001please is so now all right folks let's get it while we're getting is good next up is is it i shawn ishawn from newtown good evening good evening my name is ishaan hardaway and i am a senior at council rock north as well as the president of the nhs and team captain of the speech and debate team i and my fellow peers are in full support of policy 109 which allows students in this district full access to texts and resources to attest to that i want to offer my own personal experience about how that policy has benefited me back in 2020 before my junior year i was given my summer reading list for ap english language which included the adventures of huckleberry fenn as a person of color i've often felt both underrepresented and misrepresented
002in my education i personally believe that books like huck finn use caricatures to represent racial minorities in overused damaging slurs so i took the liberty to contact my teacher and request an alternative assignment the beauty of this practice is that i was able to engage in my education in a way which created a more meaningful and supportive learning experience thanks to my alternative assignment i was able to read the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne which taught me important lessons about the risks of demonizing sexual behavior and insisting upon rigid moral structures as a student of this district and a future voter i believe we should listen to the advice of nathaniel hawthorne and be cautious when evaluating any changes amendments or additions to policy 109 in my english test this year i have learned from
003the wonderful miss morris bower the importance of symbolism and establishing culture we have discussed how in classic texts like beowulf and hamlet the limited role of women and their common status as objects symbolizes how societies view women i believe we must utilize the same cognizance of symbols when evaluating our policy if we were to restrict access to sexual homosexual racial or even violent matters i believe this would represent our district condemning and depreciating the role that that content plays in the classroom instead we as a district should continue to support education which expands students horizons encourages their curiosity and informs their role in the classroom thank you for your time thank you up is jeremy from newtown good evening just state your last name please camp jeremy camp with a k thank you sir i'd
004like to preface this by saying i am in full support of policy 109 as it is currently written i am against any change that would support this supposed opt-in policy that some of our board members have said previously um i've had the full councilwork school district education i started here at newton elementary in first grade i'm now a senior at 12 in 12th grade um a lot of people here and probably at home are questioning why i'm here um none of these policies that changes will probably affect me um given that i'm going to be going off to college next year and to answer them i have a brother who's a freshman at construct north and i'm here speaking for every student that is going to go and follow the same path that i have
005um the beauty of council rock north and the council art school district is that the curriculum is centered around open discussion we have times where we are doing rigid work you know an hour each day and then we have times where the class is completely open to whatever you want to talk about this allows students to not only hear other people but think for themselves and think about what they truly believe in to get rid of these to restrict the books that are supposed to be on this list would not only damage the open discussions that we want to have and want to encourage but also prevent teachers from actually being able to teach because these books encourage them and have helped them do their job so to get rid of these books would just
006be it would make no sense change his policy in general would make absolutely no sense we want council rock to remain the prestigious district that it is we all pride ourselves in that i pride myself on being educated here to change that and to make it so that students are solely bookwork now in a world where open discussion is becoming the norm would be foolish and it would be a disappointment to represent us to have a school board and to be able to vote for a school board as now 18 to have that happen would not only be disgraced for me in my future as a hopeful person in government but should be a disgrace for those working and supporting this change in policy thank you next up i believe it's anne marie from new
007hope anne marie from new hope murray last name possibly hi good evening are you a resident of council rock man i have in fact was a school teacher uh and taught political science so i've got a little bit background um one of the things that i'm trying to understand is whether superintendents and the boards are going to start reading 12 hours a day in order to cover the objections that may be thrown up by parents that certain books are should not be tolerated i was interested in one of the lists of books that is being purported to be um should be banned basically from and it's that kraus list that comes out of texas and i think that's one of the things that many groups who are objecting to certain books are using those lists
008well their basic policy idea is that books these are the books that should be banned books that might make students feel discomfort guilt anguish psychological distress because of race or sex i'm thinking this wonderful exhibition that you all touted for the holocaust might have fallen under this list or this policy so before a school board takes on this responsibility to pat and even a superintendent to take on the responsibility of saying because this group of mothers doesn't like a book about x y or z we're walking into a morass and i'm thinking that this really if you look at the people uh where this comes from the gentleman in texas who made his list of 850 books which i'm sure he didn't read maybe one or two but i would guess none my thinking is
009these are issues that are being used to upset local communities in order to make points for people who are running this guy is running for office in texas nobody knew his name now i even know his name mr krause so i ask you to be really careful before you wait in 30 seconds thank you [Applause] next up is chris kinsey from northampton chris kinsey from northampton good evening uh first of all all the students who spoke your parents should all be extremely proud you guys are brilliant i'd like to start by saying thank you to all the members of the board who have been working in the interests of the staff and the students of the district as opposed to focusing on interests of their own political careers and personal politics as it relates to
010the current policy 109 parents are at this time able to opt their children out if they are required to read materials the parents deem as inappropriate this seems eminently reasonable and i support the writing of official ars to address this that's the type of work the administration should be doing and that's also where this issue should end but for anyone who listened to the policy meeting last month that's not where this seems to be headed anyone who has been paying attention knows that there's been a national movement to ban center or restrict books on a wide range of subjects including but not limited to sex gender identity race and lgbtq issues here in our own community parents have bragged on social media about other groups of parents combing through all the books unquote to find
011even references to any of these topics even if the books themselves aren't about them the fact is the creep of right-wing extremist politics into schools that we've been reading about in the news seems to be coming to our own community and many of the people who wish to ban books or suppress information or marginalize anyone who isn't white or straight are the very same people who will preach about freedom but when it comes to practice they are proving to be more hypocrite than freedom fighting surely certain members of this board have already taken their marching orders and will act on those no matter what compelling argument anyone makes about why books deemed appropriate by school staff or librarians should never be censored restricted or banned this community will not stand by and allow books to
012be censored or banned here in our public schools with rampant reports of bullying racism swastika graffiti and bathrooms harassment of minorities and lgbtq students i would contend that we need more of these books not fewer what if two weeks ago at the education committee meeting one of the board members members sitting here tonight told a group of teachers and principals that if they ever tried to close schools again he would quote come after them unquote first i hope our wonderful and hard-working teachers and principals and school staff are never intimidated by this type of outrageous and bullying and threatening behavior but the way this board has been operating lately including forcing out a competent compassionate and effective superintendent it tells me that you aren't sufficiently intimidated by us the voting public because it's us who
013will be coming after you at the polls or through litigation if need be if you continue down this road of extreme right-wing ideology this community is better than that and we will and 30 seconds this community is better than that and while we failed to truly show that at the polls in november there are more of us than there are of you or the people who we let put you in those seats we will not let our schools become petri dishes for open racism bullying bigotry or fast fascist ideology thank you [Applause] next up is stephanie from wrightsdown i would just ask you to state your last name please thank you you mean you can't read or pronounce my last name barrier terrace barrier terrace is not an easy one i'm stephanie barriotaris i'm from
014wrightstown i have three children in the council rock school district and i'm here to speak in support of policy 109. i'm here to say that if our board ever wished to change this policy that you should consider the impact that it will have for our children who see themselves in those books which might be under discussion and perhaps you know this bit of history from reading jane elliott was a teacher third grade teacher in a town in rural iowa the year was 1968 and martin luther king had been shot the night before she walked into her classroom that morning and thought carefully how do i deal with this with my third graders her statement to them was how do you think it would feel to be a black boy or girl all of the children
015were white it would be hard to know wouldn't it unless we actually experienced discrimination for ourselves would you like to find out and she had nods of agreement from her third graders elliot separated the third graders she separated them based on blue eyes brown eyes and green eyes and she told the children that the brown eyed students were smarter with a very clear explanation the children with brown eyes uh were smarter because it's determined by melatonin so she separated the children and uh the children uh with brown eyes were able to get more recessed time they were given more appreciation nods they were able to um pick the books first you get the idea and so uh elliot said in her book that the change was instant uh that the children with brown eyes were
