001We'll call to order the Monday, April 14th meeting of the Konesoga Valley Board of School Directors. Want to welcome those of you that are here as well as those that are joining us online. This is our work session, one of two meetings per month in which we receive most of theformational presentations as well as discuss and delivery future decisions. There may be some action voting items required on timely issues or to meet timely strain guidelines. All agendas and related public documents are posted on the district website and our meetings observe all legal requirements to the best of our understanding and ability. Will you please join me to pledge to the flag? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,
002indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mrs. Martin, may we have attendance, please? We have seven directors present tonight. Mr. Gensel and Mr. Hurst are absent. We do have a quorum in place. I would note that also in in attendance is the superintendent, the board secretary, treasurer, and the administrative cabinet. I will start with Dr. Hartman. Good evening. Uh just a few comments. Uh I heard a few few comments about this prior to the meeting, but just wanted to mention we did this uh past Friday have our distinguished alumni uh event in the district where we recognized five uh alumni who were uh nominated by the nominating committee and who were uh introduced by the individuals who uh who submitted the application for them. So we had Tim Grove from the class of 1985, Dan
003Massie from the class of 1998, Dr. James Miller from the class of 1962. Uh Mr. Randy Patterson from the class of 1972. And Kim Seldom Ridge who I believe was class of 85 I believe. U I can't read my own handwriting there. 75. Sorry. So um they said 65 at the ceremony. So they added a few years to it. Uh thanks to the Ed Foundation who also this year for the first time in a few years sponsored a reception afterwards at the Lancaster Country Club. Uh it was a very nice event where family members of the of those who were nominated were able to attend and and uh enjoy the evening as well. So it was a very nice event. Also on Friday evening uh we had the culmination of our Minthon efforts at the
004high school. Uh students this year raised $11,689 uh for Minthon. It culminated with a allnighter at the high school with about 70 or 80 students Friday night who had been involved and then they had a reveal of the the amount total the next morning. Uh but they had been doing fundraising throughout the year on that. So congratulations to the high school. All the money goes to the four diamonds club with the Penn State University cancer research. So um glad to see that that we have a pretty vibrant program there. And then finally, just mention right now, probably right now as we speak, as a matter of fact, our our high school choir is uh performing the national anthem this evening uh before the Philadelphia Phillies game in Philly. So, they're out there. So, congratulations to
005them for having that opportunity to go out and uh hopefully it's on, you know, we get to see the replay of that somewhere because I think it's going on right now. I think the game starts at 7:30. So, they probably are singing, right? Getting ready to sing or singing. Can we adjourn to the game? We can. We can adjourn. We can try and live stream. But that concludes my report. Thank you. Any board comments on recent activities? The agenda. Oh, okay. I'll do that. Any board comments? Uh, last week we did have the via breakfast and uh again, Mrs. Jane Eastston who was 49 years ago the lady that established uh Via was able to join us. Would you mind sending that back this way so we can put it around? Uh at this point
006I'll take a a motion to approve the agenda. Motion to approve the agenda. Second. I had a comment. Oh, but let's finish the agenda. We'll come back to you. Okay. I have a motion on the floor. I second. All in favor say I. Any opposed? If not, we'll go back to uh board comments. Thank you. I got a chance to attend the AI meeting, at least half of it, and um it's very very interesting and amazing. And um uh one of the things that struck me is that literally in the medical field doctors might be charged with malpractice if they don't go to the AI. And um I thought, yeah, that makes sense because there was just a story of a gentleman who was given a terminal a diagnosis, absolutely nothing they could do. and
007somebody found it on AI and he's doing well. So, I find that strange because we don't sue them if they don't bring in a second opinion from another doctor, but we will if they don't go to AI. Well, maybe the medical professional. That's a possibility of where it's going. But it was it was very interesting with what the students can do. Um, and of course all the cyber security and Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. I I was there too for a little while. Um, it went way over my head very quickly, but uh the teachers seemed very enthusiastic, very much involved, and uh I don't know what we'll do to follow up with that, but I'm sure we'll we'll have plenty, you know, on on their calendar. And and again that was due to Mel Upton
008printing her name in a Yes. Yes. So Mhm. Um then we'll move on to the presentation starting with uh oh the good news from Mrs. Huner. I did excited. Do I look excited? You will after about 15 minutes. So last month I graced you with my presence and we talked about some of the highlights with um challenges that we were looking at for the 2526 budget. So now we're going to circle back and want to hit some highlights of our current year projections and then talk about some highlights and challenges with the 2526 budget and we'll just keep continuing some of the conversation there. But to start with, we had intentionally budgeted for 2425 a one, excuse me, a $1 million deficit. Um, what we found during the last nine months or so of the
009budget is that we've collected more in real estate taxes than anticipated. Some of that's from a higher collection percentage, which has been pretty steady at about 98 99% uh collection. But we also had some significant increases in our reality transfer tax. Uh we had some large uh properties that changed hands and we received a tax off of that. It looks though that with interest income we're probably going to come in under budget with that. The Federal Reserve Bank cut interest rates three times in the first half year of well in the first half of our fiscal year. Uh so we're anticipating some more cuts from the Federal Reserve but not uh for the remainder of this year at this time that from what we've heard. Then with the state budget, I think you all recall
