001call order the July 18th meeting in Spanish Valley the board of school directors until we get a secretary install I will take uh attendance Mr Talley Mr Densel Mr Hurst Mrs Strawbridge and myself are here uh here we have Mr Dillman and uh Mr President now are joining us online uh will you please join me of the United States thank you it is unfortunate and happens too often and there's never enough time to get every degree to the Museum of our students let alone chill uh I have no idea how to stop these things from happening except that I think it's incumbent upon all of us to do everything we can to stay connected with our young people in honor of that shot event I would appreciate if we were taking moment of silence thank
002you the board welcomes all in attendance in the boardroom as well as online this is the only meeting this month so it will include deliberation of uh of issues as well as votes some of which are on the consent agenda because their routine or we have in some way discussed them before all the documents as well as minutes of past meetings are available on the district website our meetings observe the requirements of the school code legislative directive to the original act 84 Sunshine Law all subsequent amendments judicial readings and our district policies to the best of our understanding and ability that much said uh I would take a motion to approve the agenda so moved all this and papers say aye aye innovate unanimous we have to look at secretary uh could I please have
003a motion to elect Mrs Martin as secretary per temporary so moved second all on paper say aye aye that too is unanimous [Music] the agenda so I would I want to turn it over to superintendent absolutely thank you madam President we do have four additions listed in red on the superintendents report that were finalized today Elizabeth slaymaker is our new K2 emotional support teacher at Smoketown and I'll be talking a little bit about her when I introduce our new hires Janet Hintz is our new equipment manager Eugene Booth is our new Junior High Assistant football coach and Denise Martin is listed as a day-to-day substitute secretary she's been coming in and helping out Maryland more no relationship on occasion during the past week or so as our hiring process is winding down we do continue
004to fund exceptional candidates as we fulfill staffing needs to start the 22-23 school year we've got a number at the middle school Curtis silver Curtis you don't mind standing up Curtis is a non-traditional educator you may know him better by his YouTube Alter Ego Mr weather from Mr weather's World Curtis earned his bachelor's degree in meteorology and broadcast communication from Millersville as post-baccalaureate certification and secondary Earth Science Education also from owner's own he just finished up his student teaching experience at huskin middle school and we'll be returning there as this year as one of our first year science teachers so welcome back Curtis thank you I'm excited to continue working with ghms awesome Lindsay kabacion flimsy stand up please joining Curtis in the science department at the middle school is Lindsay gabachian Lindsay earned her
005BS and Middle grades education and Science and language arts from Westchester and followed that up with a master's degree in Earth and space science education from Penn State as former Ephrata middle school science teacher has made a wise decision um added to that I'm sorry I didn't know that came out sorry Dr troop I didn't mean to say that other she has a CD connection and she was part of the multi-district grant work spearheaded by CD's own Dr Dan daniker as part of the outdoor leadership networking initiative working with Stroud water Research Center and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation we are very excited to welcome her to the CV Middle School family so welcome Lindsey thank you and it was Dan Danica really inspired me to come here so I'm very very excited to be a
006part awesome Jeremy Peters another Middle School recommended candidate is Jeremy Peters this is the second time Jeremy has made it to the final round interviews and this time we were smart enough to offer him a permanent teaching position Jeremy earned his BS in secondary education social studies from Millersville University and completed his student teaching at Middle School at huskin Middle School in 2021 and then the second of his substitute positions this past year was to finish out the year here at CV there is no doubt he wants to be a Buckskin welcome Jeremy thank you happy to be here thank you Carson Miller joining Jeremy in the social studies department at the middle school is Carson Miller Carson is a coach for our high school track and field team and more more importantly a CV
007dad Carson earned his bachelor's degree from Marshall University in West Virginia as post-baccalaureate certification from Millersville University he's coming to us with experience as a job trainer for the IU and most recently as a learning support social studies special education teacher in an emotional support classroom in the school district of Lancaster we are looking forward to the positive impact he'll make as part of the huskin middle school team welcome Princeton thank you happy to be here thank you uh Catherine Zell there she is I knew she snuck in just when you thought we were done introducing new Middle School teachers we have one more for you Catherine is a effort of grad but who has spent most of her post-high school years in Maryland she shared her bachelor's degree in English in American studies from
008the University of Maryland Baltimore County and her master's degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Education she's coming back to Lancaster County with five years of experience teaching sixth grade in Baltimore City we are excited to see her impact on the middle school as the eighth grade itinerant learning support teacher welcome Catherine so don't the Middle School anybody else Rachel real good very good okay Smoketown Elementary Elizabeth sleighmaker Elizabeth comes to us with a wealth of experience after earning her bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary liberal studies with a minor in special education and exceptional education from James Madison University Elizabeth worked at philhaven as an after-school activities counselor and therapeutic support staff after earning her master's degree in teaching learning and curriculum from Drexel University she moved on to work for Berks County early intervention
009Head Start program she gained further experience as a mental health therapist a special education teacher and most recently an autistic support teacher at a reading School District we can't wait to see the positive impacts she will have working with our student in smoketown's K-2 emotional sport classroom welcome to CV Elizabeth thank you so awesome all the individuals do continue CV's tradition of Excellence okay now I'm on a side in totally unrelated note we need the community's help in stopping some trespassing and resulting damage to our softball field in soccer fields adjacent to our current middle school during the last few weeks we have instances of ATVs and four-wheelers tearing up the infield of the softball diamond and horseback Riders tearing up portions of this of the soccer field Eastland Peter police are involved so if
010you spot any trespassers please give them a call or better yet if you are one of the trespassers please stop that's all for tonight Madam president thank you I always enjoy this into the wasted my life doing and I had experienced with some of these young people correspondence she's ready to answer that's right of course do we have any correspondence good job we're real pleased with you are there any word comments on recent activities then this is the part of the meeting that we open for public comments um pending revision of our policy number 903 we're no longer required a percentage to State their address is there anyone here that would like to address the board next to our agenda um is comments from cvea are there any nothing tonight thank you okay thank you
011any other employee groups you wish to address the board if not we'll move right onto our consent agenda items a through m are there any concerns or questions before we entertain emotions I'd just like to make one passing comment on the applications for the overnight trips I'm really pleased to see the improved application it makes us understand that everything is being done properly so I will uh entertain that notion if somebody wants to do it make a motion to approve either around thank you second second how can we have a roll call please Mr Benigno Mr Talley Mr Dillman aye Mr gensel aye Mr Hurst aye Ms Trowbridge aye this girl aye so now your official just we'll let you know I can't convince him that I take names when you walk yeah [Laughter] I
012think we'll move on to our action discussion agenda uh the first we're going to uh have to make a former vote to turn Marilyn Martin into our permanent board secretary so moved second all this in favor um next uh Item B uh I guess Dr G are you doing that one the Human Resources Director of positions yep um Phyllis is going to take that one okay yeah so you have it um a contract so when we've done this in the past in some instances we've used s casbo in other instances we've used SOS in this particular case our interim person is coming from SOS this is the same agreement we had the last time that we used them so it should be you know it should be familiar to those of you who have seen
013it before and we ask for your approval because in the interim we have already had the person start she's only here part-time because her schedule will only permit that but she has already started with us and has been a huge help to us and without a director there any questions she also worked with us in the past um in other transitions so it's the same person same person and as much as this is a contract you have a roll call back um yeah I'm going to approve it first uploading the commotion I prove that we approve the temporary Personnel agreement exactly with me hi Mr Dillman hi Mr gensel aye Mr Hurst aye Ms trophage aye Mr Benigno aye scrub aye uh Mr Appleby are you next for our agreement with rise oh yeah let's
014make this short and sweet so uh this is an agreement on the board if you want it said you can make it long and boring if you want it I wouldn't do that too so this is a an agreement for the digital signage software it's actually been in use for the free version at the high school I had it in the budget for the new middle school and then with a thing they're changing this year they're getting rid of the free option so I basically had Marty mcgall who was working with me on this kind of pressure them so thankfully they gave us the high school for free for one year so that way when you look at it you'll see that it's charged for two buildings but we're only paying so that's a one-year