016more confident and also more condescending that they hurled insults at blue-eyed kids and then suddenly the blue-eyed kids started making mistakes mistakes that they hadn't before and she concluded that uh it was based on their behavior timid despondent losing confidence and so this historical event i'm sure is known by many of you and i'm sure it's known by educators across the country uh because it's telling 30 seconds that people judging others on their skin color their gender their religion or sexual orientation is indecent and it's not fair and i speak tonight in honor of the three young people who were lost in our school district in 2007 and to my son's friend breslin who i lost four years ago and i say that with all the emotion that you hear in my voice this matters
017to our children [Applause] next up is teddy shafer from newtown teddy shaffer from newtown [Applause] good evening my name is teddy schaefer and i'm a senior at council rock north i'm here to talk about policy 109 a policy which i support currently as it's written as it stated however at the policy committee held on march 14th certain sentiments were given by board members that i failed to speak on as a queer and trans student in this district and community when i was in middle school i had a very difficult time with my gender and sexuality those of you who listened to me at that policy meeting bear with me it's going to be basically the same reiteration but for those of you who haven't um this does deal with difficult topics regarding mental health so
018you don't like that stuff um don't listen um i had a lot of internalized issues with who i was having thoughts such as i'm not a good person because i'm queer or it would be so much easier for everyone else if i weren't here and even now i still wish that i wasn't transgender transgender standing right here currently greatly regret ever being trans not that there's any option in it but the fact i have to speak on this is difficult um i wish every day that i could just be a regular cisgender boy but it's not reality and to be honest i found more comfort in books that showed people like me more than anything else second to the support of my friends representation is so so important and critical in literature specifically for lgbtq
019students there's so much hatred and homophobia within our district alone that students need to know it's okay to be who they are we don't realize it but students are being called slurs within our buildings alone at the high school level it took a friend of mine a month to get a slur written off or a slur scrubbed off of the bathroom wall they went to the front office a teacher and the principal and again it took a whole month to get that written off or sorry rubbed off at the middle school lgbtq plus students are being barked at in the hallways that is harassment there's nothing being done about it and that is a huge issue so rather than focusing on time our time on potentially restricting or um censoring our presentation in our books
020we should spend more time actually addressing the issues that are going on within our school that are harming those who need this representation [Applause] so again to reiterate queer representation and representation just in general is extremely important and i hope you take that of the just little grain of salt or something i don't know thank you next up is pj donovan from newtown good evening my name is pj donovan i'm a junior at council rock north high school i've come to speak to you tonight on the basis of policy 109 let me state that i agree with the policy as written but i completely disagree with any possible revision or misuse of this policy as i believe it limits students from accessing beneficial material i am so lucky to go to school in this district
021a district that has always done its very best to provide students with content and tools necessary to grow and learn about the world around them and themselves i do understand some families may feel some content is not appropriate for their student to access and while that is completely acceptable what i feel is inappropriate is to allow those restrictions to extend to other students as a revision of this policy would entail as a student myself i have always valued exposing myself to viewpoints and experiences that differ from my own whether that be through literature found at school or other media if students and families make the decision to limit the content to which they expose themselves they are free to do so under the current policy however censoring the content for other students like myself who
022only want to use it to enhance their education would be unjust i believe the decision regarding the subject matter students are able to access should be made by the students and their family and and those alone it is because decisions like this vary so greatly from student to student and family to family that it is not right to censor materials for all students but to give them the freedom to do so as they see fit going to school in this district has taught me so much about how to learn and grow with the world around me and i sincerely hope that we continue to extend that opportunity to the students in this district with the necessary schools by tools by not revising policy 109 and with that thank you so much for your time and
023have a great night thank you [Applause] next up is chuck brisken chuck just state what township you're from please thank you is that right briskin b-r-i-s-k-i from newtown thank you uh good evening my name is chuck briskin i am the senior rabbi of shirami congregation in newtown and a member of the newtown yardley ministerium an interfaith clergy group and i'm also a parent of two sons at council rock north including one who spoke earlier i am very much in support of policy 109 and i also want to thank my son for bringing this to my attention it is vital that the development of administrative regulations remain in the hands of our expert educators and credential librarians it is also vital to codify the existing practice which currently allows the parents or guardians to determine what
024they deem appropriate or not for their children to read i do agree with the american libraries association assertion that it is it is a parent's responsibility to guide their own children's use of school libraries and resources not yours not mine i want to share a brief lesson about jews and our relationship with books the talmud is a medieval code of jewish law compiled about 1500 years ago that continues to guide and govern traditional jews today each page contains a central text and surrounding it you will find different opinions from many rabbis who actually wrote at different times in history over the course of several hundred years when the talmud was codified all opinions including and especially dissenting opinions were included any person who reads a page of talmud has access to a dizzying array of
025different viewpoints some of which may we may agree with and others not the point is that no viewpoints are being censored all are included on the page it would be unjust to limit access to books our children need to discover books that may help them better understand themselves as we've heard from many of our bright and brilliant students tonight they need to discover books in which they see a version of themselves limiting access to these limiting access to these books to all students because one of us finds its themes uncomfortable objectionable because of our own personal viewpoints is undemocratic and it violates so many of our core values so please [Applause] please adopt policy 109 as written without changes to codify this practice and please leave the administration of our school libraries in the hands
026of our trained librarians and educators thank you thank you [Applause] next up is lisa from washington crossing lisa i'm just going to ask you to state your last name for the record place when you get up here thanks lisa danella from washington crossing i came here tonight to be able to voice my support for the library policy 109 as a college professor whose specialty is in the importance of diversity in children's toys storybooks and media in terms of how that makes children feel about themselves their happiness their wellness as well as their academic achievement and as the mom of two children and i'm very happy with the education that they've received here in council rock this far i had prepared statements and i have to say that there is nothing that i can say with
027all of those credentials that is going to have anything to add to what our students have said here tonight so i'm going to i'm going to implore each of you to be able to really think about what the kids have said to you tonight and to be able to consider their support of 109. thank you thank you [Applause] nick the final speaker will be ellen schneider from new town township ellen schneider oh thank you my name is ellen snyder i am a supervisor of newtown township i thought i would come up and sort of approach this in a different fashion when i was a kid i loved to read science fiction was my journey into another world it made me want to think about being a scientist or an even an astronaut from there i
028went on to history books where i learned about atrocities of war and then i learned about the founding of our nation after that biographies stephen hawking abe lincoln and uh harriet tubman uh all of those benefited me in so many ways so my point is censoring this or any other kind of books is wrong and especially the ones that are being talked about we prepare future community community leaders in council rock when talking about race gender or sexual identity we show our kids that we are not afraid of any topic that they might read in our library it's better to read it in the library than learning about it somewhere else knowledge [Applause] knowledge is power and ignorance they say is bliss but i don't think so i think ignorance is just plain ignorance and
029so please don't censor our books in our school system my kids went through council rock and they are great citizens and that's what we provide to our community is great citizens thank you for listening thank you just for clarification valerie from newtown you did not make a check is this an agenda item valerie is it michael okay i'll check i'll move you over thank you that's it for public for the first session second half will uh occur later in the in the agenda thank you mr sallin dr thorbert i may um we have a large group of students in the audience who spoke out on policy 109 if the board will indulge me it was a consent agenda item so we aren't anticipating changes to it if the board would indulge me can we move
030that up because i think some of these students would probably like to get back to studying or preparing for disney or any anything else um i i don't see this as being controversial and that if the board will indulge me we could do this consent agenda fairly quickly and and show you we have no intentions of changing policy 109 if that if if that's okay with the board that's fine with me we'll move down to policy committee number b or letter b dr thorbert you want to sure sure i move to approve the consent agenda item b as contained to the attachment to this agenda have a second mr oldago any objections any further comment from the board i'll just note that it's exactly as we discussed at the policy meeting and it is dr
