001You're going to call the meeting to order order for 416 All right. Have roll call, please. President Johnson present. Present. President Dr. Morales Board member Pope Board member Reverend Curtman Board member Harris Board member Weiss Present. Board secretary Answer quickly. So, and um can we have um I have a question. And then if anybody else has any questions Okay. So, I am going to ask about the weak plan agenda item A5 for the Chester Upland School District Community Partnership the National Giving Alliance. What is that going to look like? Yes. So, my lovely board member Dr. Morales Um so, I was brought into this meeting uh with one of our our digital academy, Mr. Young principal, is actually on the board of this organization. Wow, and sharing information, and it's it's a phenomenal organization. So,
002basically, what they do is partner with school districts, and they have donors, and there is a form that can be filled out, you know, by designated people at school, and it is for students that are currently in the McKinney-Vento status, which means they're displaced, but also that are um living in impoverished areas, where they don't have the necessary resources clothing. And it's not even used clothes, new clothes. So, they have partnerships with the Gap, Old Navy, all these different stores, and basically, what happens is we get a report, you know, from one of our social workers or anybody in the building, then the form gets filled out, and they come together, and they pack up little care packages. You know, we can determine how often, you know, the only thing is that we have to
003go pick it up, which isn't a problem. And they group everything together, and then we sort it out, and it's delivered. phenomenal opportunity besides the victory closets that we already have for only for our McKinney-Vento students, we have the hygiene products, the uh the school supplies, and now we're starting excited about. So, um this this is another resource that, you know, of course, one of the main things we talk about here is of our students who like they don't necessarily have the items that they like. This will definitely help with that, and about the opportunity. So, if there's any questions about that, I will take So, they said that we can start immediately. Um there's just a there's some paperwork that needs to be filled out. Obviously, we had to go through this process first,
004and once approved, um there's some paperwork that needs to be filled out. That's just questions about that that I And they said it's better to start sooner than later, because then like if they need items for over and what have you, then we can start right away. So, we're very And the crazy thing is that they're located about two blocks away from where I used to live, and I never knew about them, and now, you know, so the connection is great. This work with the community partners is First of all, congratulations, and thank you for all the good work that you're doing in the department. Thank you, Dr. Morales. You said that this initiative qualified under McKinney- Nope. Or you said it's not only for students >> This is right. This one is not. So,
005like if there's a student that comes in or moves into the district or experiences something or is going through something, then um nope, it's it's for anybody that needs it. And there's no limit on how many things we can request. So, they're going to be tired of me. I'll tell you that right now, but that's a good problem to have. Can Miss make the report? get a guarantee or >> Yes, they can. Yeah, that we're going to determine who the contact people are, just so that, you know, as as as far as logistics and not having too many people filling out the form, there's going to be certain people, and the plan is to kind of do what we do with McKinney-Vento, where we created a separate email address just for McKinney-Vento referrals so that
006my staff and I can track it. We plan on doing the same thing for this initiative so that, you know, nothing gets lost in translation and we make sure that we're able to account for all of the needs of all of our students. Okay. All right. Thank you. Do we have any other questions regarding the agenda? >> [clears throat] >> On number C, letter C 10. Um I can't tell if this is C 10. Yes. Somebody says is gathers. I'm not sure if this is someone to answer the question. Gathers is not here and so I can read it out loud. It just says approval of the accepted special education budget service agreement with Delaware County IU unit number 20. For fiscal year July 1, 2026 through June 30th, 2027. It says here the dollar