015deal for now so just making that aware but it's uh digital signage so that would be all the displays in the Athletics Wing as well as the displays in the hallways and collaborative areas at the middle school so but since it's new I wanted to bring it to the board who who um who monitors who sets that up and decides what day is where so the high school was the office and Athletics and at the middle school will be very similar with the administrative office so we'll set up the technical side but it's um they come up with the content and then they can distribute it so okay this is only one meeting do you want to approve tonight yeah yeah I'll make a motion but I proved uh that we approved the rise of
016limited license okay second we'll call vote please Mr Dillman all right Mr gensel aye Mr Hurst aye Ms Trowbridge aye Mr Benigno aye Mr Talley aye Mr Scruff hi thank you thank you thank you Mrs huntzinger and uh I guess Mrs Heavenly flesh should have the next two issues okay well um I might be short but I'm not going to be sweet it's probably going to be a little boring because we're going to talk about some accounting stuff uh to give you a brief background on why I'm asking you for your approval of this agreement this evening Gatsby is the acronym for governmental accounting standard Sports and I lost you guys already with that didn't I anyway they're the regulatory agency that issue standards on how school districts and other public entities are to record
017their financial transactions on their audited financial statements so they issued Gatsby number 87 which is effective for the 2021-2022 audit year and Gatsby 87 states that what we have to do is identify any and all lease agreements that we have which I think we're going to be pretty lucky on this one and then we have to run through a calculation to determine the net present value of all the future liabilities for these lease agreements and uh I think the only two lease agreements that we're looking at right now is our copier lease um we're in the fourth year of a four-year agreement there but I think the one that's going to be a little more complicated is our transportation agreement so our Auditors had recommended debt books uh they provide a service a um a
018software that we would have a one-year license for this would be the base service for them about three thousand dollars and we'd have to provide certain information into this software and it would run the calculations of all this Net Present Value uh liability for the Auditors and for the financial statements I want to run through it one year and then I don't know if that's something that depending if we don't have any real complicated leases going forward that maybe we can try to back into some of those numbers but at least the first year I think we need to so I would like your approval on that for this evening so I can move forward move forward with that my questions how do we do it currently uh it's not required courses okay it's one
019of those unfunded mandates okay really fair well I have a document I think showing my files about five pages yeah it keeps growing well yeah because uh gas B96 is going to be going into effect for the 22-23 year oh and that's identifying software agreements and we might have to do something similar there but I'm not going to worry about it right now I when we make a motion you want to you ready for motion are you ready actually promotion Okay I uh move that we approved the checkbook agreement second local vote please it's Mr gensel aye Mr Hurst aye Ms travel Bridge aye aye Mr Nina Mr Benigno aye Mr Talley aye Mr Dillman aye this is Rob aye um it's fine with us we're only half listening anyhow I knew I lost you
020after that guys [Music] so uh anyway this time of year is when I come to you and review our Banking and our Investment Services uh for the upcoming school year and what our plans are and just to kind of give you a little bit of History here not going back real far but about 18 months ago we went out for an RFP a request for proposal for a banking and Investment Services and we hadn't done that for over 10 years so we were due so I went through all of the proposals in great detail vetted them out and what we ended up doing was electing to move our investments from another organization over to Pennsylvania local government Investment Trust we use the acronym plug it for them to make it easier we've been working with
021plug it for quite a few years now we have our they invest our bond proceeds and we have our construction fund banking account with them so we're pleased with them we also elected to move all of our checking accounts over to Orrstown Bank very pleased with that transition a good response time excellent follow-up and good customer service so we're working with those as our primaries so if you may or may not have found out that the Pennsylvania School Code Section 440.1 is very restrictive of the type of Investments that school districts can use typically you can invest in treasury notes treasury bonds agencies certificates of deposit but really at the end of the day what it comes down to is all the Investments need to be properly collateralized and backed by the federal government I'm
022going to talk a little bit later on about Act 10 of 2016. I want to point out here too is that our our investment policy number 609 does coincide with the Pennsylvania School Code Section 440.1 so also when we were going through all of the banking Investments proposals what was very important to us as always is the Safety and Security of our funds so we don't look just for uh proper collateralization of all of our cash accounts and Investments we're looking for fraud and other security protection services that the banks can offer such as positive pay which could identify a fraudulent check that's being presented to the bank and if they flag it they notify us and then we work through that fortunately that has not happened yet um uh we also have other security
023features that we find very important like the multi-factor authentication when you're logging into their secure website so that you get a email or a text message just so that you can confirm your code and that they know it's you and then of course just having very very strong set of internal control uh procedures in place and just daily due diligence with our bank accounts so as I mentioned the School Code Section 440.1 is very restrictive about the types of Investments we can use and back in 2016 Act 10 was passed and it allows school districts to place their monies and other types of Investments these types of Investments include like you know commercial paper negotiable CDs bills of exchange and what that does is if you looked at our investment policy you'll see that safety
024is a primary factor for us what that does is acting Act 10 of 2016 allows for a little more risk with the anticipation of maybe a higher rate of return so that is something up to you as a school board that you need to determine which direction you want to take if you kind of go over to the next slide here too this is just a real simple screenshot where you can see the trade-off between the two types of investment options again we have not interested instituted Act 10 of 2016 that language is not incorporated into our investment policy but we feel that it is Our obligation to at least make you aware that this is an option that's out there so if any any other questions on that do you know any school districts
025that have taken advantage of this because I remember when it first came going to some well actually and as far as I am listening to what you say excuse me then too because it's not my usually my area of expertise and it was quite scary what day they were allowing school districts to do the level of risk which in some cases I thought huge well and I'll give you an example um ligate does have a portfolio that incorporates some of these Act 10 investments into it and their composition of that portfolio is as of today like 37 percent commercial paper uh 32 negotiable CDs now they also have a team of experts that are vetting out all of these Investments but it still could be a fluctuation potential loss if you're an investment principle and
026we can't react as quickly and sometimes individuals yes yeah and plinkett also told me they've got about um clients right now that are participating in some of these really yes and I think that's the more popular way to do it as opposed to doing Act 10 Investments on their own they're doing it within a pulse because there's some safety in the pool to do it that way but I'm always to do too much risk with my own money let alone someone else's stuff I agree yeah yeah and the uh difference in the basis points for the interest rate is about 25 yeah yeah so okay what is commercial paper uh stocks yeah thank you you're welcome okay so then also what I do this time of year too is I work on some pretty detailed
027uh cash flow projections for the upcoming year and I share that with our investment rep so then they can invest our monies and kind of stagger the maturities so that it's going to meet our cash needs over the year and here on the revenues slide you can see that we've got we receive about 75 to 80 of our real estate tax revenue during July August and the first week or two of September so they're going to be working on investing that money out and then the rest of the years fairly fairly consistent for the revenues if you go on to the expenses expenditures uh vary quite a bit a lot depends on like if you looked at um August and February you'll see the big yellow bars and that that represents our debt service payments
028we kind of have most of our debt service payments being made all at the same time for all the different Bond issues it just makes it a lot easier there and then also the month of September December March and June is when we pay our users our employee your share of our peasers quarterly payment which is over 2 million dollars per quarter so and again then we have other ones that have sometimes two payrolls in a in a month and that increases our cash needs too and this year I got to end on a high note I finally got to show you a slide with the interest rates going up last year it had just like plummeted right before so that's just to give you a visual on that so any questions any comments any
029thoughts there's nothing technically for you to prove yeah it's fairly consistent year after anyone who's willing to spend the whole day dealing with each numbers thanks thank you so the other presentation that we're going to do tonight is a brief update on the state budget numbers and uh we're going to do this in two pieces so we'll talk a little bit about the numbers um from the state and then what that means to us and then the second piece we'll be talking about some more policy initiatives that were passed in the school code bill so to start on the first slide this is what the Commonwealth budget looks like so it is a significant increase over where we have been running year to year but not quite as much as the governor had proposed back