010last that we have to have our budgets approved by June 30th of each year. Uh unfortunately we have to then make budget decisions when we don't have a state budget. Uh and that was not passed until uh July of after our budget was approved. Uh what turned out then was quite a surprise too because we received a million dollars more in state subsidy through the ready tolearn grant program than we anticipated. Uh we also uh were not aware of $107,000 um being talked about during the proposed governor's budget. Uh and that good went to helping uh offset some of the cyber costs, cyber tuition costs. Now, transportation subsidy is very similar to our spe our special education subsidy. It's a complicated formula, but it the subsidy amount is not keeping up uh proportionately to the
011increase in the cost. So, if you're not funding that subsidy, then you obviously you're not going to get your full share. So, we are coming in under budget at this point by about $345,000. For expenditures, I think we're going to be pretty close to um to budget on this. We are self-funded for our health care plan, and those costs seems to have leveled out a little bit. We've been having some significant increases over the year, but it looks like that's pretty well leveled now. Uh transportation uh and fuel costs in increased. Our energy costs increased, too. We'll be a little over budget there. uh we did have a very very cold uh winter so that accounts for some of the increases and then the cyber tuition cost um continue to increase. There was a slight
012change to the funding formula um not the funding formula the tuition rate calculation uh which saved us about $35,000 but still our numbers kept increasing. So again, we had a planned deficit of $1 million and if everything holds right now with our projections, we'll be coming in at about a $614,000 deficit for the current year. So again, two of the hot topics uh we like to point out is again our educa our special education costs. You can see that the blue bar representing the expenditures continues to increase, but the subsidy does not increase proportionately. In fact, for the 2425 numbers listed there, we've got about a $13 million gap. Our special ed numbers, however, are pretty much in line with the state as far as the percentage of our total enrollment. Uh our total the
013state has uh is reporting about 20.1% of special education and our numbers for the 23 24 year came in just under 19%. So, for the cyber tuition cost, as I mentioned, we did receive some funding, $107,000 for the current year. Nothing has been um included in the governor's proposed budget at this time for any continuation of that subsidy. Uh our enrollment numbers still continue to um to stay high. We've got currently about 86 students enrolled in the cyber tuitions. And you can see the very last line item there, we have $1.7 million budgeted next year for cyber tuition costs. Now, there is a lot of discussions going on at the moment about uh cyber reform, but we don't have any definitive action at this time, any direction. So again, for now looking into the 2526
014budget, um our real estate tax revenue um is we've had growth in the district, but we did have some large assessment appeals. So even with the large assessment appeals, we still are recognizing some growth in the district, which is certainly helping us. And then the act one index for 2526 is 4%. So we can only increase our millage rate up to the 4% um cap. uh we cannot apply for any referendum exceptions which I don't think we would have done that anyway but because we accepted the um ready tolearn adequacy supplement we could not uh apply for any um exceptions interest rates again as I mentioned last month kind of a double-edged sword um interest rates start coming down we lose that revenue but at the same time uh we are going to be looking
015at another uh bond issue in the very very near future to help continue funding the renovation projects that we have earned income taxes have leveled out. Reality transfer taxes again that's all dependent on any large property transfers. And what we're looking at with the readytolearn supplement for 2526 is there is a piece of that that is uh assured that we will receive, but there's another $1.4 million that we do not know for sure if we will receive all of that. So, we've budgeted about 50% of that amount, and I'll show that to you shortly. And we've got a couple more weeks to wait until we know what our federal funding allocations are that comes out later in the spring. Very similar to the current year, uh, expenditure. May I answer very quickly? Uh, are we
016guaranteed what we got last year? Yes. Okay. We're guaranteed what we got last year. And then they're adding us um adding another $1.4 4 million which again uh that's an unknown at this point. So with expenditures we have some very similar highlights uh as we did the current year. Uh salaries and benefits. Uh obviously that's all tied to the teacher contract. Uh we my budget numbers right now that I'll be showing you shortly do include some estimated staffing requests. Uh healthcare I mentioned this last year. Uh there is a program that was instituted through our um insurance company where we are actually getting about $500,000 a year in rebates from some of the on some of the prescriptions. So that is really uh been pretty pretty steady at $500,000. Transportation costs will increase again. Uh
017prices of buses have definitely been increasing and we're getting ready to uh look at renewing a contract as I'd mentioned once before to you and special ed uh education tuition costs for um placement of students continues to increase as well uh with more students being in need of these services and then the cost of the services are also uh increasing and then again um we have our ongoing construction projects that we have to account for as far as the debt service payments go. The next two slides are what um Ken Johnson has uh now included in our the 2526 budget. He gave you a list of about $4.5 million back in January. He's rep prioritized it and cut it down to about a total of uh $95,000. That's on the bottom of the next page.
