second graders um we made a huge gain in that class you started first grade at 38% and at the beginning of your second grade year you moved to 58% that's a big deal um so that's something to highlight you also if you look at your beginning of the year second grade 23 24 I'm trying I I'm at that point in my life we're far away is is better with glasses and sometimes without so um at the beginning of the year in second grade we had 53% of our students in 23 24 that were demonstrating at or above Benchmark if you go to your beginning of the year

045third grade in 2425 they were at of 57% so we were kind of holding ground with some of these kids I'm only highlighting this because we're painting a picture for you tonight of our reading data it's where we are this is what we are we are moving incrementally as as best we can but there are some interesting anomalies I think in our data that we keep studying again the last column on the 2425 data is not filled in at this point because we will not be assessing them until the end of their year Now metric Measure 3 the one that's probably new to all of you just kidding is the Pennsylvania School of system of school assessments the pssa so for students to meet this metric measure they would need to score proficient or Advanced

046on the third grade ELA pssa so if you're doing the count in your head measure one is your map assessment measure two is your acadience assessment and measure three is your pssa assessment so let's see where we stand now if we held this metric this develop our district develop metric up against our 2223 students and our 23 24 students obviously we can't do it yet for 2425 because we don't have a complete data picture this is where you can see we stand I know those little numbers are small so if you're in the room look at the look at the blue so the blue in 2223 was 40% so 40% of our students in 2223 would have met this metric based on those three Assessments in 23 24 4 6% of our students would have

047met this based on our metric this is where we are currently sitting um so I just wanted to make sure you could see that because this is the metric we're going to continue to use as we move forward on our way to getting all students to read and comprehend by the end of third grade which you can see is going to be a tall task so I'm going to turn this over to Mr Woodman to wrap us up as I said at the start I was going to talk a little bit about our blueprint and just a reminder our blueprint the six pillars are up on the screen as it relates to the school I'm really going to hone in on two of those early childhood and governance and accountability so what have we done

048so far to increase student achievement this is the first year if you remember my last data meeting I talked about it was the first time that we assessed all kindergarteners coming in uh so we did that so we know where to start with each child so we're very happy to keep keep going with that uh we created a new schedule in the elementary this past summer that includes wind time what I need now this wind time is 30 minutes each day that is devoted to small group learning this is on top of what they were doing before in their reading in the LA classes that is devoted to small group learning meeting the children in small groups where they are we've hired more interventionists each year we're still looking to do that uh if you

049remember we did a $2.6 million Staffing enhancement presentation that we approved and we are moving uh some of those hires uh forward right now and we are refocusing our interventions on the primary G grades of especially K1 and two to close those gaps earlier we've also hired eight Deans technically 13 but eight Deans that will be doing intervention as well at our smaller elementary schools 50% of their time we'll be doing a lot of building management 50% of their time we'll be helping out with uh intervention as well we will be bringing the other part of the 2.6 million Staffing enhancement the content Specialists we're going to be bringing those names in March we're concluding those uh interviews right now they will work with our staff for professional learning and to support all teachers at

050all levels we continue to have have uh about a year or two we started the uh data team meetings at each Elementary School where each grade level meets with their principal uh counselor the school psych and the teachers and they look at each child and see where they are and what they need to do to uh keep moving those forward what do we need to do next our biggest need our absolute biggest need is professional learning um that's a deficit right now um you know snowman didn't help us there with the winner we we've lost pretty much the rest of our PD time and out moveed to the end of the year uh so we need professional learning time to train each teacher uh especially in those K to three grades on structured literacy the

051basic foundations of reading we need to train no matter what they teach they all need to be trained on structured literacy um so that's our biggest need is finding the time to do that we need to work with our daycares and our prek and first start and our Head Start programs that's going to be a a big first task of our early childhood director um we are looking at adding 15 possibly 30 minutes more a day of instruction time uh for all students we need to identify students of needs earlier and that starts that can start at the prek um we you know part with the special ed moving kind of a little bit on to the next presentation it sometimes there's a delay our teachers are getting an eye on the student and you

052know then we do a permission to evaluate we'd like to see if we could get that started a little bit earlier when the students are at pre or first starts or head starts so they can enter our district already getting Services if they need those and we want to continue to implement our walk to read program that we started this year in three of our elementary schools and we have plans to do that our initial uh First Look is that that is working extremely well so that's what we need to do next the accountability piece under governance and accountability uh I know Mr has gone over you the with the dashboard the CD dashboard with all of our goals it's actually over on on the door right there but it starts with the superintendent his

053goals with you and then the goals with Dr long and I we've taken those goals with our principles each principal has a metric that they're working on the goal this evening is one that every Elementary principal has as well as they have a math goal in a science school and attendance school and um if you go to to the district's new website so I'll put a little plugin for Christine wouth great job uh with her team everyone's getting used to the new format each school now has on their school web page by the numbers and it will tell you where they are in the alignment to the goals that we're talking about tonight so if you go to we'll say Sarah's school falling spring or Guilford Hills under by the Numbers it'll say what percentage

054of students are making that Mark of the metric of reading by the end of third grade so bottom line we still have much work to do we do see some small improvements but we really do want to uh attack the status quo and see some great improvements we are all in on it and it's being tied back to the CSD blueprint uh the goals and the execution of that blueprint so if you have any questions we'll gladly take those down Mr W um mik can you give us a snap shot of what an assessment looks like for a first grader yeah which one um how about I talk about aadience first then so the acadience assessment is an assessment that's given by a teacher to student and it is um there are a couple of

055different measures in first grade they may have three measures at at a time where they have to read a certain set of words in a timed way may need to um at the middle of first grade they're starting to do a retell which is a big deal and we usually see a dip in scores in the middle of first grade because they're learning how to retail um but that it's a it's not a lengthy assessment it's a quick assessment but you do it oneon-one so it it takes a little bit longer time um do you want to talk about map a little bit okay so map's a little different it is done via their Chromebook and it levels based on how they pre answer the previous question so so if they answer that previous question