030in in February and I think that's to be expected a lot of conversation about why it is a little bit higher than it has been past years I mean obviously it's an election year so I think everybody was sort of motivated to make sure both sides could agree My Hope was that they would make sure both sides could agree by June 30th that didn't happen but you know maybe one of these years we can get that backed up so we actually know these numbers before we approve our budget in June that would be helpful so you will see some different numbers if you read any news reports on this I put the whole 45.3 billion in to the this slide but there is over two billion dollars worth of uh federal covid dollars within the
031the state budget sort of of the similar to the way we put Esther funds in our budget so that's all wrapped up into the 45.3 billion so it's about a 1.3 billion increase over where we were last year again with the the coronavirus funds into the budget so the state is going to be able to put about two million dollars into their rainy day fund um that rainy day fund had been depleted and pretty low for a period of time so that's good to see that the basic Ed the bef and and SEF stand for basic education funding and then special education funding so you can see some significant numbers there 525 million on bef 100 million on SEF if you went back and looked at last year you would see that last year's bef
032was around 200 million so again significant increase in the SEF was about 50 million so we'll eventually get to a slide where I'll show you what this what it means to us but um definitely much larger numbers than than we were expecting to see uh so with this increase in the basic education funding formula we will now have about 20 percent of the total revenues that come through that formula coming into the new formula as opposed to the base that was there before so we keep chipping away at that number so that hopefully at some point in the future all of the money runs through the new formula and then one of the things that the the Commonwealth budget did last year that happened again this year was this level up supplement which basically takes
033approximately 100 bottom districts and tries to give them a little extra boost to to bring them up because they don't get as much funding as some of the others that number was about a hundred million last year so you can see it is essentially doubled from last year with special education funding the formula is a little bit different there um Adele and Sarah when they did a budget presentation for you a couple of months ago talked about the different categories so each category has a dollar threshold to it of where the students fit and then there's a multiplier assigned to it and you can see that the multipliers were moved in some cases up with category one or in other cases down to distribute that money out so you can't exactly take a a nice
034formula and just say here's what your special ed funding is going to be you have to know how many students we have in each of those categories the ready to learn funding which is a kind of ad hoc grant that sort of gets added on top uh is a 100 million dollar increase this year it was only about 20 million dollar 20 million dollars last year and then I'm going to sort of skip the pccd for a minute because we'll get into that when we get into some of the details of of the budget on the next slide you can see some of the other less significant uh funds that that hit the uh the school budgets across the Commonwealth uh ctc's early intervention and uh the the piezer's numbers aren't that much different um
035than what you've seen in the past uh the Pre-K counts number um was up it was about 25 million last year Head Start was about 5 million last year uh and um the Transportation uh formula uh actually started at a million 100 million dollar deficit but needed to be increased that is driven out by a formula as well so they had to put some more funds into that to to make it work and make the formula produce the number that it needed to the state did fund plan Con in this budget but the plan con that's funded is not for new projects it's for existing projects that are already in the pipeline so even though there's an increase there it's not something that you know districts who don't already receive funding are going to receive
036additional funding out of that line item so the next uh piece there that you see um Dr Z if you want to go to the next slide what it means for uh for CV you can see the the Commonwealth budget numbers and on the left hand side I put in the 2122 so you can see the final Commonwealth budget and then our final budget and then the two columns in the middle show you what the governor's budget looked like and what our preliminary budget looked like and then the next two columns show you what the final budget looked like and then what our final budget looks like so you when we've been going through the budget process I'd come back to you at one point and you know we had a pretty significant deficit and
037I felt pretty comfortable that there was going to be with the governor's budget numbers the way he laid them out there would be something there just the question was the number he led with was so high it was hard to tell what it would be so we went about five hundred thousand dollars more on the uh on the basic uh Ed funding line item there and actually we ended up getting closer to nine hundred thousand dollars so we are positive about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars and then if you slide down to uh the special ed uh again you know the number there was more significant um than what we uh what we had anticipated uh so we were projecting uh something to be um about 1.9 uh came in a little bit ahead
038of that so about another fifty thousand dollars there so about 400 over the two and then again um the way I did this a little bit um weird but I wanted to show you um what that other Grant uh produced uh the 327 000 and that's coming in two pieces and again I'll explain that when we get to the slide that shows that which I actually I think is the next slide so then kind of to break from the numbers and and focus on the school code and so every year when the Commonwealth passes a budget they do the Appropriations piece and then there are policy pieces that get rolled into the uh the school code in 1949 so uh that'll be act 55 for this year and um the slide the order of these
039aren't really related because there was you know if you remember last year there wasn't a lot um new that was put into the school code this year was an entirely different story and again I think sort of with the negotiations on the appropriation side and the budget numbers moving provided for an opportunity for some folks to kind of get some policy stuff at the table as well so special education funding commission has been out there for a while they are going to be required by January of 2024 to reconvene and look at the formula again and see if there are any adjustments that need to be made to that so that's just the commission we'll kind of watch that see what transpires there and we can report back to you I'm said a couple of
040times now there's this special pot of money for Safety and Security and it's really coming in two pieces so essentially 100 million for the mental health and safety portion and then another 100 million for physical Safety and Security and they sort of had it broken down in that the way each entity is going to receive is going to be for schools it's a base of a hundred thousand dollars and then an additional amount put on top of that based upon your adms so for us each of those numbers would be about another sixty three thousand dollars 63 500 so 163 500 for each which totals the 300 000 that I had on the previous slide so this was I knew we didn't know this money was coming um I think you'll see it's a reaction
041to obviously things that have been going on across the country and um so we're gonna have to sit down and come up with a plan as to how to spend the money the application for these funds will not open until August 1st and they're only going to give us 30 days to do it or 31 days to do it I'm going to be due the end of August so we'll we'll be dealing with that I would assume at the August board meeting the next slide then and again in no particular order in that same safety security theme a number of years ago the state told us we had to have a safety and security coordinator designated has to be a district level a person with District level responsibility you know from us just going through
042our uh our safety update for you last month that that's me and so now in addition to the other parameters that are in act 44 um I'm going to have to do seven hours of training annually and um on top of that there is now going to be a training required for staff annually and that's kind of broken down into two pieces two hours in each of the um categories that you see listed there and then one hour some more specific to to drills and threats and our rvi and those sorts of things so there are going to be there's going to be a process in place where folks can become providers and um I would assume that will run through pde and they'll decide you know who's going to be approved as a provider
043or not I would think it would be yeah either online or in person or both uh threat assessment teams so this has been a requirement for a couple of years now but we also must do um annual training there and ensure that information on the team gets distributed so folks know that we have a threat assessment team we actually have them in each buildings uh in each building that work with our students Safety and Security will also become part of teacher prep programs so that doesn't really relate to us and that we don't have to do anything but as the collagen and the universities are preparing our new teachers um there will be a component that they're going to have to be trained on as well and then this is sort of an odd one
044but um there there must have been some issues with nursing services to non-public schools and so there is now a requirement that if you receive state funding for nursing and House services that you must make sure you're providing service to the non-pubs to the same level that you were in the 1819 year I think what you saw with the pandemic was some districts not able to uh to keep that going forward so the next slide then talks about so the state has been and you'll see on this slide and then on the next one as well the state has been trying to come up with ideas to help with the teacher shortage so one of them is these at this out of state applicants piece that will allow for applicants coming from another state to