018And again, the what's making this budget difficult like it does every year is all of the uncertainties. Uh we don't know if there's going to be cyber tuition uh reform. Uh if there is, we don't know to what amount. So currently my 2526 budget does include that full $1.7 million and I have not accounted for any uh tuition reform at this time. uh the ready tole learns uh adequacy supplement again I'm only including 50% of the new funds in the budget uh we don't know what the impact of tariffs it's going to be on any of our costs including our health care cost too and uh interest rates again we're probably looking at a total of uh during the 2526 year at least uh two additional rate cuts by the federal reserve are you considering
019uh any possible federal cuts cuts. Yeah, that would be the possib Oh, I'm sorry. Could you repeat that again? Are you considering any cuts of federal funding? No, the budget does not account for any uh federal subsidies at that point. Again, that's a total unknown. We do get about $1.6 million in federal subsidies this year. Yes, that's what's in the budget currently. Yes. So with all of that, what we have in the budget is $91 million for revenue, 95 million for expenditures, and that draws us to a $4.2 million deficit. Uh if by adding in 50% of the ready tolearn adequacy supplement, uh that $700,000 brings our deficit down to $3.5 million. But that number does not include additional 711 from what we got this year. Yes, this is with 50% of the additional revenue,
020but this number does not include millage rate increase. So if we were to I ran the Oh, sure. Include what? Millage rate increase. Correct. Mhm. And then on the next slide we do have um the mil different uh scenarios of millage rate increases and how much each of those would generate and as far as revenue. So if we were looking at a uh 3.5 or 3.0% increase we'd be getting between$ 1.5 to $2 million of additional revenue. So if we were to go with a 3% increase and 50% of that ready tolearn adequacy supplement, it would uh decrease our our deficit to about $1.3 million. So a lot again is unclear as to what we are going to receive is uh the full amount of the ready tolearn supplement or even what cyber reform will
021bring to us. uh running through a couple different scenarios though uh behind the scenes to try to make the puzzle fit. And I believe that as we uh go further along through this month and even into May uh we'll be hopefully be getting some clarity from the state as far as what we can expect in funding. So I have some other information for you what the millage rates are for the other districts and what their percentage increase was for the 2425 year. Um, but I do want to uh map out for you the timeline for for the budget. Uh, we must have u approve adopt a proposed budget by May 12th. That's the first meeting in May because we have to have 30 days between uh the adoption of the proposed budget and the approval
022adoption of the final budget. Uh, and that would be in June 16th. Now, we can continue to make changes through June. So, we're not locked into anything in particular as far as um having to make a decision now or on May 12th uh regarding a military increase, but I at least wanted to put these numbers in front of you. Um what I can do if you'd like is to come back next week um just briefly uh and show you the uh impact of a 3% or 3 and a half% millage rate increases and then also it'll provide you with more detail. I'm just giving you totals right now, but I can uh provide you with uh the detail of the revenue and expenditures and uh five-year projections to you for you as well. Any thoughts?