056correctly it gets a little more difficult if it's incorrect then it it it backs off a little bit so then that um uh helps us to then see how they're performing um based on how they're answering their questions um and we do that for both reading and math okay thank you yep then pssa for ELA purposes is how many days long not but not in first grade starts in third grade starts in third grade third grade through 8th grade thank you yep my question is um one of the things I appreciate about uh map as you see the scores as app parent in the portal um and it's usually pretty quick and if you wait enough months you eventually get the pssa scores as well um is there an option to integrate aadience at some

057point so that parents are also seeing those scores we've talked about that I there's still a lot about aadience that we're learning especially in their online management system but we have talked about possibly uploading that in some way to Sapphire the problem is like I said before the assessment changes a lot and it's never it's never one assessment so I mean yes I'm sure there's a way we could do it I'm not I'm not sure what it would look like maybe it doesn't make sense well but what I would encourage though too is those every student has an aadience booklet so for every parent in K to3 when you go in for parent teacher conferences or talk to your teacher they have a booklet and the booklet is powerful it's going to show you exactly

058how they scored very rarely do our teachers look at that overall reading composite score because that's not what they need they're drilling down into all those sub tests I told you about they're going back in the book to look at their mistakes so that would be even more powerful than say a composite number in sappire you know what I mean so makes sense just from time so Maps is about 30 to 45 minutes and Cadence is like 3 minutes yeah maybe a little longer thank when you say three times a year like September January May somewhere around that time period okay thank you aadience you're you're doing those oneon-one yes math you can do the whole class at once yeah yeah yeah as long as the power doesn't go out rarely does in the barrel

059what what was the you s a uh identify with nonsense words or what what exactly is that so A student would see words it really tests whether or not they are uh their reading skills so instead of being able to memorize words like cat dog they're going to get words like bip and can they say all of those sounds correctly they're words that don't make sense and it's a way to play with words to make sure that they're not just memorizing but rather that they know know all those sounds that are in a word and can put it together even if it doesn't make any sense so it could be it'll be a whole list of words that aren't real that they would have to go through and read okay and blend that's a really

060powerful assessment because you're assessing oh know I'm going to nerd out on reading stuff but that's a really powerful assessment you learn a lot about a reader looking at their nonsense word fluency scores okay I've been accused of such that's why I was wondering find out what this is [Music] okay thank you thank you thank you that was great well done so moving on to our our second presentation this evening I'm really just going to introduce the two folks that are going to start the presentation and I'll give some Financial summaries at the end uh but it's title progress and special ed and tonight we have uh our director of special ed Sheree Sullivan and we have Dr Emily goodine who is our 9 to2 uh special ed supervisor so Mrs solivan go ahead thank

061you Mr Whitman good evening it's a I appreciate this opportunity to present to you we are looking forward to it we have several topics that we'd like to cover with you this this evening uh our agenda is going to cover uh starting with the population growth of special education over the past 10 years also those leading disability categories that are attributing to the growth we'll dive into autism and look at our Trend as far back as 201314 and where we're projected to land by 2028 with a reconfiguration of our schools we'll also look at Department operations so that you can see what we look like and how we work we'll also see our student growth our student growth outcomes excuse me Dr goodine will present on those which will be a review of growth in

062pssa and keystones and Passa testing of our special education students we'll then look at our internal audit findings uh completed by devpar there are internal audit agency that worked with us at the beginning of the school year uh those findings I think were shared with you already we also will dive into to special education cost drivers Mr Whitman will present those and our schools of Distinction and how we're preparing for them in the future looking at our 10-year population growth we'll go back as far as 201314 we can see here that our special education population was at 11.3% while the state was at 15.4% moving up to 2023 and 24 school year our population grew to 16.4% andate percentage was at 20.1% we grow we grew five percentage points and so did the state so

063everyone is growing along the way not just us it is in the state as well leading disabilities in Chambersburg that attributed to the uh this state um us being above the state average growth are those disabilities in autism intellectual dis dis ability and speech and language let's take a closer look at these disabilities under autism as far back as 1920 we're going to look at the past five years we grew about 3% to 177% and the 23 24 school year our data is always a year behind from the submission that we do from the state so we're looking to the 23 24 school year data for each of these categories and all of our data here in the District looking at uh 17% for us in under the autism category the state at that time

064at of 2324 was just at 13.9 again another 3% difference so under the intellectual disabilities um we're holding our own uh in that category however we're topping out at 88.1% which is 2 percentages over uh the intellectual disability for 6.1% at the state level if you compare that to our speech and language Services it does make sense that when we have needs of autism and intellectual disabilities that there is an increase in speech services so although the range in in the amount of students that we're supporting has teetered from 16 to 177% the state is only at 13.9% and 2023 24 where we were at 17 .6% looking at the autism Trend and projection for the future if you look at 2013 2014 we were at just 10 a half% of students with disabilities moving

065that up to the 2324 school year we Rose to 177% if we project into 2028 with our reconfiguration of schools we're looking at potentially having 20% of students with autism in the district our department operations how large are we we're going to dive into this information with you tonight it's a lot of information we're going to start in the center of this diagram diagram diagram the um so as we get started here we have 17 schools in each of of our schools we're Sur we are supporting students with learning disabilities in our elementary schools we're also supporting students with autism life skills and emotional supports in our three largest buildings of fville Elementary Hamilton Heights and Scotland Elementary in those buildings we also have a range of services that we'll talk about later as we

066get into this diagram but throughout the district we are servicing 1,500 50 students this number also is comprised of Franklin Learning Center students which is roughly around 80 or so students between 80 85 um it there is a rotation of of coming in and going out that exist we also have about 50 students in our in our Chambersburg Virtual Academy and we have another 50 students in probably um outside um placements such as River Rock yellow breaches and other um treatment facilities but that is a approximately 1,550 students that we reported for our December 1 upload that we'll talk a little bit more later looking at again how big we are in our operations we have 89 teacher positions we have four vacant positions at the moment our teachers again are supporting those four large

067programs um all students who are identified for needing learning Support Services autistic Support Services life skill skill services and emotional support we have 229 support staff those are our teaching assistants our par Educators um Personal Care assistants who are working individually with students of the 229 positions that we have we are filling about 40 of those with subcontractors at this time that is a gap that we hope to close in the future with future contracts um so that we can have District staff in all of those positions it continues to be our goal to achieve as we move forward we have 34 related service providers making up these 34 positions are 13 speech and language therapist of those 13 therapists three positions are unfilled and we're supporting with contractors to support the needs of our