045receive uh comparable instructional certificates out of the Department of Ed of certain criteria are met I want to go through all the details of that but just to let you know that it's out there some Provisions with home education programs in that students can participate in other extra or co-curricular activities there's also an academic course component to that and then allowing them to be into a CT CTC or CTE programs and an interesting piece here we don't have to provide District transportation but if there is transportation operating and available to them they can choose to use it so that's a little bit different than it's been in the past the school meals that we've talked about before when Teresa was here the alternate meal threshold increased from 50 dollars to 75 dollars a debt in
046order to offer the alternate meal an interesting piece about this is this is the exact language if you remember when Teresa brought the policy to you that we got told by pde had to come out of our policy so I raised that issue and I'm waiting to hear back why we had to take it out if now we're increasing the dollar amount so hopefully we'll get an answer to that and figure out what's going on um anyone to tell Teresa because she wasn't happy about it in the first place and so I've never seen that woman unhappy she was fired up and we had followed the psba policy so you know that obviously we all thought we knew what was happening with this and to be told by Petey it was wrong was a bit
047of a head scratcher so we'll try to get an answer on that and then special education students so those turning 21 years old in the 21-22 school year can be enrolled in the 22-23 of those those parents and students need to make a decision by August 1st for that and then the last slide again some miscellaneous items so pde is actually going to be required to develop an online um course Clearinghouse that will be able to be used not only by public school students but non-pubs and and home educated students one of the bargaining chips in this whole budget development if you'd remember reading in the paper the governor was trying to put some Charter School regulations in place and he was forced to end that effort in order to get this budget passed so
048that has been put on the shelf for the time being the earned income tax credits which allow for scholarships to non-public for students to attend non-public schools got an increase of about 41 percent there were some CTC pilot programs specific to cosmetology and barber training and then a couple of committees and commissions that are going to be instituted and created going forward on Talent Recruitment and again back to trying to fill that pipeline for Teacher shortage and on education and economic competitiveness to make sure that we're doing a good job there there and there will certainly be stakeholders you know a variety of stakeholders involved in both of those efforts and then also in addition to the online course Clearinghouse say that three times fast the pde is also going to be developing a structured
049literacy support program that we're going to need to put in our professional development programs so a lot of different policy sorts of things in this particular budget this year so if you have any questions we'll try to answer them some of it's so new we haven't really been able to dive into it yet so if we don't have an answer we'll certainly get back to you questions um I I appreciate that we have a conservative projections when we do our budget would rather have it in this direction than the other but here's my my last question um in some areas we've gotten considerable increases or at least more than we anticipate I always worry about a government that gives it to you with one hand and takes you back you know with the other but
050with these increases in the bef does that mean we will fall under um that hold harmless regulations come next year's budget I wouldn't anticipate that I think what's going to happen is the the increase that a lot of it's going to depend on who the governor is right but the increase you're going to see next year everything that I have read is the increase this year is historic so the increase you're going to see next year is not going to be anything close to what we saw this year it wouldn't be as much but they can't they can't take us the other direction am I right but because of old apartments they can't lower well remember it all works on the formula now so you can actually get less one year than you got the
051previous year because it the for the way the formula functions and and we can certainly dive into some of the detail with us you know some evening when you all want to um it's not just how your numbers so we can report our numbers and our numbers go into the formula but it's really where we rank out compared to other districts across the state so where in the past when the state had a formula in place and we were able to basically take the criteria in the formula and calculate it we can't do that any longer because we know what our numbers are but we don't have any idea how everybody else's numbers are moving so the complicatedness of the formula is having things like your local effort is now part of that formula your
052number of Ells is part of that formula so there are a lot of components to it and The Lion's Share of it is still that average daily membership number that enrollment number um but if you have even if you had Rising enrollment if your enrollment was rising at a rate slower than other districts you could actually get less one year than you had the previous year I was ignorantly hoping to see us on a relationship to level up and when I didn't buy Sauce it was a zero um I was a little bit confused so I I dug a little deeper into some of the charts on the on the other graphs and finally found out why it's because we don't have a low enough poverty rate correct uh even though the reimbursement you know
053is still the same because other districts have more trouble raising taxes correct and we still restore down down funded by the state yeah yeah a function of that and a function of our relative wealth in comparison to those that's not just out of that yeah which is frustrating when we're ranked as low as we are for State funding I assume when we were ranked that low there was going to be something in it for us no we didn't get any last year for that either so now the uh the increasing funding that we get certainly will take less out of reserves than we've planned well you know the spending plan never exactly ends up at the end what it's going to look like at the at the beginning but yes our plan at this point
054would be now remember we had a couple of positions that we had to add late in the budget so this gives us a little bit of of relief now one of those we're still waiting to hear on a pccd grant for the set specialist so we'll see how that plays out but it would help us cover that and then again to your point um we did build that budget using more reserves for the 22-23 year than we've used in the past couple of years so by about four hundred thousand dollars interestingly enough um so yes we if it all played out the way we are you're projecting it to be we could use it for that um found it interesting a local news show that when the budget was passed they said now local school
055districts can do their budgets I got my tax notice in the mail who we had already died I mean it would help us people that report to the public with explain to them how this works yes it would actually make more sense if they did theirs by May 30th that way we would be able to fold any increases in yeah for June well I'm worried right now but what they might do with the primary date yeah well correct yeah that may really you mean us budgeting a lot earlier than I'm teaching my January or February well yeah because you know how it feels when we're doing it on those presidential election Years anyway it feels like we're doing it to almost too early so to even come back further is going to be going to
056be interesting okay any questions okay thank you thank you guys Christopher are you up sir yes thank you this is Christopher Peters from yes good evening I'm here to present the rebid numbers for renovation of the Old Middle School New Smoketown Elementary open up the bid comparison one that has uh really the everything's on there um the bid tab the other attachment there goes into everybody's bids all the backup their numbers so you can dig into that I'll go over the overview here um there's the original we did have that on there and the rebid number so you can see the difference um GC um the original number is 11 million 880 000 and the rebid was about a million less I will say under the GC numbers here and the electrical numbers we have
057alternates listed last week we met and discussed the alternates that we would recommend the board to proceed with along with the base bin numbers and so those are listed on there and I'll just go through those briefly in the bid tab attachment it has the other alternates that we're not accepting if you have any questions about that we can dive into those as well uh the deduct on the entry canopy the 183 000 that was a new canopy uh the front entry um it's a standalone and we've felt like that was a good savings to take because we're still over budget and that entry canopy you can build at any time if you feel like there's an e there hasn't been one there now so I felt like that was a good savings the efis
058repair that's the exterior stucco the around the building it's really a recoating it'll get a Fresh coat and patch and all that so it's a good long-term thing so you don't have to deal with any damage that is there or is pending on that that was a good price it was the lowest one I believe of of the bidders and then an additional play field multi-purpose field um for 113 000 was the other one there was a few other site ones a few other architectural ones that we did not take under the general Construction that was the biggest savings from the rebid that's about a million dollars we did do probably the most rework or difference in the drawings in the general con construction bid so uh that's that's good news there um uh HVAC
059that one went up about 482 000 uh we had no alternates there uh there weren't really many I don't think there was much at all changed in the drawings uh that was just the nature of the market uh so the one thing that's done on this spreadsheet I didn't say is that it's the actual um low bidder so ECI is the general uh Construction contract Mico mechanical is the HVAC and we're recommending them for 404 million 807 460 dollars for the plumbing uh it's SM Friday was the low bidder also no alternates uh their number was slight bit higher than the plumbing number last time one million one hundred thirty seven thousand six hundred dollars and fifty cents not sure why that's there but um electrical is low bar uh their electrical Division and here