031elliott's and the administration's exact words so the attachments in the agenda online mr frederickson do you happen to have that available if i didn't lose it in the power outage i have it if you need it matt dr thor you want to walk through this or just for the audience edification sure um look we had a lot of people speak about it um the section in red is the uh change from the strikethrough below it this reflects every other policy we have done where the superintendent or their designee shall set forth procedures and preparing our guardian to request student receive an exemption and to respond to complaints that's that is literally the entire policy right there um and dr elliott if you want you may want to comment you asked for this and and and
032the administration wrote it so do you see any problems with this whatsoever i do not but i do want to clarify i see a spelling error it should be set fourth instead of set four in the first line so mr frederickson if we want to make that changes i'm like that doesn't make sense the way it's written more in there too we'll get that map uh this i i do not see an issue you know as as this policy this revision that we brought to the board for approval states uh working on administrative regulations to provide some clarity for folks which we are currently finalizing and we'll have those uh ready in the very near future okay thank you i i thought we we had a wide-ranging conversation and and in the end we threaded
033the needle very well and and we arrived right back where we started which was your recommendation so um that's it i mean okay anybody else any objections are hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary to mark that with unanimous consent thank you i appreciate it fellow board members thanks absolutely dr thor would you mind taking h approval of many many minutes please certainly let me catch up here i moved to approve the minutes of the meeting of the board of school directors held on march 3rd 2022. a second please mr doggo with the second any comments from the board any objections hearing none oh yes the secretary mark that unanimous consent from there we're going to go to items discussion draft boards meeting schedule dr elliot please mr solomon so uh earlier uh several
034weeks ago i socialized with the board a draft that is attached here for our board meeting schedule for the 22-23 school year typically we will look at this schedule as a board at around this time of the year and then have in our may meeting a vote to approve this schedule so that we can get it communicated to our community so this is a discussion item this evening just to see if any board members have any questions or comments about this draft schedule as we prepare the final schedule for a board's approval thank you thank you dr any comment from the board i know for me every thursday counts every thursday's here so whatever way we move things and we've done it in the past we will move accordingly so so um i know we
035talked about what would be the right sequence of uh meetings in order to arrive at the board meeting or committee meetings so to have the last thursday of the month would make more sense than having the third thursday of the month that would make more sense the challenge is we would not have our solicitor on the fourth thursday of the month because he is uh has a prior commitment on the fourth thursday every month which is why we went with the third yeah mr oldago please i'll just say thank you for it was recommended by uh our new finance director to uh switch to the finance meetings to the the week prior to the board meeting which actually doing it this other way and waiting three weeks has shown to to show some problems so
036it was a good suggestion i just want to say thank you okay anybody else okay good to go yes thank you all right from there we'll move to letter b uh mr harris you're going to produce a overview of the preliminary budget presentation and if you don't mind i'm going to remove this head and i'll go over that way if you don't mind certainly and which button new here first time it's just you know all right thank you uh ladies and gentlemen the board members of the community thank you for the opportunity to talk about the general fund budget we have been spending a majority of our time talking about issues other than finance we have transportation on the agenda this evening we talk about food service and we are we are taking a deeper
037dive into the expected material for the general fund budget uh dr elliott is here to uh to provide support and comment and there's there will be a portion that will turn over to her to discuss just a first overview there's we have a budget preparation timeline i won't go into detail here but we are in the the mid portion here we've done our revisions to revenue and expense now we're talking about our large cost revisions we are talking about the anticipation of attrition retirements changes and positions benefit changes any new initiatives that the the board is currently considering and we are seeking direction for a tax increase contemplation which could include a zero percent tax increase i want to make sure that the board is aware that that is in within their rights to do
038so uh we are looking for directions so that we can fulfill our legal legal obligations to get to may with may 5th with a proposed final budget we need to adopt that legally and then in june we june 16th we have a meeting scheduled to adopt our final budget which at that time the board would would be obligated to enact a tax levy any questions about the timeline components of the council rock budget uh from an accounting perspective we we've put them into three major buckets there is a fourth bucket that we we don't necessarily use all the time which is the 9000 series which is any other uh any other revenues not assigned to the six seven or eight thousand series but the six thousands are local revenue real estate tax levy or eit's
039occupational taxes those are the lion's share of that that area the 7000's are state revenue which we have our state subsidy you'll see the acronym bef or sef that's our basic education subsidy and our special education subsidy which is a state allocation we usually don't find out about those until after the board passes the budget because harrisburg does not have a contractual obligation to pass the budget by june 30th we also have state grants and social security appeasers reimbursement where we we actually receive reimbursement on the money that we actually spend on salaries and benefits and then finally the eight thousands of federal revenue uh the access reimbursement is a large part of that title one title two title three title four at our last finance meeting we i gave you an overview of this
040budget and you'll see some of those numbers that may seem familiar to you and i hope that you've you've taken the time to digest those revenue revenue budget numbers tonight as as a way of a visual we have this is our current picture we have about 77 percent of those the six thousands of of the total general fund budget lives in the six thousands so most of it is eit's or real estate income real estate taxes we do have uh our smallest portion which is the small sliver up top there which is the revenue from federal sources and then the next largest portion about 20 to 22 percent is from state sources i do not anticipate a admit a significant shift in what this pie looks like the the the contemplation of all the revenue
041that we've we've talked about in previous meetings still stays on the line the piece that remains to be seen are are the real estate tax levy that the board needs to consider as well as the finalization of the state budget which would tell us our special ed and basic ad numbers for next year uh the components of the expense budget is far more meticulous and you see expense reports every month based in these these nine areas one hundreds of salary expenses wages we pay folks uh extra duty contracts uh some of the stipends for for coaching and overtime for staff 200 are the benefits across the board your retirement social security medical expenses 300 or purchase services from contractors outside so that's our substitute cost our our contracts of the bucks county intermediate unit are
042legal and some contractors that are not captured in other areas four hundreds of the property services and this is where we hope we don't have a whole lot of snow removal so we can buy dump trucks next year uh mr taylor snow removal utilities et cetera 500's our tuition and transportation in the 500 you also have captured our charter school costs our tuition to to to non-public schools that that are on agreements with the district as well as uh as uh special ed special ed freaking me out of district special education other than the bciu 600s the books the pens the small technology the things that really make make things go in our classrooms uh the equipment our vans trucks large computers or large machinery in the 800s is a very very small number dues
043and fees that are otherwise not realized in any other area and the nine thousands is the catch-all if we can't capture it in one's one hundred three eight hundreds we jam it into the nine hundreds and you will find that that's our debt service our interest and other miscellaneous expenses our annual operating spen expenses no surprise 46 of our operating budget is for personnel and salaries another approximate quarter of our budget is in personal services which are the the benefits that leaves approximately 25 percent for everything else that's we call that the 300s to the 900s and this cabinet has gone poured over line by line by line i i can't tell you how much detail that this cabinet has has given to me to show that there that these expenses are substantiated in the
044budget and there are some some of these expenses that are contemplated that we hope we never have to incur there are tuition expenses we need to contemplate there are additional overtime charges that we need to contemplate there are if we get an influx of students we are we are receiving receiving registrations now for students out of from out of country so we need to make sure we have staff and and materials to support those students so there there are some contingencies built into this budget but you see the lion's share of of of any school district's budget is anywhere from 75 to 85 percent of its budget in in the in the people who do the work so uh we can dive into those later and i can give you uh more detail as we
045get closer to the adoption of the proposed final budget questions about this slide i'll pause i've said a lot of words am i blowing by anybody in the audience okay how do we pay for things we pay for things generally through the general fund that is funded annually year to year these are annual expenses costs that we are contemplating whether it be anything in the 100s or 900s but i want to be to underscore that that budget lives from july 1 to june 30 of every year so when july june 30th comes and goes the budget is then closed the expenses that we've incurred from that period that the proper accounting functions we can take a two month look forward if we get any bills of in expenses we've incurred say april may or june
046and pay them in july or august we can back fund them into the the prior year but if we write a purchase order for july 1st going forward we cannot charge it back to the previous year we have capital reserve fund we have a debt service fund and internal service fund these are funds over multiple years they pay our medical expenses they pay our debt service and they pay our projects these are things that live outside of the general fund so mr taylor is responsible for making sure that the construction projects are are moving on time my job is to make sure that the capital reserve fund is properly funded so that checks can go out outside of the general fund i'll pause here for questions the impacts on our budget process and i put