068students we have nine occupational therapists physical therapists who are also supporting these students at any given time throughout the school year with the speech and language and the occupational therapy and Physical Therapy Services we're servicing at least about 600 students throughout the school year we can range as high as 900 students in a school year for those Services because it's a continuation of students being evaluated entering the program and exiting the program once they have achieved their skills we also have seven School psychologists those psychologists are busy evaluating students and also working on our school teams to support our students our staff and parent Outreach so that we can provide safe buildings um safe support systems in place for all and to have ongoing support for our teams and evaluation processes such as mtss um

069academically behaviorally and having their input they are valued member of the school team as well as our two social workers who are supporting the 17 schools um this two social workers are under the special education umbrella they're supporting our families with Outreach um uh also utilizing the soulless care that we've put into place and they are also providing counseling to our students with emotional disturbance and any other students who need counseling are also supported by them um we also have in addition to all these supports and services three Behavior Specialists our Behavior Specialists are trained in uh Crisis Prevention intervention and they also train our staff who are working with students who need behavior supports or to form teams in our buildings to be able to support the wellness of the buildings with that Crisis

070Prevention intervention um deescalation and how to work with students that are escalated to deescalate them they also work in teams to support behavior and efforts of the development of functional Behavior assessments and positive behavior support plans throughout the district we often um share our wealth of these Resources with the regular education um in hopes of preventing future needs for special education so moving forward um we also have with myself leading this department are four supervisors these supervisors are covering K to2 programs we have a program supervisor for elementary one for middle school and one for high school and the fourth supervisor is a program services for uh par Educators where that person is hiring um completing onboarding and training of personal care assistant and teaching assistant working in our classrooms and with individual students our

071supervisors uh K to 12 at the each of the levels they are providing instructional supports and evaluating progress of our students to ensure that we're meeting uh within special education guidelines along with our team we have two secretaries our secretaries um have shared responsibilities for the finances of our department they are not only budgeting and purchasing but also uh providing payments to cover all of our 17 buildings and the department needs in addition to these responsibilities they also maintain student data in our student information system which is sapphire um that information system and the data that I'm sharing with you tonight is all from the data that they are overseeing and inputting on a daily basis to ensure it's accurate up to date and that it is submitted in a timely fashion to the state

072so looking at how large we really are I just want to share with you that our department is larger than every building in school district with the exception of caches our department is also larger than Central Fulton School District fanet metal school district and Fairfield School District M right now we'd like to Branch out and Dr goodine is going to share with you our student assessment growth on a pssa is the Keystone and a passes thank you good evening there we so one thing that you will notice you heard the last presentation and the ladies talked a little bit about assessments um and metrics and they mentioned the pssa and they mainly focused on students being Advanced or proficient we talk about that achievement portion as a department we focus more on the growth of

073our students versus achievement and part of the reason for that is when we're talking about special education students they typically are performing two or more years below grade level so it's really important for us to be focusing on their overall growth every year as we're monitoring them and that growth is also built into their individ idual IEPs um they have measurable annual goals that we are tracking every single year through progress monitoring uh progress monitoring is when we are assessing them on a weekly or a bi-weekly basis in the areas of reading math or writing we use a progress monitoring tool called as web um and that is something that we are monitoring and tracking as well so when we also look at data we we look at the pssa and the Keystone but it's

074always from that lens of growth so that's where we're coming from so that's what we're going to talk about this evening um when we looked at our growth in the district we did want to kind of compare ourselves to some other districts we have some like districts listed up there um names that you've probably seen before um but these districts were selected to compare to Chambersburg in terms of their enrollment numbers and also their socioeconomic status um in digging into each of these districts and their demographics honing in on that special ed piece there are some distinct differences that we do want to point out um these districts in question all have varying percentages of special education populations um and that's important to note because the number of special ed students can impact their growth

075um the other thing that we found out too is in special education we talk about tiers of support there are three levels of support ranging from the the lowest level which is itinerant the middle level which is supplemental and our highest level of support which is full-time Within These districts we also have varying percentages of students in each of those levels um there are districts that have 70% of their students at that lowest level of itinerate where other districts may have 40% at the lowest level or 50% all of those things come into play when we're talking about their overall growth compared to us as well so it's kind of comparing apples to oranges just a little bit so when we look at elementary and we look at the pssas grades 4 to8 our special

076education student growth in the ELA and the Science assessment is ranked number one compared to these nine other districts so in the pool of 10 we are ranked number one with special ed growth our all student population so when we look at all student population that is considering our special ed students but also our regular ed students in those two tested subjects um grades 4 to8 our all students are also ranked at number one so we're seeing comparable growth with our specialed population as well as our all student population in terms of math pssa grades four to8 our special education students are ranked number two in terms of growth and our all student population is ranked third okay okay so we see some good growth happening there if you shift down to take a look

077at the high schools with Keystone we are seeing some challenges um we recognize those challenges as you probably have heard and know cashes is currently on atsi um so that's a monitoring status and they are on that status for various student groups one being our special education population CMS is currently on TSI um also for the student population of special education so when you look at our Keystone scores our strongest areas right now are the algebra and the literature we are ranked um as you can see up there in both of those areas eighth comparative to those like districts um however our all student population in algebra is currently ranked Fifth and our all student population in literature is currently ranked sixth we're still seeing comparable growth when we compare the two groups together here

078in Chambersburg but our ranking you know is just a little bit different there in terms of biology our special education students are ranked 10th comparative to those other districts um but at the same time our all student population is also seeing some challenges and they are ranked eighth in biology the other assessment that you'll see up there that has an aster is our Passa assessment the Passa assessment is the alternate assessment um through the state this is an assessment that is designed for our students who have more intensive needs there is an eligibility criteria that they have to meet so our Prime students that are taking the pass or our self-contained autistic support classrooms are students who are intellectually disabled um so we have 2.9% of our eligible student population in grades 3 through 7