060we have three alternates as well um because we deducted the entry canopy out on the general construction there's some lighting that was in that so that one went along with that for a small deduct additional power to the site that is power for the Christmas light display permanent site power out there rather than something being makeshift every year so that's 34 35 000 almost and then the cat6a cabling the the base bid had Cat6 and Cat 6A it's best that everything would be cat6a moving forward and the functionality would work a lot better so we're recommending to approve that as well so for low bar the number would be 5 million one hundred twenty one thousand sixty dollars and then food service a small increase from last time 528 000 for 11 400 is the
061bidder on that as well so all told it's about a savings of 383 000 uh for to do the redid is that used for anything else I mean that seems like a chunk of money to use for one week out of the year I don't know if it's used for anything well it's not because currently it's it's uh or um extension cords upon extension cords so it was an opportunity that could be used for other things um in the future I know the general can when we were talking about that one is um the community that has a lot of attendance from the community and has every year I know it does so um part of that consensus was we didn't realize that they didn't have any power that they've been running everything by extension
062cords um and I didn't know about the extension yeah so it's a lot of site work is going to be done it kind of made sense to say we have to move it and that was the big thing because of the changes to the that whole back parking area they have to move it to the front side of the parking lot so any more extension cords well and there's no because we're adding that thoroughfare also so the the entry and exit for that whole event will be easier but now you don't have like sidewalk and Cones covering up we have to use all that so they even be driving over them okay so it kind of made sense it's an investment to say and I know the kids really like that and I've come to
063yeah I know it gets great attendance but it just seems like an improval I didn't realize they were stringing a bunch of extensions yeah yeah we all had the same our eyebrows all went out and we're like oh maybe this could be a good investment yeah is that the light show yeah yeah they do other than just the holiday light show they do like shows throughout the year for TSA type stuff yeah and that's what I was asking TSA is going to use it I'm not sure once you once you know that there's a power source out there since we're focusing a lot of Versatility with some of these it adds that versatile component to that and say hey what do you want to do yeah that makes sense okay thank you yeah yeah good
064question any other questions on these numbers or the bids okay yep we're all quiet okay it's kind of one of those that is what it is um for the HVAC we'd have done a lot better that was yeah right right and there will there's opportunity to um the project moves forward we get the contractors under contract we can all sit down with them and say was there anything else that you saw and have an exercise where we can talk about any other cost-saving items out at the gate or maybe we can start with um even a small deduct change order to start the project is we did save money correct and um and I think we had an obligation to the taxpayers should at least you know put out that effort to do that although
065you know the way things should go this is already above budget and I assume that won't be the last time we'll see that happen in this project no we stopped a bit out Leola so yeah that we can expect that for that too and I think so one of the guys um I can't remember which one of you guys had mentioned that but you'll have to speak up if you want everyone to hear the 25 over budget that's pretty that's happening across the board right for construction projects rebeds all that stuff everybody is seeing 25 more it's just the way the world is right now yeah project brand new build and they saw prices that were 25 30 over what they asked me why just keep reminding myself of how much you saved on financing
066that's right we've got it so we're what's left that's in place yep any other questions will these get locked in waiting to approve this uh tonight yes yeah okay yeah this was a a choice of whether or not we make it an action so if someone wants to make that motion I can make the motion to approve the smoke towns presenters yeah nice second could we have a roll call vote please Strawbridge Valley Hi Mr gent Dylan Mr Dillman MR cancel aye Mr s hi okay shall we move forward thank you very much thank you okay our next item is uh at the request of Mr Talley and the approval of the rest of the board uh I was going to make some introductory statements but I think it's best just to let this go
067where it goes and uh I'm going to turn that the whole thing over you for now you want to make some introduction first no uh just well basically I I don't know that everyone here especially the newer board members and the people that might be listening online understand um how policy Works uh that we don't have as much control over policy as we might like uh the authorities that we work under uh I decide to check uh I'll never do that again I decided to check all of the listings in the footnotes for this policy that referred me to other policies I ended up with a list uh space and a half to solid page of all the authorities that we have to check to change any one of the this policy or the ones
068closely related of our own policy there's about a dozen that all are connected to this policy so if we change any one of those all the rest have to have to be checked uh and and these issues that we deal with uh I I had a communication earlier this year that this wasn't law and uh I think we need to understand that when either the federal government or the state government allows any of its departments or bureaus to establish regulations they have the same weight as law that includes our own policies where the the school code allows us to establish certain policies and sometimes demands that we have certain policies and they have the same weight as any law because that power is handed down from the legislature and uh it can be difficult they
069often give give us policies to pass and then don't tell us how to implement them and then at the end of the day everybody's policies are challengeable if you're enforceable when we pass them and they're challengeable now challenging them gets to be a long time consuming and sometimes expensive uh issue but uh until the challenge basically we haven't as to follow those laws so um where the funny position on this particular one because there's so much still up in the air we're in the front the early days of it and Mr Talley felt that we should review it and consider if you want to touch it or not we have a couple options but one of the interesting things I thought when I was thinking about this did anyone any read the LMP article about
070our athletic director yes and in LLP really nice article about um Title IX and it was about uh inclusion and how she felt that in her career path that Title IX helped her to get to become an athletic director in essence and it was really just an interesting interesting article from a CV perspective from her perspective um and the perspective of inclusion and I started to think about it a lot especially with the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg who I think was a Visionary an absolutely awesome just individual and had it so right in so many ways um but I didn't realize that the first woman to run a marathon was in 1967. women were barred from from running marathons because the powers that be felt that their bodies were too weak to handle the
071length the distance of a marathon until Catherine Schweitzer used her first initial learner name and ran a marathon and proved everyone wrong um you know my wife graduated from the Naval Academy and the first graduating class of women in the Naval Academy was 1980. so it wasn't that it wasn't that long ago so I take um inclusion very seriously very personal especially when you know I have two daughters myself who want to shoot for the stars and I support them issue for the stars but this is where it gets a little bit a little bit gray and one of the things I'm trying to do is try to be Forward Thinking and try to uh be ahead of the curve where I can be because when something unique or something different happens we always visigraph
072does great with this we always go what does the contract say and what does policy say first off I don't want to see an email I don't want to see a phone call I don't want anything I just want to read word for word what the policy says because that's what we go on from that perspective when it comes to to policy one two three it's not very it is lengthy it has a lot of different things in there and it references state and local law is what our federal federal and state law is what we will follow when it comes to gender identity I couldn't find any federal or state law there's things that are being proposed to the legislator such as the Republican state representative trying to pass the protective woman Sports act
073which would put this all to rest but the governor vetoed that act so we're now back at square one um I saw that the fight Administration tried to put policy through to allow transgender males females to use the locker rooms other identity so meaning I.E boys could use girls locker rooms to shower and to change Sports and and that kind of perspective and that was and that was blocked so there's a lot of noise out there at the federal state level Etc but when it comes to our district and let's just kind of put it within these when the Within These boundaries um we have a policy that references federal and state uh laws but we also reference PIAA which is a Pennsylvania inter College Scholastic Athletic Association and there is a statement about transgender
074in that so I've been doing my homework and I'm going to read it if you don't mind because it's just one sentence it says where students gender is questioned or uncertain the PIAA will accept the principles decision as to the student's gender and that's Pia good so that doesn't really reference really anything other than our school principals can decide if a male could run a woman's track or if a female can run males track Etc vice versa depending upon their their agenda identity um back in 2007 in this policy we did have language that was taken out honestly I'm not sure why probably because we referenced law and probably because we reference PIAA and it was a sentence and I'm just going to read it out loud but this is what was said in 2007.