047it in capital letters costs everything costs something the district pays for for goods and services just like any other business our forecasted increases this year the things that keep me up at night that i don't know which are which are final until the board says yay or nay are our charter school costs our peasers rate our utility cost mr taylor has told us that we're forecasting a six to seven percent increase in gas i just got my notice from pico that electricity is going up at my home about 13 water and sewer we we've had to make budgetary transfers because of increases that those municipal municipal authorities have made we end up paying that bill we want running water we want flushing toilets we want to make sure that those bills are paid we have
048to contemplate those costs in our future budgets we also have contractual agreements transportation on the agenda tonight custodial substitute teachers maintenance agreements labor costs and our software and licensing those are annual costs that make this district as excellent as it is and i i have to say i was really impressed by the students and their eloquence uh when when they were speaking passionately about about subjects i i don't think i was that eloquent when i was that young so these are these are the things that are are impacting the the contemplation of building the big puzzle that is the general fund budget additional impacts and this is this is rare we're in a very rare time because 10 15 years ago we were always talking about medical increases medical increases medical increases and i remember
049at starting as a teacher in in the late 90s i i had medical insurance fully paid for by the board and now we find ourselves where their cost shares based on our labor agreements and even those are becoming prohibitively expensive but we're anticipating flat flat to no increase to a push to no increase on medical insurance for next year and i will say i have to call out dr lambert thank you so much your your special education costs are nominally increased in in this budget that's one one cost area that can be incredibly volatile but he and his team have been uh done yeoman's work to make sure that those costs are captured it's to be determined the reason why i don't have expenses for you that are that are actionable is because we're still
050waiting on some pieces collective bargaining transportation we have our applications that come out for our insurance renewals that's our general reliability property cyber insurance our energy energy agreements there are caps that are built into those agreements that we are notified so that we can build our budgets for next year but some of those are still to be determined because cpi is has hit seven eight nine percent and those agreements are triggered by some of those those navigations in in the economic indicators we also are contemplating additional staff based on enrollment if we have suddenly have an influx of third graders at a particular school we're going to need an at to add a teacher or at the very least contemplate adding instructional assistance we have we still have to we still have time to contemplate
051fully our retirements the deadline for for most was it was april 1st we're still shaking out some of the some of the final numbers on those and again we've been giving the board some some ideas on the initiatives that we want to have uh for for now for for this year for next year into the future and i want to turn it over to dr elliott to talk about some of those initiatives thank you mr harris so when we talk about an initiative we think about as a district we're always focused on continuous improvement we want to continue to figure out ways that we can be better for the students and the families that we serve and we do that through different initiatives that may or may not cost money sometimes they're one-time costs sometimes
052they're costs that are going to have an impact on on future budget years and as we have done in the past when we plan and we budget we're always budgeting ahead we're always thinking five years down the line how do we prepare for what may what we may need to be doing five years ahead of us so we always are thinking ahead with our planning and not just looking at the current year that's in front of us when we think about initiatives and we think about this budget planning so that enables us to really be able to budget fiscally soundly and make sure that we're using uh the funds that we have to the best of our our ability to be the best we can for our kids so some of the initiatives that we're
053contemplating and some of these are things that we had started talking about before the pandemic and and we had to put on a hold and so they are kind of in a waiting pattern at the moment just to highlight some of those initiatives and some have been discussed at different committee meetings in the past so the fifth special at the elementary level really is a focus on steam and it's the target of this special is about giving access to all of our elementary students to steam and to steam concepts so we know and as you heard tonight from the csos the steam fields are some of the fastest growing and highest demand in the workforce today and so we want to make sure our students have access to those those skills and concepts so that
054they are prepared and have that ability to choose those those fields if they if they do so the uh middle school advisory period many people know our middle school as having an r.a or a resource activity period this is an initiative in particular that has a zero cost but again it is an initiative it's something that is helping us when we think about learning loss and we think about helping our our middle schoolers shifting this ra period creates opportunities for us to have second chance learning for those students that before they go home at the end of the day and have to do their homework independently to check in with the teacher if they didn't quite understand something or for a teacher to contact a student and say you need to come see me before
055you go home today because i want to make sure you understood this concept we discussed in class today um the high school schedule and start times is is one particular initiative that we had looked at before the pandemic we had done a lot of exploration and research and really looked at what are some different structures that we can put in place at the high school level to increase student choice and to focus on student health and wellness and that isn't an initiative that you know we'd like to consider uh contemplating in future years curriculum refresh and updates are something that we're always looking at and and in particular there are certain areas of the curriculum that when we do an update in that area it is more expensive than others a perfect example of that
056is elementary language arts when you're purchasing an elementary language arts program it's a very comprehensive program with lots of parts because of reading writing speaking and listening and all the components with word study that go with language art so it's always a hefty price tag so that's something that we have to contemplate as we look at future budgets instructional technology we continue to look at ways to improve and refresh the technology that we have whether it's refreshing the interactive boards that we have in our classrooms the chromebooks that our students use our infrastructure all of those pieces are important to our our success as a district and our systems organization we also look at initiatives that support different equipment needs such as vans and and tow trucks and vehicles and small projects that are important
057to maintaining our facilities staffing is sometimes an initiative where we need to look at particular additions in staffing one example of this might be our increased number of students as english learners in our district and the need to be able to provide more support for those students with this influx of students that we've received recently and then finally initiative that we contemplate is capital planning as mr harris talked about looking at our facilities and other larger product projects that we want to make sure we're budgeting for out into the future thank you dr elliot we did a fiscal analysis to project our future costs and in our synopsis software we have a look back of actual spend in these cost areas from 2015 all the way to 2021. we compare that with the projected spend
058that's in the approved budget for this year and then we base our future projections on any of the following a fixed percentage growth rate which could be a compound annual growth rate cagr cpi consumer price increase index or any contractual agreements we also have a defined schedule which would be something like our debt service schedule which varies from year to year depending on the principal and interest that we have if we take on new newer additional debt or if we if we refinance and additional grant revenue for instance for instance we have our s or arp money that will sunset in a year we need to make sure that those cos those those revenues are removed from the budget in in future years so we leave that on a defined schedule and then again we
059have the staffing we do budget projections based on the current staff that we have now and we try to to to account for the about average value of the position and any attrition or additions that we may anticipate need of salaries in the projections are tied to benefit locations so the requisite social security appeasers and medical costs are tied to individuals as well as the and the estimates grow upon the previous year as years allocation so if we find that there is an over allocation we want to revise our current budget to make sure we get the money into the right line item and get as healthy of a budget as we want as we can we don't want to give a completely plus up budget to you and then have a lot of money
060fall to fund balance um that would be that would be in my my estimation um an exercise in futility because we could always come back to you say we need more money need more money more money but if we have money consistently falling to fund balance then it's unfair to the board and it's unfair to the community to say why are we always raising taxes i was a former board member i get that i heard it all the time initiatives are folded into the existing budget lineup as a cost so once an initiative is contemplated and the toggle is turned on it folds right into the appropriate 100s 200 300s 400s as as we've talked about in the previous slides jason if i could sure doc i apologize you already slide ahead dr elliott just
061i realize the board and the cabinet and staff may be aware of your comments about new enrollment we have a lot of people in the audience and watching can you just go dig deeper and explain what you meant by we're seeing more enrollment in our schools currently and where that's coming from oh you're speaking to the english language learners yes please certainly so what we've learned since december this year we've had an influx of about um i'm going to lose my numbers 23 i believe new english language learners and the majority of those students they they cut across grades k through 12 so a good majority of those students are actually beginning or entering language learners which means they speak little to no english so if you can imagine a high school freshman who speaks