023Yeah. I one one question. Uh back when you were talking about um the uh assessment appeals. There's a lot of of construction going on down at Rockville. Yes. Now over the years their assessment has been lowered. Are we allowed to file? Yes. Yes. So once you're up and running, we we could request a fresh assessment. Yes, we could. Yeah. And from what I've been able to gather, the uh construction at Rockville probably is not going to make it onto our tax roles until um the 26 27 year. Uh same with some of the other construction that's down here on the corner of Greenfield Road and uh Willow Road. that probably from what I again what I've read uh those that property that construction will go on our tax rules probably the end of um next
024spring. Uh so it would affect our 2627 budget. And then um also in Ben Franklin Boulevard area where the um um Thaddius Stevens has a center there. There's a new warehouse that's going up very quickly and it will actually probably hit our roles uh this this May or June. So I have included that for next year. Must we file or are those all projects that would automatically uh start an an assessment? Good question. uh the two new projects that would be based on the assessment office uh going and assessing the value at that time. The Rockfail, that's a good question. I'm not sure. I would I probably that would be something coming from the assessment office that we didn't have to file an appeal, but we can certainly do that with some other um um
025properties if we found the need to do so. We have one large assessment appeal that we lost and um if a lot of it a lot of the reduction in their assessed value was because of uh significant vacancies. So if those vacancies were to be filled we can certainly uh contact they're switching to mixed use apartments and retail and offices right? Yes. Okay. Um additionally um do we get any funds? Are we among the 300 and some school districts to get some a little bump because we're underfunded? Yes. I don't know if you notice we have a legislator who wants all that underfunding monies. I don't think that will happen, but it was a little scary to read that. Yeah. And how are we? This year's deficit is projected to be 600. Yes. How are
026we covering that? We have about $15 million in our fund balance in the in the general fund. So we can and that was very intentional to draw that down a little bit, but especially with all of these uncertainties, yes, I really don't want to go going forward tap into any of the reserves. Do you have current TIFF numbers? You know me. Do you have current numbers for the TIFF costs? Oh yes. Last ones I have were 24 was 150,000. I'd like to keep track of it. It's about 190,000 a year now. And if I recall, we've probably uh paid or acrewed um around $600,000 in the tiff to the town. 600,000 so far. We're only in what? Year seven of out of 20 something around there. That's going to be really large till we get
02720 years. Yes. Six. How much did you say? 600,000 about 600 190 per year right now and about 600,000 in total and we're not halfway through. I have another question probably for Dan. the ready tolearn block grant and adequacy grant. Remind me what those I so I don't remember hearing about that. So the the ready and Adele correct me if I'm misspe um that well the adequacy that's what we were just referring to with the that's to make up for the underfunding that went on for years. There was the big court case. Um, and that's that's the 700,000 that you're budgeting at 50%. That's half of what we are anticip if we were to get the full adequacy adjustment. Correct. Um, so that's to make up that the regular and block block grant. Um, some
028people call it accountability block grant. That's your annual state subsidy subsidy that we just get for general use. And they've the adequacy was rolled into the account the Yes. Ready to learn blog grant starting last year if I'm correct. Right. Correct. But this isn't just preschool learning or something. That's what I'm questioning. What's ready to learn? It it pretty much is is we use it for general fun with anything instructional program. marked it for um teacher salaries specifically. Thank you. Mhm. Could you remind me again what we generate from 1 mil? Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. I I want to say 3.5 million. That that sounds about right. Yes. Uh, I know you said you would come back with a three and a 3.5. I'd like to see a 2.75 or 2.5. Also, I
029can run that scenario, too. I I I'm uh I'm a little hesitant to go up that high. it it's sort of out of our usual right increase and uh I'm not sure I'm comfortable suddenly it kicking up and we still have time uh you know that's the one benefit right now is to get better numbers better data um hopefully some more indications especially after spring break now uh as to what direction we think the state might be ending up with but again when I said that that's where I got the nod from Mr. tally also. Yeah. I I think we need to look at just what that will do by only giving us um the three the four 4% like that. I'm trying to find it. Is that where you're thinking we may have to
030raise to? So, in working through the budget, again, this is very difficult because there are so many different so many unknowns. Uh, the 1.3 million deficit that I showed you just a little while ago was based on a 3% increase. Okay? And that's understanding um um we have to balance the increase with taxpayers as well. and we're aware definitely aware of that and they're facing we're all facing a lot of uncertainties too. Thank you. Certainly I I know we're all disappointed that the governor is sort of uh it seemed as if he walked away from a cyber tuition reform, but I get the feeling he didn't want to put all of his eggs that he'd prefer to put all his eggs in one basket. is really pushy card for the uh the re the uh
031the special ed reimbursement. So Mhm. hopefully that's all that is and that's still on his menu. So the one proposal that's out there regarding cyber reform is to decrease the regular education tuition rate, cyber tuition rate down to 8,000. I don't we have no idea if that would come through or not. Uh if he that did happen and regular education was capped at $8,000, that would save us about $400,000. More so than than constantly the special ed because that's already been addressed to some extent. Yes, to some extent. Any other thoughts, ideas? And we always do um have the option um to look with some of these construction projects that if we feel that that $900,000 that's in capital right now is too strong, we can look at possibly um using some other capital reserve
032funds. again going in with all these continued renovation plans kind of like to have that as a backup plan. Any other questions or comments? Then we'll see you next week. You got it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next presentation is from Dr. Ham of special ed. Good evening. So, I have a very brief presentation for you. Uh, it's kind of 30,000 foot view of special ed, but I'm also glad to answer any specific questions you have as well. So, um, in special education, the data I wanted to just give you an overview of, uh, the students we're serving right now. So this information is based on our December one count which is the official time every year that we um we have a a count that goes to the state. So our December one
033count for this year was about 768 students receiving special education services and the students are all um identified by a disability category. What you see on the screen is the representation of those 768 students. So specific learning disability is the biggest uh disability category uh nationally at the state level and also here in the school district. That's uh pretty common. Um generally speech and language impairments happen to be second nationally and at the state level. Um for us you can see that they're actually third and autism uh has sort of jumped into second place within the school district. So that's a little bit of a an anomaly uh between us and what's happening at the state level. Um but autism even at the state level wouldn't be too far behind that. So, uh, our other