079taking that Passa the data and Passa is just a little bit different because students are given a level that they are tested on and it's not necessarily their grade level it's based on their own individual level and then the way they monitor those students is if they are meeting the Target or they are above the target so where you see the percentages there for 3 to8 we have 45% of our students in ela meeting the Target or exceeding math is 38% and science is 43% in 11th grade at the high school 11th grade is the only grade that takes the Passa at the high school and we are seeing 73% at the Target in ela 47% in math and 33% in science okay going turn it back over to Mrs Sullivan thank you Dr goodine

080looking at our internal audit findings it's really uh this is a great opportunity to share with you our strengths in the audit findings because the auditor in order to understand how we operate they had to look at our systems and in looking at our systems they're looking at our processes and our procedures and so some of the highlights that we're sharing with you tonight are at the core of what we do and when I say they're at the core of what we do is because if we don't do these things right we fall apart they don't match there's mised monies there's opportunity for failure so these are areas that tie us all together and make us really strong as a department and so I'm just going to highlight a few of these for you um

081so that you can see that we're running um the core of the department really well in order to help support the vast number of supports and services that we have in place we were um commended for our structure and organization to reassess teacher case loads and to be able to adjust accordingly when we need to for those case loads for example if we have um a teacher who has an autistic support case load they have they can only be given up to eight students so we have to continually watch when we have students moving in students moving out and to be able to repurpose reorganize what we're doing in order to make sure number one our students are supported and number two that our teachers can do it within the case load capacities that we're

082responsible for maintaining through the the regulations another area that we were commended on was that they were impressed with our pre-referral process for speech and language Services through this process we um developed a screening process where students would be given intervention at like a tier two when we talk about a multi-tiered system approach to supporting students without going straight to evaluation but determine their skill levels and provide instruction for them at an informal level this process can then lead to evaluation for our students it creates balance among case loads plus still gives students intervention in a multi-tiered process that leads to evaluation if if and when necessary they discussed also our communication of regulations and we have that strong communication through our newsletters our emails professional development our uh supervisors hold uh weekly uh professional

083learning communities with our teachers we also have Outside Agency supports coming in for um development of programs we have the autism initiative involved in the district to help support our autistic support classrooms those are just a few um variations of how we provide support for the regulations how to communicate correctly what we should be doing in our classrooms we also have um what is called act 16 reporting and that is when we report student expenditures and this is completed thankfully through our business office um and they run an efficient process of collecting all expenditures for our students for each and every student all 1,550 of them are collected and the importance of this is that the state has different buckets that these ex expenditures go into so when we have a lot of high costs

084we can submit for contingency fund and be reimbursed for those costs under data Integrity we spent a lot of time um in training and developing skills to do a better job with data Integrity that is uh the data that is going into our CIS system the sapphire system of student data our July 1 uh uploads are for students who are exiting from special education and the December 1st are those students who have current working IEP documents they are active students in special education so our goal is always capture 100% of those students and that starts from the ground up the services being in place the IEPs and paperworks being in place so that we can upload them every December 1st and that generates our federal Ida funding for the district and our programs in addition

085to these strengths we were also noted for the homebound and instruction in the home procedures that we have in place they are efficient and they work um they work for students who have illnesses Homebound and home and instruction in the home are not special education placements they are placements um and instruction given actually in the home because we have students with short-term illnesses who receive Homebound and those students with long-term illnesses or disease that may not be able to attend school at receive instruction in the home through our transition coordinator we have the support of that system in place and it's and it's thriving so we're able to see who really needs it and what supports and services we can give them to make it all work out for their in their best interest in

086the situation that they're in so in highlighting all these strengths um it is really important to still acknowledge that we have a lot of growth to continue there's always room for improvement and as we look to the future we are going to explore other avenues and efforts to Define other areas where we can um exert our effort into finding new Pathways for funding and so from the Auditors it was suggested that we also look into our medical access funding we believe that there are resources that we are providing that we are not um billing for so in the the months to come we are going to engage in exploring those options to generate more funding for our programs with that said Mr Whitman now I'm going to turn things over to him so that he

087can talk about the special ed cost um drivers for us so Emily is handing out a document right now and uh this is for your perusal after the after the presentation but I want to go over the first set of data points so you understand what you're looking at so what you have in front of you are kind of small packets within one large packet and if you take a look at the first sheet that is what we call our 1200s only that's overall the learning support the special ed uh budget behind there you will see uh sheets very similar that that will accompany the over overall budget five sheets back will start the sensory support which was basically our budget for students with autism then you'll see emotional support budget that's our students with

088emotional support then you'll see life skills that's our intellectually disabled students then you'll see multi-handicapped and it'll go through our cost drivers over the last 10 years and I know this is something that uh uh when we asked for this publicly Mr Norcross you wanted to hear about our our last 10 years so if you take a look at the first one that is from 2ou 2013 to the 23 24 school year then it has an expense bar chart behind that in different colors uh the third sheet is might be my favorite sheet out of the whole thing this is the budget to actual and you see a big jump this last year we were challenged through you know several meetings to predict and project uh over many meetings with Tammy and her team and

089the special ed Department We believe We were as close as we could get with the projections for what's coming this year and it was you know put in last year's budget so that's why the big jump we're hoping at the end of the year that we don't come back and ask for like three or four million for special ed uh it should be quite a bit uh down from there I I know it will be because my secret is not coming to me daily and saying we're running out of money already in the budget because that happened my first uh 3 years in this position so uh things are in much better shape this year because of what we did with the budget last year but um this is for your perusal if you have

090any questions if you would email them to me I will with what you're seeing here because it's a lot of data if You' email them to me I can put them in a Friday folder and put it under board questions so uh we'll do that that way uh first off I want to thank uh Sheree Sullivan and Emily goodine for a great presentation um they have a lot going on this year tomorrow we have a comp plan meeting with a whole bunch of our staff members and community members in the evening tomorrow night uh they went through an internal audit and also they're going through a state audit right now and uh all this while being short staffed so uh they're working incredibly hard I've worked with seven uh special ad directors since I've been

091here in Chambersburg and I will tell you this this group is topnotch um so very very very happy so talking about some of the uh Trends you see right beside from 201325 it says straw Trend this is something that I I'll give credit Chris brought up the straw um because I was talking about all of the uh Early Childhood needs that we have right now we have a lot of autistic classrooms in the elementary life skills emotional support they're at three buildings fville alone has 92 special Edge students in a building so that puts them at about 37% of their student population is special ed and so think of a straw three parts one part will be K to 5 one part will be Middle School one part will be ninth grade really to age