007amount is $1,871,000. But down here is the presented total. But the adopted budget for DCIU is $31,000 $31,000,000 69 $920. So, out of that amount is is that I'm only responsible for the 1.8. That's what it sounds like. That's our allocation, but I would have to look into it and get back to you. I will say to answer part of it, every district is going to have to accept the DCIU's total budget. But in terms of whether This 1.8 million is our total. I don't have the answer. And I have no one else here to represent. Can I Can I ask before we put this before the receiver to approve that one, we separate the total DC that we separate adopted budget adopt their budget as a separate Two line items. Yes, because if not
008it just it looks And also that whatever this dollar amount represents that's as its own um on item on each one. I understood two resolutions. For the presentation presentation by Dr. Wallace. Can I Good evening. our community those present, those online. So, first I'll give the finance the the treasurer's report. Very brief. We'll be working in partnership with Double Four to um stay abreast of our financial situation and budget preparation is on the way. So, I'm just going to leave it there. I will give updates as we go through the budget um budget process and then hopefully leading into the overall budget presentation that we have every year from our business um department. That's what we'll be looking forward to as far as finances. I hope I didn't miss anything. But That's what we'll be
009looking forward to as far as the treasurer um space finances considered. Um for the legislative report it's long. I do I do I would like for everyone to read everything on it cuz it takes a lot to put it together, but there are some spaces that I would like to highlight. The first is local and regional, which I'll start at in more of to the um report. So, locally we are preparing for advocacy day. Um on May 4th, the legislative committee, which is myself and now um Director Pope and Director Reverend Kirkland will be meeting with the Pennsylvania School Board Association in Harrisburg. We've provided them with a list of speakers well, legislators that we would like to speak to regarding issues in Chester Upland School District with topics related to equitable education in Chester
010Upland School District and that we do not want to talk to people that we see every day or whose office we can go knock on their door. That we would like to speak to people who need to understand our needs more intimately. So, that will happen on the 4th and then on the 6th two days later, we will be back in Harrisburg with our babies. As you know, this is something that is very important to me even before I came on the board. So, it's good to be on the board and have a little bit more value to what we're doing. Um but also was able with the support of education voters but I'm to advocate for us to have a student speaker um present at the rally on May 6th. So, Chester Upland School
011District will be represented by one of our students, Decari. Our student representative. Yes. Is there anything missing? It's okay. He will be our student representative speaker that day. And we have also 10 It's normally about eight or 10 students that go. They get their schedule to meet with legislators. We prep them in advance of the topics and they go in and they advocate on their self. Ms. Trina Johnson has been there every year that I've been there, so she is aware that that that process is completely led by the students. And this year our president and um Dr. Superintendent Dr. May, I would like for one of the students to report back after we had that because we don't we don't ever go back around and follow up to have them come back and present
012to the public. Um on the state updates, the House approved the uh general appropriation bill on April 14th. Uh we call it a bipartisan support because we did have two parties that said yes, even though with a very small amount of Republicans who voted yes, I think five or six, but it's still bipartisan support. So, now it heads over to the Senate and as we know, once it gets to the Senate, that is where our back and forth happens and that determines how long we will be with or without a budget after July 1st. So, I'm really hoping that because it is an election cycle that they will not want their constituents to be upset with them that we can budget done in reasonable time. May not be July 1st cuz I don't think they
013would want to hand Josh Shapiro a timely budget, but hopefully it won't be no banking. Um the other thing that I would like to address that is very important is the IEP timeline adjustment that has been introduced and referred to the House Education Committee. This would change the um completion timeline for evaluation from 60 calendar days to 60 consecutive school days. This is not ideal. This This could be good for one side but not good for the other side cuz as you know, we can have days where we if it's in the winter time, we can have snow days, we can have many things that cause that to push back um for the students and it could actually prolong their evaluation process. So, we are um that is what we're waiting for to see how