034categories where we tend to have some representation are other health impairments and emotional disturbance, um, intellectual disabilities. And then there's a number of categories on there where we have very few students represented and receiving services uh, from us as a district. So, our programming that we're providing within the school district is on the left hand side of your screen. So we provide uh learning support is our biggest area of support that we provide from a programming standpoint. Foundations is a type of learning support that just tends to be more intensive. So those top two programs there are uh our biggest area programming. We also provide life skills support, autistic support, emotional support and you can see um as a district we we have our uh own names for those programs here. We also have itinerate
035autistic support. So the difference between that and our expressions program is that our expressions program tends to be a more full-time very intensive placement. Our itinerant support tends to be uh for students with a a much um I'd say lesser need. They receive lesser services. They just have someone consulting uh and providing some support, a small amount of support. Uh we have speech and language support. We do employ seven speech therapists across the district. And then we also have programming to support students transition as they're preparing for life after high school. Now the partnerships on the other side are the way that we provide support for students um either outside of the district or sometimes just a partnership that comes into the district as well. So, we do have students who receive center-based programming. Um,
036and that's programming that could be provided by IU13, uh, locations like Newstory, uh, and we even partner with a neighboring intermediate unit for some center-based programming as well. Um, so those tend to be students that require a much more significant intensive programming than what we provide here in our public school building. We also partner with IU13 for therapeutic emotional support, which is a more intensive version of emotional support. We host one of those programs at our high school, and we also have students that go out to other school districts to receive that support. We also partner for transition services and a few odds and end things here and there um that we're just not providing within the district at this point. I think um for I haven't been here that long as you know I
037started last summer um but historically or if you've been here long enough you probably know that the shift in our services here within the district in the last 5 years has pretty profoundly moved from partnerships into programming that we provide directly. Um so our last two specialed plans under Mrs. Schaefer have really shifted and increased the programming that we provide within the school district and that's where our our in-house programming is much more extensive. So during the past school year and looking ahead to next year, some of the areas of focus have been special education compliance. So making sure that um our paperwork and our practices are really compliant with the law both at the state and federal level. So we've had a very heavy focus on that during this school year and that will
038continue next school year. Also a very heavy focus on processes and procedures. Mrs. Schaefer and I have worked to devel to develop a dashboard of um practices within the district so our teachers know here is the way we handle this specific situation. Um here's the process for it. So that's been a heavy focus this year as well as we move into next school year. Um, another focus, uh, in addition to keeping those alive will be database decision- making and supporting our teachers to make sure they have the data they need. Um, when they're looking at how our students are making progress towards their goals and if their interventions are working, we want we want them to use a databased uh, practice. So, we'll be really focusing on that next school year. Also looking at our
039in-house programming and making sure there's an there's alignment K through 12. So for example, we have autistic support classrooms at the elementary and middle level and then itinerate autistic support at the high school. We want to make sure that our practices across that program are very much aligned and that the students have um access to consistent program components as they're moving through the grade levels. So that'll be a focus of the upcoming school year as well as looking at our instructional practices within each program. And then lastly, uh we do have a special education plan that's currently in place that expires in 2026. The state hasn't released the list of those uh creating a plan for next year yet that I have seen, but I would presume we'll be on that list. So that would
040require us to establish a steering committee next fall where we'll take a look at our practices within the district. I'll certainly ask that um representatives from this group join us as well as parents, teachers, perhaps students to take a look at our practices in the district in regard to special education and then make the plan uh for the next three years. And that plan has to be approved by you um by next May. So that'll be something we'll be working on next school year. And that's all I prepared, but I'm glad to answer any questions that you have. When you look at the the mix of uh services from your first slide, uh are there any of those that you especially see growing faster than others? Um probably our autistic support program. So we have
041um at our elementary level, we have six classrooms right now. Um we have a number of students coming into school age programming out of early intervention who require that and this is the second year in a row where that um has been pretty heavy coming to us from early intervention. So students that are already identified already receiving services and transitioning to us. So um our we have lots of students we're at near capacity in our our elementary classrooms. um we have enough space for next year. Um but I just see that as a a place we're going to continue to grow. We have that support through middle school. Um we don't need to add that at the high school next year, but I would see that coming um sooner than later that we'll need to
042look at adding a high school classroom as well just as students move through. We keep hearing that uh the IU, excuse me, uh keeps warning us that uh there's a point where they will reach capacity. Uh are we prepared uh for that? Um I would say that that has happened this year. Um we have there have been several cases where we've not been able to place students. Um that has been a challenge um finding the outside placements more so than our inside placements. Um in regular communication with our IU partners so I know what areas they're struggling with. Um and those are areas that um as appropriate we're able to manage here in the school district. There are some students who really require programming outside of the district and that's where we have to explore
043some of those other partnerships. um many of the services that the IU provides, there are other partners that provide those as well. So, this school year when I've had to reach out for placements, I generally have had to reach out to multiple partners within the county and some actually outside of the county uh to access services for our students just because um it hasn't been readily available through the IU or some of the other partners. So, that has been a little bit of a challenge. Thank you. Are there any other concerns or questions? Thank you. Great. Thank you. At this point in the meeting, is anyone from the public who would like to address any of our agenda items? If not, we'll move on to our action discussion items. U Mr. McGraw. Good evening everybody.