09221 and right now there is a ball bearing stretching that straw in the elementary division because that's where most most of our classes are right now that's going to continue to go through the straw that straw is not going to shrink back cuz we are still seeing lots of students come in with a lot of needs more students with autism more students that are life skills and intellectually disabled as presented earlier this evening that's going to go to the middle level we are going to need more teachers in the middle level then eventually as they get older it's going to be in the high school on the other side in gifted education we're probably going to need another gifted education we are uh finding more students with gifted needs so that's a that's a the

093other end just wanted to tell you about so we've gone from 13 million to 32 million from 2013 to 25 you'll see that in the the document that I gave you there uh some of this you know Sheree already went through life skills autistic support you know has gone up the most speech is really correlated to you know students with autism basically every student that has autism is a need of speech services uh we are currently short uh three speech teachers right now they can't be found anywhere uh Wilson is actually going to be helping us out starting a Speech Pathology program uh which is going to be hopefully helpful to our area but all districts are really in desperate need I think the Liu last time I heard was like short 17 speech pathologists

094so we are contract in out to tune of about $400,000 for our speech services and our compliance regulations just so you know students with autism in the elementary if they're in a self-contained classroom that classroom can only have eight students that is a regulation that we must follow and you have to have one teacher and two AIDS so when you think that's for a class of eight that's about a $250,000 classroom and um Mr Nelson how many classes of autism do you have at feville seven three life skills and then I think they have four at Hamilton Heights and how many at Scotland two so you have that's that's a a lot of expensive classrooms uh and that's one of our biggest cost drivers as we move to our schools of Distinction I want to

095talk a little bit about the internal audit and we're waiting on the state audit um part of the internal audit we are asked to look at our access billing and they believe that we can find about another $350 to $500,000 so Sheree and her team are going to be looking at that if that's true we will want to hire another access uh secretary for billing purposes and uh that's all we have one person right now that that's all they do is access billing all day long and uh sounds like we need another one but we have to make sure that that is correct correct and the research is right um but if that would work out the three things that the audit really saying that we need could be cost neutral one is a supervisor

096of program Services as you just heard me talk about speech we have nine about 900 students that are in and out of speech during the year with movein and everything like that so 900 students out of the, 1550 that are on their case load need speech services a lot of our students need occupational therapy and physical therapy as well um at this point we really need to have uh Shere is doing a little too much overseeing she's pretty much overseeing speech right now because her supervisors are too busy to to handle that we really need Sheree to be the orchestrator of the whole department so uh we do concur with their findings that we really need a supervisor program services with that being said I'm going to move into the grade reconfiguration we would like

097to get that under control and then when we do our grade reconfiguration heading towards the schools of Distinction in 2028 that supervisor program Services would slide into one of the four spots that you see here for the grade reconfiguration so really that job ends up being the same who knows what we'll look like if we have exponential growth in special ed we may need to hire an additional one but right now our thoughts are that we can see that we can move that person into a grade reconfiguration but that would be one supervisor K to3 1 4 to 6 the 78 would be about 1400 students but they would take on the case load of the current number about 85 at FLC 85 you know very high need students at FLC and then a 9

098to2 uh special ed supervisor and then the last thing um we definitely when we look at schools like us their support department generally is a lot larger for for how many uh students they have we really need to have one Financial secretary one person that that's their entire job that they're not doing other task under the realm of special ed whether it's filing uh taking care of our student information system we need one person that is really is in charge of uh all the bills and receiving the bills um so we would like to have a financial secretary and that would be you know part of uh next year's budget if we could do that uh that really ends our presentation if you have any questions you know please feel free to ask our team

099board members questions I do I do have a couple questions I actually looked through your internal audit that you guys sent over um and I noticed a couple things and I hope it's okay these are just questions for my clarification I like to just start that at the beginning because I'm never insinuating by any question I ask that I know how to do anybody's job any better than what you're doing so please do not take take it in that way um on the page five under the ACT 16 I did notice 2122 in the category of the 27,000 to 54,000 we had 133 students and then that jumped significantly by almost 60 students to the following year was there something that went on was there like a reclassification did we just get that many more

100students that were identified I was just curious could you give me I'm sorry could you give me the year again that you had said that um 21 to 22 we had 33 students that were in the 27,000 to 54,000 uh demographic or range that's there I can I have the here and then that next year it went up by almost 60 students in that same range and everything else stayed about the same I didn't know if you remembered if there was like an influx or if you had new people that or new students that were identified or it just seemed like a big jump for one year it is a big jump and if you look back to that period of time I think the opening of schools here and services for special education might

101have been a turning point for students returning to the district that could have affected that funding piece postco bump yes yes okay yes see El thank you I think I didn't say the covid word I we don't like to thank you and the only other question I had is when um yes let me see Dr goodine was speaking do you know the percentages on the three different categories that you gave the itinerant supplemental and full-time here in Chambersburg just out of curiosity the percentages for those just for Chambersburg School District she said that they go into itinerate supplemental and full-time is how they're broken down I was just curious what they are here for this District this is 13 14 I need that whole packet I do have that data here we have um what

102is called and this can be seen online it's public it's called Special Education data report rep card and so that's where I pulled some of our data from tonight from this report card I'll actually give you this copy here um but when you look at uh it goes by special education inside of regular education 80% or more that's your itinerant okay um so those students um were at 58.1% the state percentage was 61.7% for the supplemental it was 16.6% we're at and state was 10.3% and special education in other settings which would be more like the fulltime is 88.7% and 4.4% for the state this uh data sheet also gives you the enrollment um the Lea versus the state enrollment um and other other factors on here you're welcome to have this thank you very

103much I appreciate that uh Sherry I've got one question um so when you're projecting the growth of special ed students in particular autism and it's such a large segment that is growing it's on yeah I'm on yes and I'm curious about um if we knew what was causing autism we could eventually figure out if those causes are being mitigated in some way or eliminated you know to know if our projections are going to increase or decline absolutely what can you tell us about what what's causing it can you see in the trending that's it's going to yeah I I don't actually know what's causing it if I'm completely honest um there are many contributing factors I believe that are out there um there's greater awareness of autism and the characteristics of it I would say