014that turns out. The other thing that I had highlighted was cyber uh charter and cyber school. So, for the last four or five years, we have been going at Harrisburg for cyber charter reform, funding, reimbursement, line items, whatever you want to throw it as, please give it to us. But this year we are not doing that. Well, this year as a whole, we are not advocating for cyber reform. We are advocating for space to evaluate and assess the reforms that have already gone in, making sure that they work properly, making sure that the mechanisms that um within the changed school code actually work and materialize in the way that they're supposed to. So, this year we're putting a pause on it. Might pick it up next year if things don't work out right, but for
015right now we're giving them giving them a little break with that. On the federal updates, I did report in February that we do have an approved funding package. However, I want to bring to your attention because there's a lot of talk in the news about, "Oh, we're moving things from the Department of Education to other spaces." And I I just want as a district for us to understand what that means. It means that not necessarily an immediate loss of funding, but an immediate shift of who has ownership and administration of that funding. So, whereas a lot of our title entitlements sat with the Department of Education, now some of them have been moved to um Health and Human Services. And right now they have interagency agreements with over 100 education related programs. So, what that
016means is they'll they will go to spaces such as Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, wherever this administration is feeling those items would be better suited under. Um and I listed some of the programs that are impacted by that. Right now our federal funding is safe, but it doesn't mean that once it moves to another department that it will remain the same. So, we'll stay on that if I got to go find a way to sit on a federal space to advocate for Chester Upland School District will do so. So, thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Um I just want to say it has been as far as I I'm pretty sure a true joy and pleasure working with Dr. Williams because she's very thorough. Very thorough. And also and yeah,
017not only is she very thorough when it comes to providing us with information, she makes she makes me happy. >> [laughter] >> Thank you. Thank you, baby. >> so it's it's she's a joy to work with and and her commitment is second to none. And she's always keeping us abreast of everything. Thank you. Also happy. As we move forward in this process, I'm excited. I appreciate it. Thank you. So, but thank you. It's She puts a lot of work into it and it does not go unnoticed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Paying notice up in Harrisburg, too. Yes. There she comes. But that's good. That's good. She's representing our district. We We coming correct. Yes, we will have a report by Director Lavenders saying. Good evening, everyone. Um The policy committee, we
018talked about the AI policy. And putting together an AI policy. We looked at and we're in the process of doing that. We looked at uh East Penn School District, um Upper State Claire School District, Bethlehem School District. So, we're going to review those and see if we can't Well, we will come up with the policy. The next thing was a cell phone policy. And that may just be a you know, updating the electronics policy, but it may be more than that. Uh we looked at Philadelphia School District for that, Norristown School District, and Derry Township School District. Cursive writing, um statewide. We were That was supposed to be That was mandated to be uh implemented in April. Correct? >> Yes, so not a necessary policy, but there are things that we are doing in the
019district. Right. Yes. So, um Anyway, Bethlehem and Philadelphia are the only ones who have a written policy. So, we'll follow up and um come up with our written policy for Chester Upland School District. And that's all I have for you. May I say something for something to say? So, the cursive writing, I don't know if you necessarily need a policy for it more so that we have to document how we are implementing the curriculum, we're shifting the curriculum. And the cell phone ban, I would just ask that before you change it, let's just wait to see what they do in Harrisburg because if you if you update the cell phone ban now and then they end up passing the bill to bill ban, then we'll have to change it again. It won't be a ban.