044Thank you for having me. Uh what I have before you is a lease. Uh typically at this time of year, uh you've seen these type of agreements come through as we look to uh continue to refresh and support our 1:1. Uh the equipment contained in this lease is to support uh several computer labs and our student onetoone devices. Uh the district's um worked hard over the years to create a uh sustainable cycle. Uh so uh last year was the first year that they got completely on cycle. And what I mean by that is every first grader, every fifth grader, and every ninth grader got a device. The intention is that they would keep those through the four years of this lease program and uh return them. So they'd have them through fourth grade, get a
045new one in fifth, again through 9th grade, uh and go through till they graduate. And this allows us to um these Apple structures allow us to divide those payments and spread them out. They're continuing as of right now to provide their uh 0% APR. So there's no interest payments in this program. Uh in addition, they do offer a modest uh guaranteed buyback option that you'll see denoted there on the screen. Um we typically find that the uh thirdparty vendors provide a uh significantly higher value for the devices we do sell. Uh so all the devices we try to pull back and then sell those to uh keep replenishing and supporting this one to one. Um programwise included in this in addition to the student devices in this refresh uh we have four labs at the
046high school that would get attention this year. Uh so we'd be supporting music, uh video editing, photo editing, and aviation program as well as the middle school, uh teched lab that would all be comprised in the lease you have before you. So I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about the structure or programs or anything. So I know it's a significant investment uh that we make. Do we have any issue with lost or damaged devices? So um yes, all schools do. I I would say that with the iPads in particular, coming from a previous district that had Chromebooks, uh the device damage is is not even close. Um that and is one of the reasons that district was also looking to switch to iPads. Um this program does include uh for all of
047our student devices does include an insurance program that we are purchasing for each device. Uh what that provides is uh two breaks uh per device per year whether they're accidental or not. Um so that we're able to then process those and send it back and uh get a new device uh issued from Apple. Um so you we're uh part of this lease is paying for that program and it's been very very helpful. I mean it still takes a lot of logistics to to get the device, send it back. We have to process it through their their system that they have for it but uh it definitely helps. Uh in addition, the cases that we purchase here as part of this bundle uh from a different company called Logitech that Apple um partners with, they also
048provide uh three-year um guarantees on those. And I am I'm kind of shocked at what they will replace for us uh based off of the damage that can be sustained sometimes. Um and typically any school district you're going to see across the the nation, it's going to be your middle schoolers that have the highest incidents. That's just kind of the trend. Um and it tapers off as they get into high school and and become a little more responsible with their devices. You said uh accidental or not are they sometimes fall under the accidental the the it will cover intentional on the plan. Um it it covers the break. Uh as a as a district we have a policy uh to if we suspect intentional damage where that charge would go to the family um to
049make that determination for theirs. so that that we have uh some type of a backup. But that that is one way that this plan helps to u mitigate any rising cost due to damage or or loss devices. I assume that rarely happens. Uh negligence maybe intentional intentional. No, it it's it's it's been very very minimum. I haven't uh I haven't seen anything that wouldn't be outside the norm in the cost of doing business. I would call it for a school. Adam, this is for just grades 1, five, and nine and four years split out on the payment. I presume since this is one quarter of the students, we're also doing three other yearly payment plans. You're correct. So, this um this will flow into a uh kind of a budget cycle. So, we have multiple
050leases with Apple going on right now and each year we're we're looking to have one final payment and then three more. So, like one we would say falls off the the lease schedule and we have another one. Uh the the position that that we find ourselves in here now and and what I'm most excited about is if you can see the payment terms up there, the initial payment, the $172,000 is actually in this year's budget and was approved in last the budget for last year. So we able to buy these early uh also without currently any tariffs on on moving forward and one of the reasons we put ourselves in in a a better position by doing this. So these these prices reflect and are are guaranteed through uh uh this month uh for us
051to be able to do that. And then you can see there the actual subsequent three payments will be in August. So we did that for strategically one it will not be in next year's budgets. buying for this this year and then that provides some flexibility for us to know where our budget numbers and make sure that we can structure the next lease. So, Apple allows you to structure those payments in any way you want, but once you have uh authorized the lease, then uh you would have uh it would be subject to changes and and charges from there if we'd ever want to adjust the terms. Um so, that will put us in a good spot for uh subsequent years. And how many years will these iPads last? So are we talking more years? Yeah.