062no english who's suddenly put into an english class or math class or science class and they do not speak english it's very challenging we are required to provide them with english instruction as well as supports in their classrooms so um having this addition uh that we weren't expecting is requiring us to provide some additional support for those students and why are they here just i know but just go into it a little further well i think it depends on the students we have some students who are refugees from uh ukraine that's kind of where i was going right surrounding that but not all of our new students are are from uh ukraine so we do have some refugees that have arrived yes and i think that's important that the public understands that you know not
063only are we taking in and you know people from ukraine and elsewhere that 23 means a lot when you talk about kids that need to learn english um so how do you how do you quantify that with staff and it's it's something that just really just developed over the last couple of months yes exactly thanks sorry jason that i wasn't good enough i appreciate the opportunity opportunity to speak about it if you recall from one of our first finance meetings together the the one of my guiding principles of building a budget is to leave room for the unexpected and certainly uh having a need for for additional hours for instructional assistants or additional teaching staff is one of those that is that is certainly unexpected so and as initiatives are estimated costs they're linked to
064staffing benefits equipment supplies any of those in in the on the left can be actualized in in our general fund budget in a line item they are located in the appropriately generally accepted accounting principal code that's gaap in the general fund and the proper location regular ed special ed facilities technology et cetera so we want i want to be clear that when the teams have put together these contemplated costs they are put into the proper area the proper cost area so it's very easy for me if the board decided to say let's move on this this particular initiative we fold those costs right into our our pde 2028 and we would be ready for for a may adoption for a proposed final budget initiative impact the board did receive slides that enumerated the entire costs
065uh revenue expense and uh i want to thank the cabinet team for their feedback it seemed a little uh cumbersome so for for those folks at home watching this on video uh or in the audience if you look from left to right our fifth elementary special at 7.6 fte has a total cost projected over five years about 3.2 million dollars you see each year there's a depreciating cost because we contemplate that there will be some retirements or transfers of lesser lesser salaried staff so more expensive staff retire we hire less expensive staff and in future years each of those are contemplated the fifth special is also contemplated of 4.6 fte there was a request to see if we could fold in some existing staff to those positions that's about a 1.1 million dollar savings so
0663.2 to 2.099 curriculum investments as dr elliot mentioned some years it's really expensive some years it's not remember there are 10 500 souls that were required to educate and if you if you look at if you look at 1.5 million across the k12 spectrum that is that is not not a very very large number when you talk about per child but each year to take the pressure off of the budget the the the curriculum team has decided to roll in and phase in and that's dr elliot and her team to make sure that we're we're not overwhelming our teachers with multiple implementations of new programs and also making sure that we're preserving our room and the budget but a five-year cost estimate is approximately 4.3 million dollars dr lambert has spoken education committee about the
067gifted review and sel support we have an estimate if the board were to opt act on that particular initiative a five-year cost of about nine hundred and seven thousand dollars 173 thousand dollars in the first year and those costs are staying level because that's going to require new staff and the new staff are at the average rate of of our crea bargaining unit and that contemplates the increase in peasers and and social security along with contractual increases and then finally this is this is one this is one that has been a legacy issue from pre-pandemic and i was speaking with dr sanko these are rather stale costs but i wanted the board to take a look the high school schedule revisions are the best work of the committee at the time this was a k-12
068initiative the district-wide team felt that that was the best cost several years ago high school administration now feels that they want to take a second third fourth look at this to get a better set of better better parameters around what they'd like to see implemented that will impact staffing costs that will impact equipment cost and dr sanko has assured me that that those folks are working on that and making sure that they're they're they're getting their best foot forward so that's that's a number that has lived in the projection software and that is a number that the the board has asked about in previous committee meetings and it's my understanding that the the high school administration has asked to take a pause on this initiative so that they could better evaluate the needs and get
069better costs to the board it may cost more it may cost less but i defer to those experts i'm just charged with putting the numbers on the line dr sanko did you want to add anything to that thank you any questions about these these initiatives impact to tax levy it all boils down to to this the board super bowl is june 16th whether or not you enact the tax levy and i have cases for why or why not yes a tax to implement a tax levy it compounds year by year so the levy that you enact now will compound over future years it is limited by act one law this year the board is allowed to raise taxes by 3.4 percent we get projections of what act one could be we call that the ifo
070the independent fiscal office they project out what act one could be it is forecast as of as of earlier this year you know 4.6 4.7 percent that was before cpi changed so i'm anticipating that they may go higher in future years it you can reduce the tax levy in future years if we find that we're we're collecting too much money i've never had it happen in in all my years as an educator but but there have been tax reductions in certain certain years in certain districts and it's also compounded by the increases to the real estate assessed values so as land is developed new homes are built businesses are improved the assessed values increase and the millage increases proportionally on those on those properties a case for why for no tax levy you cannot make
071up ground in future years if you if the board finds that it needs to raise revenue beyond what it can legally raise in act one it will have to go to referendum which requires a a ballot vote on the primary primary election that is a lot of paperwork for myself and mr cox it's an enterprise that that i've only seen work once in bucks county recently and that was for the funding of renovations to a high school and this is probably one of the only tax increases that pennsylvanians can have a shot at voting no at personally uh most of my time earlier in my career was spent in new jersey and every year we would worry about how many people would show up for or against the school budget because we didn't know the
072school board didn't vote on it they put it up for a vote but the constituency would vote every year that's not the case here the board it squarely lies in the board's prerogative whether or not you raise taxes if you don't do a tax increase this year it may require cuts to staff and programs to mandate to manage mandated costs in a future slide i do have a hyperlink to mandated costs in across the state that are outlined in in state code and federal code that the district must or the district shall provide certain services english language learners is one of those shell provides and finally the assessed value reductions due to litigation tax appeals and like will have additional impact if no tax levy is is is contemplated questions thoughts concerns mandated costs our
073large cost area is one of the largest about 41 million dollars in our budget is our pisa's rate and it goes up every year it may go up by ones or twos percent but it does impact as we have contractual increases to staff to staff to staff salaries we do have contractual increases that for labor for services fringe benefit costs these are areas of for instance our medical we're we're thankful we're coming to you with with a zero increase for our medical share and prescription costs and again our special education expenses we have mandated we're but by the i if it's in the iep we're legally obligated to provide it and we we need to make sure that we are taking care of those kiddos according to what what the what the experts on the
074iep team say that those students need other areas are pde mandated costs act 44 safety and security uh shell versus may and policy code and statute if it says a district may that is an option it is uh and and one of them is transportation the district shall provide non nonpublic transportation if it provides transportation otherwise if it doesn't it may provide it so if we bus one kid to our school then we need to bus all of our kids to whatever school they go to in the district safety and security needs we shall provide for safety and security we shall provide for homeless supports and if you want to avail yourself there is a hyperlink to the mandate document it is about 15 17 pages it is eye-opening to what the mandated costs are
075and i hear constituents say all the time why does it cost so much to educate a kid well that 25 of those 300s and 900s a large majority of it is mandated costs we might get a little bit of wiggle room in our 600s with our supplies what kind of chromebook we buy or what kind of pencil we buy um we can get you know sharpen the pencil on equipment we we purchase but there are there are things that are absolutely non-negotiable that we are we're we're tied to in state policy code and mandate major impacts to revenue obviously earlier we talked about the the real estate tax tax levy currently in any of our projections our baseline is a zero percent tax levy you will see that that is that that that yields an
076alarming rate five years from now we might be able to dip into fund balance for two or three years but we will certainly be in deficit spend in in future years with the zero tax increase assessed value changes if the assessed values go up and according to our audit last year they did increase approximately 0.03 percent we currently contemplate a 0.01 percent increase we could we could elevate that but that's really dependent on upon land development and and real estate values state subsidies could increase we're contemplating a zero increase in revenue in that area special education the same if the governor does get get his way on his proposed budget i'll show you in a future slide what that would look like on the realization of of additional revenue for the district we do have