104that's the greatest um contributor there's also um you know no longer um uh the idea that it's different it's a part of society so there's this acceptance I think that goes along with it and I think what's important to note also is that autism varies right it goes from you know to intensive needs to very independent and thriving individuals who um you know have are like everybody else yeah jobs and families and everything right exactly and you know who's to say that it didn't all exist before me remember years ago we had institutions where students went because we didn't have autistic support classrooms so I could probably write a whole book about this please I'll read but um and I'll give it to you you'll be my first person yeah lots of variables out there

105I appreciate your question thank you thank you yeah I have a question the uh the growth comparisons with the other nine districts that are similar our Elementary Middle School numbers are pretty impressive we're ranked number one and two yeah our high school on the other hand is not what do you attribute that too and what are some of the ideas that your team is discussing about addressing that so we are actively um involved in that and I'm going to invite Dr goodine up here because she's been instrumental at our secondary level for those students in 9 to 12 and looking at their testing as well as their progress monitoring because our progress monitoring does speak um other volumes and so I'll let you go ahead and take the mic yeah so um you know in

106the rankings I think it's important to point out too when we're actually looking at the growth rate our growth rate we might be ranked low but comparative to who might be number one and number two it's not that big of a gap um and this is grow not proficiency too cor correct and it is very different because the high school is seeing um an increase in proficiency rate but the growth rate is not necessarily what they would like it to be um and for our students in particular you know when we talk about being two plus grade levels behind when you're learning algebra and your math level might be on a fifth grade math level or a sixth grade math level it's going to be increasingly difficult for you to show growth in an area

107of like algebra um so we're working very closely with the atsi Committees at the high school to talk about strategies that we can Implement strategies with the schedule change with Block in terms of supporting our students with remediation and intervention um additional professional development we keep talking about in terms of accommodations and modifications in all environments for all students not just special ed students but also regular ed students as well so there's a lot of good ation around that right now good I just want to add I really do appreciate the correlation between all students and Special Ed I think it's it's just not a special ed problem it's an all student problem necessarily so as we grow all students are get with all kids you'll see the performance go for special ed as well

108that's great thank you yes uh Mr Sullivan and Dr goody thank you for the presentation and and for the board when we discussed this in new business a couple months ago about having the presentation uh and and it was mentioned tonight in the in the presentation uh how this has grown not just on a financial aspect or impact I should say to the district but also obviously the enrollment numbers which show that one unofficial metric that I thought of just this evening listened to the presentation in that when the president in the past year and a half to me makes a comment at the beginning of the meeting that we had an executive session and we can't tell you what we talked about and we're not going to tell you what we talked about but

109one unofficial metric that I would like to point out tonight is that the executive session topics and discussions related to special ed are nowhere near what they used to be the the frequency and of that discussion was almost monthly and so I think that's a perfect uh tribute to our staff and Mr Whitman even mentioned it in an executive session about 6 eight months ago too that we don't have these um discussions and tough decisions to make an executive session that we can't get into more details on but with that so thank you ladies but with that and uh the idea of some more administrative roles I love the idea of getting the finances back into the special ed Department I think that's a good Focus um and the supervisors but I think Mrs solivan

110mentioned we still have these four vacant teachers and Mr Whitman's straw approach that that those four vacancies sounds like it's even going to grow so as a board and as a district similar to what we did maybe with food service and janitorial support a year and a half ago what can we do as a board and District to help that vacancy we put a big heavy focus on food service in joral because for years on end and Tom Dolan God Rest of Soul always mentioned it uh but then we put a focus on it and we we seem to improve it what can we do in the special ed Department as a board and that's a question for our presenters what can we do what what could the board do to help with these vacancies

111well I'll take a little bit of that question um I know Mr bigger and I have been talking about one of the things that that's happening right now is negotiations with CAA we've been looking at is there anything that we can include in the contract uh currently I think the the stien for writing IEPs they get uh three days is that correct um and I think a $200 stien so looking at ways to incentivize uh some of our special folks would be uh something that we definitely need to take a look at I don't know if sh or Emily want to chime in yet but there there's absolutely been discussions about that and I don't want to get too far into that with what's going on I'd like to uh thank the presenters um and

112the opportunity to hear directly from the staff and I I've gotten so much confidence from seeing your professionalism and your passion with your job that I have no fears that if we give you the freedom you need you'll you'll get the job done and you'll and it flows from the top down and all the teachers that are working with these kids are going to get the idea that this is how it's going to work so thank you for being that way appreciate it thank you yes thank you very much thank you I just want to thank you for your continued support over the past three years it's been excellent and we're doing great things for kids you're doing great things for kids with all the support you've given them so thank you so much thank

113you okay item 5.01 privilege of the floor uh we'll start with those who signed in uh there's only one uh member of the audience who signed in but we will open it up like I always do uh this Jordan several agenda items and Dr long will keep time for us I do have several agenda items I usually have a script I'm not doing that tonight uh Personnel actions I'd like to congratulate Melissa cash dollar for her promotion her sister is my doctor Mr Nelson congratulations and anyone else who's getting a promotion to tonight congratulations uh your executive session uh agenda item some of this was actually bought up tonight and I just thought about it the other day and I was shocked when I realized that Services drive a budget not not salaries 21.8% of

114the budget are teacher salaries 28.3% is all the salaries in this District so Services which you heard tonight Drive the budget the vendors for instance T-Mobile a um let's see a roofing contractor let's see Cyber Charter Schools at $8 million if I could wipe that one out of the budget I would for every single person in this school district that would mean we'd have more money for the children and the teachers let's see what else under under special ed the salaries okay $10.2 million special programs which are vendors which I think was mentioned tonight 32.3 million so that's to my point vendors Drive special Le vendors Drive everything and that is in every single budget County state and federal approval of the bill list which is your largest part of the budget again vendors not