075Conestoga Valley's School District hereby limits participation on girls interscholastic teams to female students only and participation on boys interscholastic teams to male students only and it was that sentence but work gets a little gray is what is a boy and what is a girl what is the definition of that we we didn't we did not reference one and we did not have one now you can take a look from the Precedence standpoint where a biological girl can be on the girl's name in a biological boy it could be on the boys team Etc but that's not written in the policy but the policy just says boys girls on on uh on their teams Etc Without Really listing what what that is so from a district standpoint we have no federal law we have no state
076law we have PIAA which is great but not helpful at all so we have nothing so if uh and I'm going to use practice as an example because it gets a lot of the publicity so if we have a male athlete who wants to run female track there's really nothing we can do on the Conestoga Valley School District because we go to our policy and there's nothing in our policy that says they can either do it or they cannot do it Etc so our hands are tied and we really have three options we have well actually a couple options we have option number one is do nothing and just let the policy write as it as it may because this is a special policy uh review you know I still Dr Z I still want
077to keep this on the normal policy review schedule I don't want to make this date as a revision acceptor because it's just going to be um a change or we can add I'm not interested in doing a new policy or we can add language in our policy that references gender identity and how do we and how do we want to manage it so that way we know what the expectations are and we know what we want to do if in case this does come up or may not come up not sure but if it does come up I'd rather have a policy that we all are in agreement with rather than dealing with something of this nature when it actually happens because we have nothing to fall back on responses I definitely agree that I
078like the idea of being proactive instead of reactive like let's discuss and deciding Now versus when it's happening actual happening um personal feeling I think for both safety of students and athletes and stuff I think it would be a good idea to add terminology in there or whatever such as in like biological um I think it keeps stuff fair and safe anyone else they should do all that research by the way yeah I'm sorry yeah yeah that was well presented so thanks for that when is this policy on the schedule to be looked at in two years from now in two years because you're right halfway Yeah in our five-year cycle um I will add this um in 2007 and I could be wrong about the year but I think we had a boy who's
079interested in playing field hockey and back then there was a move to establish field hockey as an important Sport and I think that's maybe where everything I don't even know how that was settled but no I it wouldn't make sense I have no memory of how we handle this um but I will say that back in that time the term transgender was a foreign language you know it had nothing to do with that because we really didn't start dealing with transgender issues issues until around 2017. for they really you know Rose to the surface um you say we have no references I found in our policies uh four references to sexual orientation that we would respect and a couple to gender identity recognize it and consider not recognizing it to be discriminator to it we
080are not consistent at all some places in our policies we only say uh we will not discriminate other places we list what the law originally had which was what race color religion National background gender but as far as law goes as I said once a court rules it becomes the law and there are specific places where the law has been interpreted to include gender identity um this is my list of all the places you would have to look to find what the law was this is all the government agencies that have a right to tell us what we have to do and what we can't do and some of them have had cases in court and some haven't and although basically I agree being proactive is really the smarter thing I don't think it is
081in this case mostly because we don't know where it's going the law can change every day just in today's paper it turns out that they have shown the rough draft of the new Title IX rights and we would be in violation so somebody passes that and then we have to because we always follow the law change our policy immediately and then a month from then in some other court case or another appeal they lose that fight and then we have to change our policy back because we always follow the law so I feel much like I did with our health and safety plan that if our policy says we will follow the law when the law tells us what we have to do that's what we do to try and decide what they're going to
082tell us to tell us to do is beyond our ability and it is unusual I don't remember of another issue where we had to deal with it this far ahead of knowing what was right and it has nothing to do with whether or not you agree or disagree uh as board members we're entitled to our own opinions but we're obligated to follow the law and quite frankly I had no idea what that is and I have seen uh explanation for some of our policies and for some of these rulings I followed very careful uh some recent uh uh initiatives that have been out there in some cases they say as long as you offer track you're not discriminating it has nothing to do with which team well a court of law is going to decide
083that not us and uh I I just should want to keep going back and forth every time it gets changed and she said I can't remember another issue that we had to deal with this far ahead of established law or a law could change so quickly and right now it can change every other day uh in today's paper there is an article on on the Title IX yet the court a court somewhere just ruled the opposite way so where is the curve we're trying to get ahead of well I mean that's also though as far as in just the same following the law like that and with a changing every day so why one day they're able to play the next they're not like so and that's why I kind of agree with Mike as
084far as hey here's our policy and until it gets flat out ironed out and last of that moment that is the law in other words once once you judge rules as of that moment that's the law right but whether it be however executive order or any it's not they're not passing a specific law yes they are but what I mean I'm saying whether it be uh an executive order or something like that that then gets challenged which has the weight of Law and I understand that but I'm saying but then it gets challenged so it puts a hold on it and then back and forth it doesn't get a hold unless a judge puts a hold on right correct and that's what we're talking about because the judge is ruling it keeps the first case
085back and forth so that becomes the law the law because of that day that becomes the law right if somebody wants to appeal it farther they first thing they have to do is have what do they call that when they they put a hold on it legally I forget it has to say like excuse me mistake yeah they put a stay on it there's another legal term too and basically that means we could let someone play today and then tomorrow we got to take them off the team right or vice versa or we didn't let them on the team and the judge rules we should have now reliable for withholding services this is a no-win situation everybody's going right 100 I agree and that's why I'm saying I think it seems more I don't know
086responsible or something to to be consistent versus flip-flopping about hey sorry you can't play today and then two days later okay you can play today oh no you can't play no matter what we do that would be the case no matter what we do if the Law changes and I may have been saturated it's not going to change week to week but it is going to change and sometimes it does change all the time and sometimes within going through the court system when uh sometimes it could change in the lower courts during any One support Jesus no matter what our policy says as the law is ruled differently it will change there's nothing we can do to stop that in just a moment Mr Benigno did you want to talk no we're not or is
087it would that be depends on the court you have uh you have Circuit Court federal circuit courts and you have state courts and courts of appeals on both levels it depends what base and they're doing their argument on I was just going to say well like I there's so much fluid in this and there's so much we don't know what's going to happen next and what is going to happen next and you said I can change I would tend to agree with Mr tally and Mr Hurst that I would rather fall back on a policy that is consistent with what we're going on right now then have to flip-flop back and forth I understand both sides of this argument and it's tough on either side but I would prefer that we would take the route
088that Mr Kelly Mr herself well if we see you don't want to have flip-flop but if we no matter what our policy says we're going to have to flip-flop well then yeah I understand that I mean in this latest one was this this one this one in today's paper was a uh U.S District Court Nashville do you I get what you're saying but we have other policies too on search and search ing students whatever the federal court says you can't search students anymore we'd have to change our policy no no I yes we would but right now that's not uh an issue that's being fought yeah every other week this is a new issue that has never been established uh I don't think there's I don't think our student searches you're going to want to
089change but um as an example yeah yeah any of our policies can be negated or added to at not of our doing but no matter what my point is you're right you'd like to have a policy to go to whatever the policy says won't matter we will still have to move back and forth according to what the courts tell us to do right I understand but I mean the policy could be just we're going to follow state federal law what do we gain but we already say that we say that no I'm saying that's all you would have to put in the policy that's right that's what we have because that's what we have to deal with right now what do we gain by putting one side or the other and I don't care which
090side by putting either side in policy what do we gain nothing because it'll be changed by the courts when they're ready and we make ourselves uh more of a target for a lawsuit if the ruling goes against us as it is now as long as we rely on stable legal uh recommendation we protect ourselves right and and I under Stan what you're saying um not arguing that I mean if you can tell me what we gain by being specific in policy I'm all for it I don't really in some ways care which way it goes because I happen to know that it's going to change right for me it's about if we're going to talk about being proactive the game for me is proactive protection I'm sorry the game for me is proactive protection yeah
091the reason I appreciated Mike's research that he did is because it puts an emphasis on the importance of particularly girls Sports women's sports and I think that's something to be protected so one of the proactive things is to say hey we're going to phone this standard because we we see you and we we want to protect that we want to protect your right to privacy we want to practice some of those other things so we're just setting a standard of protection and saying this is what we'd like to see in place and it might change and like you said we're subject to the law we have to follow the law it's no different than the mask issue that was up that caused so much contention in the community which I was a part of too
092understanding the law and how it needs to be implemented versus not um at the same time sometimes and I feel this way it also knowing our community um sometimes it also it's effective to just kind of say hey we're going to protect this this is this is a line that CV's kind of drawing this in at the moment and that's harsher language than I mean debate but it's saying like this is something we were willing to protect and then if it comes up like Mike has stated before we decide do we want to fight it or not um there is a future protection thing here um that comes along with concerns of a girls track team and then one day there is a boy there it's just similar to what happened in Hempfield and there's