077transportation and access subsidies we'll talk about transportation more in our finance committee but we did get some more good news on the revenue end from from from matt adams who's in the audience that we will be receiving additional transportation subsidy this year which will beat the budget for our revenue for this year which is which is good news but it is also a a utilization if we put buses on the road we get the we get the revenue back if we cut the buses then we don't get the revenue same thing for access is the medicare special education supports and services program there is a proposed reduction to reflect the actual utilization so that we can we can be fiscally responsible in that cost area to realize that eventually that access money may run out
078if we anticipate we're going to get reimbursed faster than we're spending money so we spend money in one year get reimbursed by access in another year and write off costs and then realize that revenue in the third year so we want to make sure that's it's a balance over several years we talked about in in the finance committee a couple of months ago that earned income taxes we've got a forecast to grow approximately 15 in the next year that is unprecedented and that gives me that gives me a little bit of comfort to know that we have a little bit of room in the forecast to grow however i i don't i would not recommend that the board put that entire 15 on the on the revenue line currently we have a 10 10 to
07911 in the estimate because we're actually seeing that those gaps close from our anticipated revenue to our currently realized revenue the impact of the tax zero percent tax levy in 2023 i've shown in synopsis and to this board and last finance meeting projected revenues of about 253 million dollars 252 811 532 projected expenses and there are these do include some of the expenses including transportation uh contractual with uh with forecasted substitute increases as well as uh labor costs for a new custodial contractor which yields 260 million dollars in expenses which yields a delta of about two seven point two million dollars if the board were to not enact a tax levy there will be no opportunity for initiatives this does and this number does not consider any attrition or retirements so uh mrs taylor and
080i will will be spending a lot of time together to make sure that those numbers are are accurate in our our our payroll projections we have two options the board can use fund balance we have about 30 million dollars in fund balance so it would go down to about 23 million dollars in the following year or the option two would be to cut expenses which would mostly be personnel and or hedge our bets in revenue projections which should be the bef or the eit miss harris i really don't like when people interrupt presentations but i i feel a need to ask please projected expenses do they include any new initiatives they do not okay go on all right the option one this is directly from synopsis you can see in the 2023 budget the 7.2
081million dollar midway the page net operating results that's 252 minus over the 60 gives us a 7.2 you can see if there's a zero increase service tax increase you reach a 48.7 million dollar deficit in 2027. that's everything we're spending now everything is contemplated growth rates contractual increases these are projections to you know to any to any cost area that we we have a growth where we can tie it to then option two why option one no cuts to existing program or staff every every every position is safe every program exists as it currently does there is no tax increase it is a status quo status quo budget for this year the disadvantage there is a 48.7 million dollar deficit by 2027 and i don't know anybody who would run their household budget on a
08248 million deficit and it also limits our opportunity for initiatives in future years that's that's the one thing that i want to get across to this board that a zero percent increase at present leaves all those options off the table that we talked about option two reduce expenses we for our retirements our our our open positions were remain unfilled and we could reduce head count of existing positions that means cuts to existing staff we also could contemplate cuts to programmer operations delay or defer purchases we have about two million dollars in chromebooks that we could delay we have capital expense some vehicles technology building equipment that we're looking to purchase in this year that we could cut or delay we could move them to capital expense which is a separately funded budget other than the
083general fund we could also curtail a reduced delivery of services one is for instance to enforce our walking zones which is about a 1.4 million dollar savings we could reduce our nursing services to our non-publics proportionally to our publics and then also our instructional supports i can tell you that coming from other districts council rock is rich with this instructional supports that meet the needs of its students and these are vital and i would i would discourage you from considering any of these but i i be derelict in my duty to tell you that these weren't real bona fide options but they they in my opinion they're draconian and they would set the district back multiple years and if you wanted to bring them back it would take a referendum of herculean effort to to
084restore major impacts to these cost areas put some dollars to this program or equipment delays estimate a 5 million dollar reduction to expenses unfilled positions would be about a two million dollar reduction to expenses i won't go into the detail but these are these are some of the things that cabinet has contemplated the board has seen some of these in prior years these are these are not palatable these are not recommended but these are legitimate options that the board could act upon and again i want to underscore that i would never in a million years recommend that you do these things to just close the budget gap because it does impact remember i said 10 500 souls it does impact a large large portion of those souls that we're we're looking to impact for our
085future we could adjust our risk tolerance on our revenues in in governor wolf's budget we could yield a 2.1 million dollar increase to revenue in basic education funding i have it on pretty good authority that the governor's budget's dead in the water so i would not put any stock in that we may get a we may get a one to two percent increase over our current allocation but this is 12 to 15 percent over over our previous year's allocation we could also consider moving the eit projection more in line with what the keystone collections group did forecast for us we currently have 19.5 million online we could increase that to the 20.5 million dollars if the board acted on both of those you could save you could add 23 million dollars to the revenue budget
086so it goes from 252 to about 256. we could also temper our tolerance for charter school costs three years ago we spent about a million dollars in charter school we are currently on track to spend about 2.7 million dollars in charter school costs special education costs as well as regular education costs a majority of those students do enjoy a placement in a cyber charter school the board could contemplate having some of those students come back if they don't come back and we still get the bill we're required to pay the board is going to act on the transportation contract tonight we've been showing increases of approximately 12 to 14 percent on any on the high end this is one area that we will certainly bake back in once the board acts on the transportation contract
087tonight but this is this is a cost area of volatility that i that was was is not a normal uh normal course of business for for school districts we could also take a nutrition risk contemplating 27 to 28 retirements we could go less so we could go more if we don't get the retirements that we are expecting our our salaries and benefits will be overspent in our allocation areas we could also stagger delay implementation of any initiative we could also delay capital capital transfers and our projects i will speak uh for for mr taylor uh and doug i don't mean to put words in your mouth but he's taken a great great pains to develop a plan that this board has has really bought into for the renovation and refurbishment of facilities and the capital
088spending plan that is currently on the books is sound and it is affordable any any change in future borrowings any change in capital transfers would would essentially derail those efforts and as we've seen with some of the costs across estimates for contemplated borrowing for richborough elementary those costs could increase anywhere from 10 15 to 20 percent if it were kicked down the road a year two or three so that comes with a significant savings but it also comes with a significant warning so it is really the risk tolerance that the board is willing to take i'll pause there for questions okay why option two it does force efficiencies in some cases more people fewer people means that few people do more work sometimes that's more efficient sometimes that's less efficient those efficiencies can be improved
089it controls the costs in the immediate it does afford us the ability to not raise taxes and it does give us a smaller deficit in future years that does not contemplate that there will be zero deficit budgets in future years but there will be certainly a if we dip from fund balance or did our hedged our bets or cut staff proportionately you would have a smaller deficit it does limit our response to student need and dr elliot very eloquently spoke about the the emergent need that's just come in the past few months for our english language learners it again limits our opportunity for initiatives in future years and probably the largest is if you cut it now you're going to rate have to raise more money in taxes and possibly to a referendum if you
090exceed the allocations or your limit in act one the board has seen this slide i thought it was a value added for this particular presentation one percent tax increase on the bottom a flat one percent which is built into one of our projections yields over four years six point nine million dollars one it only closes our budget gap currently by 1.7 in next year conversely the 3.4 in the act one at the very top yields about 5.8 million dollars based on current assessed value over four years the board will realize approximately 30 million dollars in revenue that could go to some of the initiatives that it's contemplating over the next few years there is a middle road that the ifo minus one percent it's so if ifo is 3.4 then the the ifo minus one
091percent is a 2.4 it yields 4.1 million dollars in in revenue in year one and comes to a total yield of revenue for approximately 22.1 million dollars so in future years remember what i said if the board doesn't act upon the full act one this year it cannot take any of the the percentage it left on the table in previous years and fold it into future it's limited by law next year it's 3.9 it may it may be 4.9 after one second after after cpi and all the wage data comes in miss pali so when you had a slide for the different initiatives that we all talked about how important they are in order to address the um educational laws and so on there was a dollar assigned with each one of them so i
092ca assuming like a really super good case scenario that we want to implement all of them is that even possible even if we go at 3.4 would that be sufficient so i do have slides later in the presentation that would contemplate and act one minus one percent the ifo minus one percent and i'm happy to build i got direction from the consensus of the board was to build them less than our act one i'm happy to build those those models for you to contemplate i can show in the next couple of slides the impact to the average homeowner i have i have a nice pivot chart that would show what those what 3.4 would look like compared to a one to the to the individual and i'm happy to build that and have it ready