115teachers and lastly let's see I want to make sure no not lastly superintendent bigger please let me know when the district wins the grant reward for the solar I'm hoping fville and one other school wins that award it will help us I just got solar on my house and believe it or not in two two months time and you might laugh at this but we have planted Seven Trees and um let's see here's a question can ice just prance into our schools and take unac unaccompanied children with a federal warrant in hand away that's for you superintendent bigger cuz I'm worried about that and lastly before you answer me last we lastly Mrs our our governor has gotten the Trump Administration to unfreeze billions and grants and Loans to all of us so I'd like

116to your us Congressman Mrs Jordan thank you I do any other members of the audience wish to make public comment okay than thank you uh group seven the consent agenda this is probably going to be the largest change uh this evening from previous meetings uh whereas we would have lately we've had two consent agenda sections a seven and eight you can see section Eight's blank so we're just doing seven uh so the first part of item 701 through 7.21 are there any of those items that a board member member would wishes to vote on separately and the reason I asked that question we will then pull those individual items out uh we would still vote on the remainder of the whole first and then we'll do individual votes I mean if you want to pull

117you know any individual items out then we would vote on each one of those items individually um I would like to pull item 7.12 okay any other items okay so we we will vote on items 7.01 through 7.21 excluding 7.12 uh once and and I will ask for a motion in second but before I do that we going to follow the procedure we've been using uh with the admin team Chris your team first if there's any of those items again excluding 7.12 that the admin wishes to maybe elaborate on or just provide any information ahead of the vote I don't see anything I'm looking to to to Dr L and and Mr Whitman that anything you want to highlight at this point in time just for the board and the public uh job core is

118really a neat um partnership that we are going to have that it is free for students to um go to this residential area there's two of them um within the state they can learn earn a career while they're there as well uh certificates but also get a Chambersburg uh diploma by staying there and finishing their uh credits so this is a real unque part unique partnership thank you Dr long okay any board members have any questions or comments on any of the items excluding 7.12 at this time okay hearing none I'd like to have a motion to approve items 7.01 through 7.21 excluding item 7.12 I have nightmares about those numbers tonight Motion in second place please move to approve second motion by Mrs goggler second by Mrs gal all those in favor signify by

119saying I I I opposed eyes have it and so move uh Miss harau we'll do a motion and second and then we'll have discussion and questions on on your item so do I can I have a motion and second for item 7.12 please move approve go ahead no go ahead move to approve I'll second motion by Dr Diller second by Miss Harbaugh questions discussions I'm asking that we table this particular item uh I just received resource materials on Friday that I would like the ability to review uh before we would vote on this I second the motion card cheat all right we have a motion in second to uh table item 7.12 um any discussions on that motion yeah I'm just I'm just curious can you share more details about what you received I requested

120the resource material for that class this was provided to me on Friday wonderfully by the administration I just have not had time to review it yet and so I'd like time to be able to review that before we make a vote on that in particular so I appreciate the effort that was made to get this to me so I could review it um and the the syllabus that came with it so thank you to everybody that made that possible any any questions she had we did put in the Friday folder I think last week regarding the policy surrounding uh this topic and subject so all the questions she asked us you have all the same information as response if there are other board members that are interested in seeing it as well should we borrow

121Stephan's or request an additional copy I don't know the answer that well since we won't go until if we do decide to table this it wouldn't be until March I'm sure I can be done with that by end of week I just need some time to do that so I'm more than willing to hand it off to you whoever would be interested in seeing that hold on Mr Mr Whitman you have a comment yeah uh well this vote was just for the curriculum map that there would be a separate vote for another time for the uh Source uh but I will say this is a course that is uh part of uh rmu the uh University that we have an agreement with uh so they would want us to be using that resource so I

122see how they're married but I just want to let you know that this is approving a curriculum map that's been uh we've had it on the the display out in the the lobby uh so it would be two separate votes though eventually coming your way yeah and the reason that I don't feel comfortable approving the map is because there were certain uh topics that I saw on the curriculum map that I wanted to see how they were presented before I felt comfortable in even approving the map and so with having this resource I feel like I'll be able to to get that information and be able to have um an educated vote whenever uh we come up with that so that's why I'm asking for it to be tabled just so I have time to

123review I think that's very reasonable request the course to me looks fascinating but I also see a lot of topics that to me are quite heavy yeah exactly so I just wanted to see how it was being presented so just for my own you know edification to see how it's kind of coming across there so once I get a chance to do that then I'll be I'll feel more comfortable making an educated decision sounds good I just want to comment this is an elective right an advanced elective and I think Advanced electives need to be preparing our students to be in the world as it is and there are a lot of uncomfortable topics in the world as it is we should be able to be prepared to discuss them but clearly if people were

124anxious about what's in the curriculum and they're giving you that anxiety Then you need to be doing your due diligence as well I'd be interested to know what you find out okay we have a motion in second um all those in favor of tabling item 7.12 until our well we'll take it off the table at that time yep we'll add it to the we'll add it on the cow and then it'll be y a separate item and the following voting meeting all those in favor signify by saying I I I oppose eyes have it and so move before we move on uh Mr bigger you want to comment on for those who who stuck around uh if you were uh just approved to to uh get a new position or uh an existing one please

125stand and just men mention who you are real quick just so the board gets to see who they hire tonight I know there's many of you here so just quick name introduction if they don't know you um and your new position or uh different position I'm Melissa Casher um yeah I'm [Laughter] here I know her too I have three of [Laughter] them um I'm excited this is an opportunity Comm we were Drew and I were chatting quietly um while we were listening to some of the presentations and I moved to the community when I was a year old and I've lived here my own children have attended one has graduated in college now and the other is in my building so she has been texting when are you coming home um it's been a long

126day I think there's a testament to the process that we went through which was really rigorous um our colleagues that went through that process with us which are incredible people and devote time to this District every single day so I'm up for the challenge I appreciate the opportunity and your faith in me um and I'm excited to kind of continue an impact so thank you and I'm I am approved to move from 12 Years I looked at the faculty this morning a little Tey when I told them I was on the agenda 12 years as principal at South all but three of 24 have been in that building so my roots are middle level so thanks I appreciate the work that was brief what I like to do that that was pretty good learning well