093a boy there and now these girls have to adjust and all that kind of stuff and it's not taking away from the individual concerns we have for transgender kids um they deserve everything everybody else has a right to be cared for right to education all of those things um this is a a tough area because you have many for the one or one for the many and somebody has to draw a line somewhere somewhere the federal government can't draw a line they don't know what to do they're trying to protect them right at the same time and anytime they touch anything they make a mess of it we're all in agreement they're added so from a community standpoint sometimes it's a matter of I want to protect this this is worth protecting and it needs
094to have a conversation every time so let's put something in place that says this is a conversation but at the same time we're holding to this because this is worth being protected and for me that's I can't distribute with your perspective without I do think uh if I remember correcting that it's not a boy on their track team he withdrew and did not participate if I'm correct yeah I just know the initiative I think well let me ask you this um do you think it would behoove us to try to find out what role there is out there right now before we move forward is it worth it for us at least try to find out what is considered the legal standard right now yes Mr Dillman absolutely yeah I think absolutely I think regardless
095of which direction we go while I very much respect the research that you've done very much respect the research that that Mr Cali has done I don't I'm not aware that any of us are attorneys right so I think before we do anything we need to pull in counsel so we all have a good understanding of what is the actual legal landscape what are the risks where does it stand today knowing that it's very fluid right that it could change but I think we need to have a good handle on a solid basis of what are the regulations and the laws in place that affect this issue and then I guess to answer the question that you posed in terms of what we would gain by um modifying this policy regardless of how it's modified
096I think we would gain two things number one we would gain clarity in a policy rather than uh what I would view it as a bit ambiguous right now and number two I think we would gain uh a position that the board feels is best for the Conestoga Valley School District be that as it may that at a certain point in time federal law may require us to change that I don't think we should wait for federal law to dictate our course I think we should decide what we feel is best for Conestoga Valley School District and Implement that policy and until unless that violates federal law or other regulations that's what we feel is best for the direction of Conestoga Valley well do I understand what you're saying is if there is law to
097be obeyed right now that's what we should be doing but if it's as fluid as we think it might be then we use our own judgment well I think yes I think that okay we need to know what truly is the law that governs and governs it now and I think at that point we have no choice but to follow it correct if I'm understanding that correctly but I think the first step is to understand what is the true legal landscape then determine what do we feel is best for Conestoga Valley School District within those parameters okay um I I will tell you this I did hear from uh the president of hempfield's board and uh I haven't really had my conversation with him I'm not familiar with their process as of now but I
098expect to talk to him I'm always trying to let somebody else do the hard front work and then we'll fall out but they took 15 months of research uh I've been talking about with the policy yeah yeah they they did they came up with the policy they came up with uh granted contradictory legal advice but I think that's the nature of what's happening right now out there but even with that they took 15 months to look at this I don't know that we would need 15 months to do that I can't help and fill you in that 15 months we'd have to switch directions half a dozen times anyhow uh but uh how do you feel about at least stepping back to find out to educate ourselves with where where things are fun with that
099yeah I'm good with that I just don't want to write it off and just ignore it just be like oh because it changes all the time we have to obey it like Brad said I think we should set our standards and let see me know you know what our policy is going forward and then react according to law it is one of those things there was a time when that was not considered a contradictory policy right but things change and we have to change with him we have to address them so basically where we are is we will have to come up with a plan uh to inform ourselves better it was that about what we're saying yes yeah that's fine uh Phil yeah are you in line with that too we'll come up with
100some sort of schedule or uh outline as to what we need to do to get ourselves better informed does that work for all of us okay that one's smoother than I thought it might uh finance and operations are there any questions about that report curriculum and instructions Dr Mann here he was going right I'm going to come from okay um Dr Manna talked about the Middle School assistant to the assistant principal job description in that we've increased it from a 10 month to 12 month position because we are not hiring an additional halftime person so that's just the updated job description that matches the discussion that Dr Mann had with us um two months ago the induction schedule is zero for your review this is for all of our new hires regardless if they're brand
101new to the profession or just new to CV they go for five days and you'll see that on Thursday no Wednesday there's lunch with the school board so if you are available Wednesday August 10th at 12 o'clock in the high school cafeteria you are welcome to re-meet the people that we've brought to this board meetings over the last few months and we're looking I believe it's a little over 40. new people this year which is awesome um talking with my superintendents across the disc across the county they're all seeing the same number of High new hires this year we've been very fortunate we're Statewide there's a teacher shortage locked on wood we've got a great reputation and the people that are coming are excited to to join the CD family so again that's for your
102review um it's a very comprehensive orientation and induction and this year for the first time we're doing Elementary tours on that Thursday so all teachers will see all of the elementary schools not just the ones that they're assigned to yeah which is pretty cool is that just heading it up each day at the top like with Andy and Tanya and Sean oh sorry at the top of the schedule is that who's kind of heading up the team the teaming aspect so these are all teachers that are part of the team and you probably recognize some of them from different Elementary or middle schools or you know up into high school with Tanya we don't often get much recognition but there's always a treat of teachers who organize and run this orientation and uh there was
103a time when it was set up differently and you could actually go in and listen to some of the orientation presentations and it was interesting to see you know what what it is they need to add to the training they've already had it's I don't know that all schools do it it's comprehensively as they do no and this um if you are a new teacher that has not gone through induction this counts as your first part of induction and then what we do is assign a mentor to the new teacher so that's a year-long process so every month they have certain tasks that they complete with their Mentor teacher in order to get their induction certification so they can get level two after three years but again yeah CV has historically done it the right
104way and we've just made small tweaks to it it's a great um introduction to what's expected of that what we expect in classroom management what we expect in discipline and so forth so that we are consistent it's a great program something to be proud of so that that was just information only there for you on the cni report is there anything on federal funds documentation no not today uh the iupsba language chat Academy reports are mine uh I as usual I posted your psba report I would add to that that I will give credit to where credit is due uh psba was very successful in its focused advocacy during this budget period they were focusing on special ed career and technology and emotional support programs and they got considerable increases in all three of them
105so it's nice to see them be successful and I think they're focusing on a few issues was important which would lead me to believe if you were one of the people who are sent uh this survey for your priorities fill it out yeah because that's where they will put their emphasis in their advocacy so I I did mine just today uh it was sent to me without a live link know how to get in touch with them uh the other thing is also into on in your today's email you would have gotten your legislative Edition and it's very long but in the middle of it is a really good list of all the changes that are coming up in the school category just so you sort of note know what's there if you want to
106go back to your email and just scan through very similar to what uh Mississippi showed us and there's also seven coming on the federal level I mean the federal level gets involved in education you really have to hold your breath and they are looking at some sort of program to put people in classrooms where teachers shortages aren't there and it's sort of scary if you ask me I'd rather put that effort into training teachers and finding people that are willing to do that but we'll see what that turns into um is there anything from the CTC uh no I have a meeting later this month oh okay construction team update I don't know which of the three of you wants to take this Here Comes friend he's Brave yeah and the um new middle school
107project right now presently is 83 complete yeah I'm sorry it is 83 complete that's right and again I base that on the billing everything billed to date is oh yeah and that's progress billing um the uh the concentration of work right now is uh the site which consists of uh curves sidewalks and final grading um the um building an envelope which two items there two main items and that's the finished uh completion of the roofing the metal roof of the metal panels and also curtain wall and the curtain roller five stairwells that receive that the main part of the curtain wall goes in in the glazing so four of those are glazed and the framework for the fifth one is actually arrived today um the next part of the consultation work is the systems and
108the systems being the HVAC system the fire alarm system the lighting and electrical systems they are they are actually one of our one of our problems was the mechanical labor uh mid next week or I'm sorry mid last week they uh they apparently took it seriously and started to add uh labors to or and mechanics to the job and also over the weekend so this weekend they had 22 they actually had 22 men on the site or mechanics on site working on Saturday they had eight on Sunday or five on Sunday I'm sorry and and they're running presently running about eight now uh so that's hoping immensely I'm sorry but HVAC you're talking that's HVAC that's strictly HVAC yes uh electrically we we seem to be fine with Labor uh general contractor and his various