093for the next finance meeting so i'm not saying necessarily to go over the 3.4 percent but to understand given these um different like scenarios what is possible in terms of initiatives the board is well within its legal right to increase taxes to 3.4 percent and uh but but i've only built scenarios less than so ifo minus one is currently the ceiling that that we will present to the finance committee and if it's the will of the board i'm happy to do additional modeling what what a 3.4 would look like so if i'm happy because we talked about educational laws and how we're going to address that but at some point we have to understand we have to pay for it so in order to create these initiatives we have to figure out what would be
094the best way to pay for them and maybe don't do them all at once but figure have a plan and see play with like revenue versus expense and figure out what would be the best i'm not saying we have to go it's not the it's not the set number that we have to go over or under it's what is necessary to do what do we need to do i appreciate that comment the i i just want to take a moment and thank my assistant michelle pollock who did lion's share of this work getting a pivot table ready for me uh she saved me hours and hours of work so michelle if you're listening thank you uh this is an impact of a one percent tax increase to the property owner to an average property owner
095thirty eight thirty eight thousand eight hundred dollars is the average assessed value in all of the townships that that serve council rock if the board enacted a one percent tax increase the impact to the average to average assessed home would be 51.53 per year at a 1.5 is 77.29 cents per year at two percent 103.06 per year three percent 154 59 per year and at the act one max 175 20. so if you look at it it's about 50 bucks per percent for every for every average tax on tax payer now the board had asked for a wider swath of assessments and this this this is a revision to the powerpoint that is currently on board doc so we will upload that revision people can take a look at what their assessed values are and
096see realistically what the contemplated tax increase would be impacting to their bottom line and i think it really it's it's it's not lost on me that there are folks who have fixed incomes and there are folks who have unlimited incomes in certain cases and we want to be respectful of of of all of our constituents when we contemplate a tax increase so i'll i'll move through again one percent fifty fifty one dollars one point five seventy seven dollars two percent one oh three three percent 154 four percent 175. any questions about that pivot table it was not advised absolutely absolutely this is again the feedback from the team uh when when we we did a dry run we had i had this in my back pocket for finance in a couple of weeks but i
097the team felt it was very very powerful add to the presentation uh we rely on each other to succeed here and then we have the instead of going into the software and toggling on i know the hour is late i wanted to get through this this is our baseline no new initiatives zero percent that's the slide this does realize is a smaller deficit because we did get updated numbers in our transportation subsidy so we did bake that in so instead of a 48 million dollar deficit we're now at a 46 million dollar deficit so the better numbers we get with some of those to be determined we will get closer and closer closing that gap to add some fifth special at the at the 4.6 with a flat 1 tax we would be 22 million
098in the hole bottom right hand corner to add a little more to add our eld support and our substitute pay attention keeping the fifth special that we have and that that is a half of an ifo which is 1.7 gets us to a positive fund balance in year and year five but it's only ninety one thousand dollars uh not a tolerance that i would that would encourage the board to entertain and then uh conservative conservatively as the board is directed to add do most and these are a staggered layered approach as as you've as you've indicated mrs pally to have a staggered approach to all of these in different years this contemplates an ifo minus one percent over five years so that would commit the board to that level of action in future years but
099it still does uh put us perilously in danger of our fund balance policy which is about 15 million dollars we have a fund balance policy of five percent and uh 11.1 or 12 million dollars is slightly under that but you can see that it keeps everything in the um it adds the staff instead of going to the 4.6 so there are permutations that we can turn on and turn off i'm happy to do that at finance at a more appropriate time but i see that there's a question mr hidalgo thank you um i'm just trying to follow the numbers and do my own little math here based on all i really see on the deck in the uh board docks is the option one use of fund balance and i can see there is no
100tax increase used there and there's just some small increases due to you know assumptions if i go if you go through these slides i'm trying to compare the total revenue and i'm seeing the revenue changing um different numbers so i guess the revenue looks like it's increasing in these scenarios yes so the total i'll start 254 713 in in the following year budget that's a 1.1 percent tax increase this is half this is 1.7 so one 254 to 250 256 million and then in the next year 257 that's that's your 2.4 percent yeah i see that so you're putting some scenarios together here with some assumptions of tax increases correct okay good work thank you thank you thank you and so there it is feasible to to contemplate doing all of this work but it
101will increase it will require a tax increase larger than the ifo minus one percent yes ma'am so what happens to the fan balance if we don't use it can we move it to the next for how long and do we have to use it is it like what are the requirements for that so there is no no statutory requirement to to to to use fund balance the board is required statutorily to allocate it to contemplated expenses currently we have educational initiatives of about four million dollars and then covet 19 recovery of about 14 million and then there is an unassigned fund balance by law we're we're allowed to have a 12 million dollar uh fund balance that is unassigned to anything that the board would so choose to use it for so that you could
102close your budget gap legally by by using that 12 million dollars and there's no statute limitations on how long it would take you to use it but it it we we enjoy a a healthy credit rating because we have a very healthy fund balance and in future years when we're contemplating borrowing for north and south when those buildings come due for the renovations there's not going to be 10 20 30 million that'll be in the hundreds of million and those debt services you will need some of that fund balance to stem the tide as you grow your budget to to realize the the mortgage payments the bond payments on those expenses yes these these slides are not in the board docs are not can you go back to the first one please so we can
103kind of look at the lowest option first because i think that's where we wanted to start and then kick up to the one percent just so they can see one percent if that's what you did yes so you see on the bottom right in the property tax flat one percent tax increase 22 through 27. how much of the initiatives can fit into that only the fifth special but in for in five years you'll have a twenty twenty two and a half million dollar deficit deficit i'm going to save my comments and let other people talk continue your presentation unless there's questions i'll i'll continue so we we started with baseline ad initiative add a little more and do most we at finance we can we can turn these on and off uh change the tax
104impact to show what a what a balance if if the board can can coalesce around what initiatives it wants then i can give you a reasonable path forward and contemplate a tax increase in the future yes sir jason was any effort put into reducing costs in the 75 percent re section of the disc i mean personnel yes so the first go around with with the budget with the budget talks did have kind of an all in and we went line by line saying do you need it is it a need or is it a want and a lot of those areas were in technology and facilities and there there have been some cuts in that have been realized in previous years that that have not been restored so there are there they're bare bones right
105i would like to see not tonight but just projected head count every year these things um just just total number of people and then the next steps this is the last slide i promise uh the next steps in the timeline we have a discussion at april 21st finance committee we need to finalize our proposed final budget so i can get in on the 2028 so we can get it out to the public and advertise the board meeting for the fifth which the board will then contemplate adopting the proposed final i warn you i did go through the exercise of defeating a proposed final budget which only kicks down the june 16th meeting so if anybody has vacation plans i would encourage you to to consider your statutory duty uh beyond june 16th uh may 12th
106we have a finance committee we will revise and review based on feedback from the board and and our additional costs we also have a joint finance facilities committee to revise and review so we have several cracks at the apple before we get to a final budget on june 16th but it will move fast and furious and i i welcome questions i welcome comments call me email me i'm happy to uh we can go to lunch and talk mr sam yeah thanks mr harris a couple things from my perspective one um and i think i'll take some steam away from mr hickey none of these assumptions have any rich pro scenarios built into it with as far as debt service so yes yes they do the the borrowing for richboro elementary correct me from wrong mr
107taylor but was contemplated in the 23 borrowing okay on all these scenarios correct yeah and okay that's good to know and then the next thing i would ask and the team could work on this um i think it's important to hear what the priorities of the team are not necessarily what the priorities of the board is um because that's a good starting point to know what you find most important because we've we've have discussed high school scheduling many many moons ago is it still a viable thing is it something we need to do now is it something that can sit a little bit is it special more important than whatever else is on your list so i personally would like to see what the team would like um and then we can from my opinion
108we can start working that but and this is all being said we still have schools that are overcrowded we need to come up with plans for that as well so that can't get lost anybody else on the board mr old doggo please yeah thank you i i feel uh flashback to when me and mr bilik were doing these things for the last couple years and i still have the same feeling um could we go back to the slide long time ago option one fund balance uh use of fund balance that showed zero tax increase and just your projected no uh it would be the synopsis sheet that one um thank you so if you look at the revenue we already talked about that that's increasing at about 1.6 0.5 not much the next year under