052Our typical is to do so what we'll do is we we kind of chart it out in a very very big spreadsheet and we're moving devices around. So we'll source some. So we have a lot of different movement going on to to take out older devices and kind of move them around once this cycle completely goes through. So last year was the first year. We have three more years and then we're actually on the full cycle. We'll be able to sell even more devices. But right now, we're trying to get some older generations um when the district first purchased them to get on a cycle. We have some older ones that we need to try to get rid of. So, we're going to put more back into deployment that we're going to collect some newer
053generation models and not sell from uh our rising fifth graders and rising nth graders uh and deploy those. As well as our seniors, we'll be collecting back and we'll be refreshing some devices to kindergarten that have some older ones and we'll be bringing those back on. So the goal is to always have a generation that's the newest. Our kindergarten, we can save a little bit of money by what I would call long cycling, meaning we take devices from our seniors, and we're we're always refreshing those, and that way we're taking from our seniors and getting a fifth year out of each of those, and that's another way we can uh uh save some funds. Another thing I looked at was um how we're purchasing our staff devices. So, this lease is about $300,000 less than
054last year's. And the reason is we're we have no refreshes for staff devices. So, we are looking to buy a an upgraded version for staff, but uh also change the cycle for those uh so that we'll be able to uh save some funds and I think deploy them a little more strategically. Any other questions or comments? Thank you. I guess we keep you plenty busy. Thank you very much. Dr. Hartman, would you like to present the IU budget, please? Sure. Just want to briefly mention uh this will be on the consent agenda for our next meeting. Uh but what you have uh before you is the general operating budget for two areas of the IU budget. The the core program of services and the instructional media services which are uh approved every year. the core
055program of services that that really if you think about like the uh the the professional development the uh joblike meetings that the IU provides so for example there's a superintendence group that that I meet with uh regularly there's an administrative assistance group an assistant superintendent curriculum group uh all that all the professional developments the supports they provide in school that's what's included in the core program of services uh for them and that that there's actually no direct fee for districts. Uh that comes from that component of the budget, but it still as part of the process gets has to be approved uh by the districts. And then the other component is the instructional media services, which overall is a 3.87% increase this year, but uh the portion that districts contribute to that is a 2%
056increase. So, uh, I'd be happy to answer any questions or if you want to look over it between now and our next meeting, uh, between Adele and I, we can probably answer any questions you have, if not immediately down the road. But that's the gist of what what's, uh, being shared with you to be, uh, be approved at our next meeting. It's those those two components of the IU13 budget. The increase that you spoke of looked to me to be probably salary increases and benefit increases. Was that Yes. Yeah. Any other questions or concerns? If not, this too will be in the consent agenda. The next one is the Lancaster County Academy operating budget. Uh the numbers you have on that uh one sheet summary are the only numbers that I have. Uh basically what
057happened was when we were presented the budget, uh the uh joint operating committee rejected some of it. and had some changes made. So, the full layout of that impact on the line items uh we don't have yet, but I would be glad to answer any questions. Uh one of our uh most diff excuse me most difficult challenges right now is the uh excessive cost of staying at Hack and uh trying to find another location is very difficult because we need to be on a a bus line where kids can get there easily and that that doesn't happen so easily. Uh, Crossroads has a bus uh down at Hack and when we were at Penn College on Old Fleet Pike, bus went right by. Uh, there aren't many places that uh have that uh convenience. Um,
058but we're still looking. Uh, also, you'll notice we're dipping into our fund balance this year. uh this board is very sensitive about doing that because we know how long it took. There were times when we simply did not have a fund balance and we're not anxious to you know watch that uh decrease too much. Any questions that that increased uh the seat cost is the same amount as we approved in our extension agreement with them. So that we are sticking with that Dr. Koser. You might be wondering why we have a contract between IU13 and Lancaster Menanite School. Let me explain that. Yeah. Uh, as part of our federal programs here in Kanosoka Valley, we have three non-public schools that are geographically located within our school district. Lancaster Menanite School, LCCS, and Veraritoss. And because
059they're in physically in our district, they're they have other funds that are available to them through title 2, title three, and title 4. So Lancaster Meninade School because they do have a significant number of English learners at their school, they take advantage of the title three funding that comes from the federal government to CV to the services that we agree on they would like to see happen. And so Lancaster Men recently approached us um would like to contract with the IU13 to provide some direct support to the English learners within their school entity. So this is really between those two organizations working it out. We are the approving school district and so it comes to us. It comes to our board for any approval of a service contract uh in that manner. So we wholeheartedly