127uh Drew Nelson currently the principal at fville I've been there for 10 years been the Principal at seven elementary schools in the district at one point I was a HR director for six months when s Rockwood was on maternity leave so we were talking as Melissa said about the opportunity that lies ahead and earlier I was talking to Mr Whitman I still have to focus on getting fville to the end of this year on a positive note and making sure we take the pssa and have a good wrap up as I transition in but I'm looking forward to it and thank you for the opportunity uh I'm Gary Carter currently the director of safety for the uh for the school district I don't have near the resume that these guys have or the position that

128they are about to Embark in um I've uh just been uh selected as the head football coach for the high school so I'm going to take on that role I've been coaching at the high school either foot bar baseball since about 1997 on and off did a little bit of college coaching at Shippensburg University um figured I needed one more thing to do um so through my name in the ring to be the to be the head coach um and I'll say it not about me it was about the kids um and the kids we have and the kids in the community and and uh hoping to give back uh and bring some some more wins into the program so thank you for the opportunity yeah thank you all thank you okay policy and legislation

129uh four separate motions seconds and hopefully votes here uh item 11.01 uh policy 204 attendance motion uh and second to approve the first reading of policy 204 attendance please move to approve second motion by Mr mcke second by Dr Diller questions or discussions all those in favor signify by oh I'm sorry what are we on 11.01 okay all right yes yeah sorry are you using your nonsense words again I was on it I was on it on come on I do before you guys vote I we're soon to hit the three hour mark so it's excused you're glasses down l i I do want to thank Dr long and and Heidi manir our attendance director so to speak she picked up the duty and they really jumped in the attendance bucket and are doing some

130really great work this policy is supporting the continued work in attendance as well as a whole host of other areas so I'm just very happy that we did it and I'm happy they're following through and coming with actions uh to you to really help our district so thanks to everyone for the work to get started on attendance all those in favor signify by saying I I I oppos eyes have it and so moved item 1102 policy 239 foreign exchange student uh Motion in second to approve first reading of policy 239 for foring exchange students please motion to approve second motion by Dr Diller second by Mr hack questions discussions I just have a question for the really for the public information we don't have the ability to accept these visas did we at one point

131have that ability I think in history yes what changed I think this is alignment with the program correct programs that provide forign exchange students require this and our policy was outdated correct um we have a J1 status for our district we do not have an F1 and the J1 has quite a few things that are listed and secondary school student is one of them but an F1 has changed now with the new Administration that it has to go through a different process for approval but also um it's it's just a uh a whole different Visa it it mainly um focuses on University uhuh and and it's nothing connected to any executive orders or any Chang well I've already been asked by the news and the press that question well so so there's nothing related to

132that correct correct I mean it wasn't the only change is that it was approval through the attorney general and now it is um [Music] through Immigration and Customs yeah okay okay thank you all any other questions or comments all those in favor signify by saying I I oppose eyes hav it so move item 11.03 this is the second reading of policy 226 searches uh motion uh can I have a motion and second to approve the second reading of policy 226 please Bo to approve second motion by Mr mcke second by Miss Harbaugh questions or discussions yes I have question um I will use my sense words now um I was I was reading over that I don't know maybe um maybe uh Mr Carter could help help me out with it um the searches as

133far as the technology electronic devices and whatnot what is how far is that able to go as far as going into the the students phones is no no no no all it all it does is it it's a walk through it's a scan and it's air a scan for feris Metals so it's it's called a weapons detection system but it's actually looking for the metals um using weapons knives guns um it does detect Metals in cell phones lunch boxes Chromebooks but it's not going in any devices there's no technology involved in it other than the scan of the ferris metal okay maybe I'm on the wrong one and I apologize that was maybe that's was for the K9 CCH I was looking I was reading over the um the policies on that about about the

134electronics and and whatnot and I was just I didn't know how far that was able to go as was so you're actually talking about the if you're talking about technology um as far as if we have an invest ation um and there's some kind of a photograph some kind of a a threat um that's something that it depends on probable cause as far as policing goes um administratively there's some searches that they can do but normally we don't uh get involved and search through phones if there's a picture on there parents are normally involved that would be deleted things like that but if we had probable cause as a police department we could actually seize a phone and do a search warrant depending on the search or depending on the uh the crime that we're

135saying was was that they were involved in but normally um it's very seldom that we actually take that technology and and do that we do have a platform in the district that if they're using a district device for any kind of threats or uh sending any kind of pictures uh that we could actually secure that uh through our district technology department so it's really few and far between but we do have those capabilities but um fortunately we haven't had to do that very much in the district I was there I was my concerns was I didn't know I'm glad through the police I didn't know if it was if that was giving admin or whoever ability to go through no they still they still operate on Reasonable Suspicion we still operate on probable costs okay

136all right and this policy is updated just because of the feris metal detection systems we purchased okay that's that's really the only change we brought okay good question good discussions any other questions or comments discussions okay uh then we need a vote uh item 11.0 three all those in favor signify by saying I I I oppos eyes haven't so move item 11.04 second reading new policy 226.11 searches uh Motion in second to approve second reading of policy 226.11 04 okay hearing none all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed eyes have it and so moved um item 12 new business I mentioned this briefly in my president's report uh that I wanted to talk about this Chris mentioned it in his superintendent report and we didn't even talk about talking about it

137ahead of time but uh I wanted to bring this up in discussion it sounds like it's already on Chris's agenda this is one of my uh goals or desires I should say uh what you know back when we did board reorganization in December was to review uh this uh plus X policy the X historically has been 1% but I still say x because it can be whatever the board decid so uh I guess and I wanted to do it in the same light I wanted to do it ahead our budget vote and it sounds like that's what your timeline is so I'll maybe turn it back over to you and you probably answered the question and tell us on our pre-plan was to bring the proposed final budget and then that resolution at the same

138meeting as well as pfm to bring updates on our bonding scenarios as we get closer to borrowing for the grade configuration so we're going to try to continue to package those items together that way you see them as connected and not separate okay so we'll be seeing the presentations on this yeah as we see the various budget's okay and just a little bit of a history for the board um and Mrs Styer correct me if I'm wrong I'll paraphrase it the current resolution it's centered around this plus X goes to capital reserve and the question that I have for the board is do we want to change this resolution to uh Debt Service I.E $170 million in upcoming building projects so okay that was my one item any other board members any items for uh

139new business discussion only this evening okay you see the information items on uh the bottom as the sheet uh and with that our meetings adjourn thank you