109subcontractors that goes up and down but we're trying to monitor that um and then following that is the bulk of work or or the finishes so the the ceilings the flooring uh and then the casework to follow that um the goal again is to get the educational pods a the administration area area B and parts of D which is the uh the the the kitchen and serving area um under a temporary occupancy first should say we've got carpeting in these areas right now is there yes in the educational areas yes in in area a that's a dated picture let me ask you the big question because August August is coming pretty quickly yep bus is going to pull up on the front of the school on the first day of school and kids getting off
110it is very very tight I know it's gonna be tight that's concerns me just just as a thought because if we're putting flooring down on the day before schools we got a problem again the the concentration is to have the educational area yeah uh the administration area and the serving area uh which is area D that which also consists of music and art uh is to have that in a under a temporary occupancy where the building can be occupied all right we meet again this Wednesday and go for scheduling for discussions like a regularly scheduled job conference but for those types of discussion My Philosophy is if so we can find you with that kept here and you do Food Service the serving area will be your kitchen serving area will be if the plan
111is to have that ready but not the cafeteria okay um if we're just not ready I just don't want to open up a new building no we're not ready that's my only philosophy you know I don't want to have parents coming in for the first day of school and just have it be construction zone process you just that's just me part of it will be yeah yes yes it looked horrible I just call it as it is that that's the bottom line for me if it's safe okay that's what matters just throwing up My Philosophy ugly I can live with for a little bit well and that's where a lot of our conversation and last construction team kind of went around that too and I think we're we're shifting to the to the part especially
112with crunch time and the argument can made that maybe we you know we should have been there the whole time but at this point we're getting close enough where we need regular updates the community needs regular updates any plans that are released from Rachel and her team to how things are going to go uh we need to talk about it here then release it to the public so everybody's on the same page we're on the same page too um and I've even asked for uh them to come up with kind of like a simple graphic of just a completion status educational those three pieces what did it look like just a snapshot that we can do we got babies on our website weekly so we have that too okay I've seen it whenever we get
113the information we post these exact updates yeah that this is monthly I'm saying we're getting closer we're getting closer we need to do something isn't good enough right now and I expressed that I would like to see a simple graphic done more often yeah that people can go to they can see they can go okay okay okay here we go and then everybody just stays in the now because I know we're starting to get yeah what's the plan where they're aware of the fact that it's not done and to wait two or three weeks to let them know it isn't soon and we have some community members that will think of it the day the school started where they'll be like yeah is my kid going middle school today and they'll love the ones that
114started thinking about it last year and wondering how the transition is going to go so we the best way to meet in the middle is lots of information I'm sure everyone will do their best decision like you said there's always a plan B plan to say at what point do we put plan b or c into effect because I don't want to do it the last day day before school and I think to the end of this month is kind of is that what it is I mean once we get to August that's the point where we have to make a decision and with Rachel and her team especially that's a full team that's like which is a great thing I think the response to that's going to be ready to go so I kind
115of feel like I'm speaking for everybody here but I'm just covering the things that we talked about and I'm confident I do feel confident in the process okay all right so and I I think what we all have to realize is that decision will be made by those that understand how it has to be it won't be a matter of the board has to vote uh we we Empower those people we have a we do a construction committee and we have administrators and construction Specialists who decide it won't be gee how do you want to do this it'll be this is what you need to do first you still plan to be in that first week my question is I know at one time we had the feeling we were almost in free fall as
116far as your schedule went getting farther and farther behind and we brought in another company to help us with that did that help but certainly it helped everybody in my opinion it helped everybody understand uh in depth this scheduled that's correct however that doesn't mean we haven't slipped we can we do continue to slip it uh as as we work through I mean there's a lot of components in it and it gets to be a complicated um non-moving Parts yeah a lot of moving parts so you know some move this way and some don't and and they have an ultimate effect on the well certainly on the bottom line we were going during getting farther and farther behind so much faster my question was it worth bringing this in to get this under control I
117think it was a huge help for for people to to understand where we were at the time and then how what we can do to yes to move forward the later labor shortages have just been switching here so when it was one now it's the other and well I'm having 22 over the weekend is great because at one point there was one guy on site so yeah well that's that's providing there's good management for that right still but yes that was a that was a big that was a big I got the Feeling over the course of this uh there was always somebody new to point the finger at and we needed someone to sort of bring it all together in one place and it's led to when we have discussions even about the new
118bids for Smoketown and stuff the question all comes up you know Ken how do we feel about these guys I heard a couple names that I recognized yeah and I know we had no problem with the others I'm not so sure but again there's a point where we're a lay board and that's where we have a construction committee for somebody that we rely on to pay attention because if we have a a bidder that we have reasonable uh basis for questioning whether or not that they are worthy of bringing in low bid or not we have the right to exercise that that um that choice yes and I'm expecting that the committee did that when they brought those to us there were many benefits to the rainbow process oh really let's leave it at that
119oh no no that's good that's good to know because we only saw it in terms of the dollars yeah there were certain names that that shifted around okay but now a more reliable names Rose to the top oh that's good that's another reason why it's less problem good about it then I'm feeling a little bit better I have attitude and he was yeah he was he his head wasn't looking like mine by the end of that meeting so oh well good that's good news any other questions so we've got six weeks teachers are going to move in administrators are going to move in blah blah blah all that stuff and we're going to be okay should be we ordered the tents so that should be here soon I'm just kidding no I I think and
120we have a viable Plan B is from what I understand yeah and that and that's the benefit of having Rachel and her team already communicating with public already and getting everybody kind of up to speed and kind of into that nature of what middle school is going to be like and because again I have a future middle schooler and one leaving going to high school um so there's been good solid communication to the community and so that platform's already established not only from the website standpoint but also from the one who's heading it up personally so that tied in with everything else I feel like we have a pretty solid plan and the reason why I ask is that this is our only meeting for July yeah and there are next meetings in August which
121is in the middle of August yeah next week school starts next week so if we have a Houston if we have a problem I'd like to know earlier if you don't mind absolutely and the the local municipality the the code enforcers are also want to you know we communicate day to day with them to know if there's nothing connection so that we don't have any any Blind Side hitters at the end and that doesn't mean one one won't but something we'll try to stay as proactive format as possible the most she can do is your best and we have a plan B and either way it'll work out and our kids will come back to school on time and start a good year of Education well they've talked about a lot of different things even
122like how we had to start um the coveted or two with some staggered starts I mean it seems like they're talking about all kinds of different things so um but again you trust your you try to trust your experts and they just to make it work yeah it's just starting school stressful as it is absolutely especially in the transition and we're trying to get a new building that I understand why it's delayed so don't take this badly bikes have been done well the school ended so we kind of have the whole summer to get it to where you need to we need to understand I get a wipe was it yeah that's why if it's just not ready it's not ready and I'm okay with a semester to then let's finish it right yes absolutely
123and not rush it so I'm saying it's like the Army said it is it's an adventure it is an adventure you know I know you know but like to your point about plan A B and C that's just what Rachel and the Abbott yeah the the construction side they've also got plants ID and SQL so this isn't done they've got a portable whatever so we can get occupancy so we can get it in cool although we do have to question Rachel Saturday that she took this job knowing this machine what was happening okay Rachel thing to fix this is uh yeah a board superintendent Construction she's sort of our customer no but but it's her job to deal with it is her job to deal with it it's not her job to from a construction
124standpoint I'm not constructed she's not I don't expect Brotherhood go faster because Cody's starting school go faster yeah it won't happen that's what that's yeah I know there are two aspects is the construction aspect and there's the Practical getting the kids in place there is and you want to do it in a positive learning environment absolutely um absolutely okay anything else the next is the list of school meeting dates I did notice we fixed the November dates we had that a week too soon before so if you did your calendar in advance uh I think we had it starting November 7th instead of the 14th something like that that's been fixed any questions on the calendar uh this is another time for anyone who would like to address the board is there anyone who wishes
125to do that if not we'll go to board announcements um I do want to mention that we we did have a a retreat and during that Retreat we took the opportunity to have a short executive session I know it was at the 24th again I was 27. 27 executive session any board announcements or initiatives you want to bring up do you have any other policies you want to start I've never had no policy but just my condolences to the Smith is a family for their tragic loss again um definitely a heart loss and just horrible and my sympathy to the family I I think uh there are so many issues involved in this particular uh episode of TV um and the one that the only one that I can say we have any part of
126addressing is the emotional health of our children something we have to always be aware of and we have to remember every time we start a board meeting they're the reason we're here and uh we should always be aware of that I've got a present if you don't mind I also like to say thank you to the faculty and staff that responded to the tragedy and provided just heroic support bins because we prove it so many times that it takes all of us to be that strong yes they were phenomenal um we already went over dates I would take a motion to adjourn to Executive session for personnel and student matters so moved say aye aye