060support this. They've been working on plans together and have collaborated in the past in this area. So both organizations u fully support this uh scope of work. Which schools did you say? It's it's uh it's Lancaster Menanite and which other schools? Lancaster County Christian School, LCCS and then Veritas Academy. Okay. Thank you. All right. So, this will be on consent consent agenda. Absolutely. Mrs. Huninger, you have a transportation agreement for us? Yes, I do. So, as Rob and Hum had mentioned, there's a lot of placements that uh we need to transport our special education students as well as homeless students or provide transportation for them to come to school and uh to go home. Uh Don Dixon, our director of transportation, provided me with the name of this company, um First Student, Inc. uh which
061can provide some of the supplemental uh transportation using smaller vehicles, not the cost of a large bus. So, we'd like to add this to the consent agenda for next week so we can begin using them and helping transport the kiddos. Anyone object to saving some money here? If not, we will put that on the consent agenda. Great. Thank you, Dr. Hartman. All right. So, uh there's no document to review with this. This is just a sort of a heads up uh that next week on the uh on the agenda, we will have uh the request for a calendar revision and I believe I mentioned this previously to the board. Uh just checking with our solicitor. Technically, one of our snow makeup days this year was on a act 80 day and an act 80 day
062is counts as a student day. So it counts towards your 180 days even though that was a day that students weren't going to physically come to school. Our teachers were going to be here for professional development. Um it counts as a student day. Uh when you look in the grand scheme of things. So when we had a when you have a snow makeup day on an act 80 day, it really low it lowers it reduces the number of student days that you have technically of the state. We are well above our required number of instructional hours. Uh so it's not an issue. Uh but uh speaking with our solicitor, he thought it would probably just be good to have on record. He wasn't sure whether or not uh this required a board revision or not.
063Uh but felt it couldn't hurt to put on a revision. So if anybody from the Department of Education or the state ever said, "How come when you submitted your calendar at the beginning of the year, it said you had 180 days, you only ended up having 179?" We have at least have it reflected that the board took action on that. Uh like I said it we are well above the threshold for number of instructional hours at both the elementary and the secondary level. Uh and I don't think anybody wants to come in for an extra day after after we graduate students in June. So uh we felt the best way was just to do a revision to the calendar. Is that going to require a policy change under calendar that we would now have virtual
064days? I don't believe so. I think our our recent revisions um reflect the change in the state requirement for instructional hours. We recall I think we made we made those adjustments in there. Uh and we've talked to the association to if anything what it might require is uh moving forward if we ever want to not have a 180day instructional day. Uh that would just involve anou with our teachers association because of the language in the collective bargaining agreement states specifically what what the contract days will be made up as. So Okay. Are you going to ask put this on the consent agenda? It'll be on the consent agenda. Okay. And last thing in this part of the agenda um we are allowed uh three voting delegates to the PSBA delegate assembly. Um, I think last
065year I went uh I think Diana you listened in remotely and uh Kathy, did you listen remotely last year to the delegate assembly? You don't remember? Well, but we're still allowed three, but they no longer have I don't know why. Uh they no longer have remote access. you actually have to go up to Kalahari. Uh I have gone to these for years. I would like to be there, but it's farther than I can drive myself. So in case somebody else is planning on driving up there, uh I I can't make it and I don't think anyone is excited about the idea of taking a Tuesday to drive up there. So as of right now, we're going to pass on that. Although we do have until uh the end of June in case anyone changes their
066mind. Okay. Then we will move on to uh reviewing the agenda for next week. Are there any questions or concerns about that agenda? If not, are there any public comments on any issue that someone would like to address with the board? Are there any board initiatives or announcements to be made? Yes. Sorry. Thank you. I am remembering voting online last year. Thank you. But also I thought there were three of us last year. Yep. Um, also I noticed in the Epherta paper that there's going to be a concert in Epherta uh dedicated to Gerald Wing and Roth for all of his years in music, 31 years here at CV and that's going to be in May. So yes, I saw that. I don't I don't remember Mr. Ring and Rock, but I feeling a lot
067of people do. Yep. I don't either, but I think that's a very nice gesture for them. Any other announcements from the board? If not, I will take a motion to adjourn to executive session for student discipline and personnel issues or we can sit here all night folks. Okay. I make a motion that we adjourn the meeting to go into executive session for personnel and certain personnel. All those in favor say I. Any opposed? We are returned. Thank you. That was