020It it it it it's just kind of policy around use. That is not but it's not a ban. Thank you. And um but the board docs for where the policies are currently stored, PSBA is moving off of you know, off the platform. >> Yeah, and I did just share that with the receiver. So, we just have to have a chance to talk internally um with the team. PSBA actually has a platform uh and many superintendents uh are looking at that because we get the service from PSBA around kind of looking at most of our policies. We can do some of those policies internally, but PSBA actually has services and of course we we use their membership. Yes. Um so, if we go with something separate from that, we're looking at getting services from PSBA as
021well as paying for another platform. But we just haven't had a chance to have this conversation. And there um there is a training I can share with you the board that they're doing a training on movement and how what the system looks like and all of that and how we can apply for it. But they definitely need to have a good board to love. Uh and how they're going to actually uh store all of our information, our content uh that's on the current platform. Yes. Okay, can we schedule that for one of our 5:00 training sessions? We would need to do it before Well, yeah, it'll be a conversation this week so that we can can follow up. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you. >> I have a question. Yes. >>
022About the um cell phones. Yes. But um you trying to do a dual uh an actual school policy set up for that or not? Well, we have an electronic device policy, so we don't think it needs to be a separate policy. So, we We like to Yeah, we would like to review what we have and then look at some of these other policies that we mentioned to see what would work best for our school. And then once we draft that, we will share it publicly, which should be done to get feedback uh on our policy update. I can elaborate. Both of Both of what you all said is is the due date is May what? You said it had to be done before May. >> Before July 1. You You mean the uh move from
023board docs? Yeah, before July 1st. Yeah, and the next training I believe is April 24th. And I can just send the link out for it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions on that? Uh policies? All right, we're going to have Director Betty give her statement. There's no uh curriculum reports. Oh, okay. I didn't know if you did see I knew I saw something flying around about DCIU, too. I think that was the legislative breakfast Chester Upland had with the legislators. Okay. All right, any other questions or thoughts? >> I do have a report. Okay. All right, I got you. So, there was an appointment um of Dr. Sanchez as a director of career and tech technical education. That will start July 1st. There was an approval um of a contract with the
024Center of Autism Services and Innovations to build sustainable systems to support high quality and to strengthen evidence-based practices for autism. This is supposed to be from May 1st to 2026 to June 30th of 2030. And of course they've had approvals to purchase welding equipment with new DCI uh DCTS career Delaware County Career and Technical School, Aston campus for the welding lab. And there's been a because they've been doing innovations renovations in those buildings. They're also purchasing um radiology imaging devices. There was an approval with Immaculata University for medical careers and exercise science and sports therapy where students can actually earn four credits during the 2026-2027 school year. And this is going to be funded by the Perkins grant, which is federal money. I'm not sure about ours. And then there's approval to purchase the medical
025assistance package for the health science programs, which is being funded by a supplemental equipment grant and local funding. There's also approval for the Avos Cyber Charter School for DCIU to provide special education and related services to one of the students from February 5th until the end of this school year. There was an approval with the contract with um us, Chester Upland School District, to provide TIMS support from April 6th to June 30th of 2027. And the annual legislative breakfast will be held May 15th. The theme is unfunded mandates, impact, challenges, and solutions. Kevin Busher, Chief Advocacy Officer from Pennsylvania School Boards Association, will be a guest speaker as well as Senator Tim Kearney, 26th Senatorial Senatorial District. It's I think it's 7:30 in the morning. And of course we're all invited and may need to
026be a registration or if you tell me, I'll I sent the inside the link with the legislative the registration link is inside the email with the legislative Thank you, Robert. That is all I have. Oh, no, I don't have a report currently for pupil services at this time and um charter school oversight report is forthcoming. About the TIMS, that's the Teacher Information Management System. TIMS is the Teacher Information Management System for PDE. Yes. Yeah, um so, we're getting get support from them in to in addition to what we have what we do here or is it for What is What is the support that they're providing for us there? Cuz I thought that set with our business or our control. It's listed here as a part of the business of um on our board agenda
027for last from this past from April. So, I guess my assumption is there's been conversation It's in the test Pims Yeah, it's Pims, not Tims. Okay, our Pims reporting, which is our state reporting. Oh, you you mean the agenda item? Yes, that's that's the port because there's a retirement. And we still need Pims support. There's at least 62 reports that comes out of that state reporting that has to happen. And so, this service is to give support for continuity of services. I thought you were saying Tims, but it's Pims. Something. That's why I was like Yeah. I know our teacher there >> Yeah, Pims. Okay. Okay. Thank you for clarification. Anything else? Anything else that we didn't share? Thank you. All right. If there is no other questions, meeting I'm sorry, Mr. Oh, your face
028was like I had a question. >> Because I was looking to see >> [laughter] >> Okay. Okay. All right. Um, no other questions, our meeting is adjourned. I knew you had a question. I know because you had the questions at the beginning. Yes.