109one percent but some assumptions there i know you have them for a good reason what what concerns me is when we look at we're not doing any of the initiatives no increase but just the budgets as it sits now which makes the contractual agreements that we came up with we are looking at 10 million increase in total expenditures next year and another seven plus million seven and a half million at seventeen and a half million dollars in two years that's three point four percent year over year i'm sorry three point eight percent for first year and 2.9 so almost well over average of three percent increase without doing any initiatives not building any more schools not doing anything that's all just due to the contracts that we've agreed to um so this changes everything obviously
110anything we don't do increasing above three percent we're going to be using our fund balance our hope for better revenues than we're expecting and that's something that um we have to build into it we've we've made these obligations but we're looking at anything below three percent is going to be eaten from fund balance and there's no room to grow to do what the initiatives we want to do so i think we had a nice spike in revenue 10 million dollars we might be giving that back very quickly and so focusing on revenue and what we expect there is going to be very important because we're going to be threading a needle over the next few years if we don't uh so we might have to hire our mark and i'll just put in there for
111the public's sake i i always thought that when i walk and knock on doors and people asked me and agreed that i should represent them it's those older people and fixed incomes that that really concerns me every time we raise taxes and if there was some way if we could contemplate and understand what the effects would be if we could give some kind of tax break i think it's legal somehow in this country in the state i think some people do it uh that's the vulnerable economically vulnerable uh constituencies if they were to qualify for something i'd like to figure out that i wish somebody with more uh knowledge in it would would help me figure that out because i think a lot of us can afford these tax increases of 150 dollars a year
112and it adds up 600 over four years but um other people i worry for them and i have to say that we got to do something for them just put it out there on the record that i'm i'm more than willing to do something like that but the bottom line is we're looking at three percent 3.2 average the next two years before we even increase any more of our costs that's something to to chew on and be ready for the finance committee meeting in two weeks thank you mr dog anybody else on the board mr roosevelt please thank you mr harris for putting this together i think this was a significant amount of information for both the board to think about as well as the community i i want to i have a couple questions
113and a couple comments so if you allow a little bit of latitude here if we go back to the slide that has the pie chart which has the annual operating expenditures it reflects as you articulated an obvious element here that 75 percent approximately are going toward staff and benefits and the rest of everything is going to for kids equipment supplies outside contractors etc is about 25 um if we could now also jump forward to the impact on the community with respect to taxes do you mean the oh sorry if the chart yeah the the pie chart annual expense operating expenditures was the first thing that i was commenting on right yeah so as you pointed out we got the purple and the yellow that represents 75 that is staff salaries and staff benefits and if
114we could also roll to the impact to the homeowner sure to think was later close your eyes okay there we go so here are we representing that the average homeowner in this area makes let's just say for argument's sake forty to sixty thousand dollars is that what this is reflecting no this this reflects the average assessment on your tax bill got it okay so for some community parity i guess the um the bucks county employee salaries people that work for the county from salary.com is about four hundred and thirty five thousand dollars from our annual salaries from crsd um average staff salaries is a hundred and three thousand dollars eight hundred and ninety back in 2020 and i think the bucks county data reflects the median household income in bucks county is 93 767. so
115for some community parity what we have is staff of the community and staff of the school getting paid more than the average community member so that's why i thought this was important while it looks like it's a low number uh we also have i think in a lot of our districts about 60 percent of our constituents are taxpayers that don't send a kid to the district so when i say i think this is a lot of information for both the board to consider as well as the community this is what we're talking about i'm concerned because the scenarios that you projected demonstrate that we will be very we're very close to at risk of handcuffing ourselves to tax increases and there is a lot of con there's a lot of costs that we can't control
116nor predict in here that you indicated keep you up at night and we have not a lot of margin of error we're also potentially handcuffing future boards by the decisions that we're making we do have a lot of initiatives wonderful things so i i like your presentation because it sets all of these things out and i am really looking forward to hearing commute comments from the community as well as this administration on what their what initiatives they prioritize so that you from finance can present some projections on how we get there and we as a board can review and deliberate and discuss how we can make that happen um but it's concerning because this is reflecting tax increases that we can't avoid and will handcuff future boards to do the same so hearing from the
117community is important thank you thank you mr roosevelt anybody else dr thorbert mr icke please mr harris like you said appreciate the presentation uh enlightening for me i'm not a financial guru uh so i struggle with this probably a little more than some of the others i'm glad to hear that richboro is still on the agenda there as it's the last school that needs to be renovated but going beyond that um i'm going to pay you back on something that mr solomon has harped on for a while now and i don't know if we can do it this year because it's obviously too late at some point in time we need to go through this budget line by line and figure out what we need and what we don't need and what we can jettison
118um i liken it to the federal government to a sense they get a budget every year and they're afraid that if they don't spend up to that budget that they're not going to get the money the next year well i'm wondering if there are things in our budget that we have just done year after year after year after year that we really don't need and we can cut because you do want to do some of these initiatives and like you said i'd rather hear i want to hear from the board you're the you know the cabinet what what what do they want to see done as opposed to what do we want to see done and like mike said you know i welcome the comments from the board because uh i agree with mr odago
119yeah i would love to see the senior citizens not have to pay an increase in taxes but as far as i know that is beyond our level here that would go up to the state that's something that they would have to do and i don't project them giving tax breaks to senior citizens so once again it falls back on us and everything that we do impacts them and you know i'm approaching that age so i'm especially sensitive to it understood dr thorward you're not approaching that age you can go now well i i just shave it off when it gets great so um i'm spitballing here um i'm mindful after the discussion we had before that when you spit ball it becomes gospel but what if i mean i asked for head count for a
120reason i mean 75 percent of our budget is personnel and we've milked the 25 percent year after year after there's no more blood in that stone um pig tailing after what mr hickey said looking for efficiencies i mean i i've seen incentives where i'll give you two percent if you show me one percent in reductions um i'll give you three percent if you show me one and a half percent and but that requires a line by line what are we doing this because we've always done it are we doing this because we want it um it feels like and i i'm not saying we're doing this that new initiative add more people instead of use the people we have and lose one of the old initiatives i you know i mean we have the staff
121are they are they focused on the right thing or not i mean it becomes a question of priorities we can't make everything the priority we we can't and and and we cannot take these deficits out of 25 of the budget because their books their power they're keeping the lights on and we've done that over and over and over again there's no more money there so the only place you can save any money is in the 75 percent that seems sacrosanct right now and i i don't know that it is um we can use attrition you know i'm not asking for layoffs uh or any but but are we using our people in the right places versus that's what they've always done so they're they're they there they are so i would ask as you prioritize
122this you know i mean think about it that way that you know do we have the staff and can we repurpose them for something else and take them out of what they were doing prior in some cases we can't i don't think we have that many who speak um and use the cyrillic language we're going to have to hire people to do those things for these kids i get it i get it so but think about it again it's not gospel i'm throwing it out there so thank you for anybody else you have miss valley please so it's i understand you know arguments from all sides it makes sense that for someone who is on fixed income and they face inflation and every little increase is not going to be good at the same time
123that same person if they reside in a really good district like cancer rock that means their property value is going to go up so when it's time to sell maybe they will benefit but looking at this chart just to bring the business perspective i think the district resembles like a service industry or a service company so you most of the expenses are salaries and benefits and my experience is for a service company to succeed they have to have really good people that provide the service and i'm not saying there is no fat to be cut but these people the really good people will come to you if you pay them properly and you give them the right benefits so so on one hand yes we want to balance the budget and not have huge increases
124at the other on the other hand we want to provide excellent education and we want to make this district the best probably in pennsylvania if we can do that so in order to do this we have to figure out what's going to give or take and and maybe we have a long plan and we say okay maybe we'll stagger things and slowly we'll get where we want to be but it's good to think of like all different perspectives and what is our long-term plan when we try to figure this out you miss paul anybody else just a couple questions for me if you would sir um the keystone numbers you mentioned that earlier and i think we mentioned is the finances they've been pretty spot on they have are we conservative in our estimates we
125are currently conservative very conservative conservative or we we are we move are you comfortable in moving that number in the other direction i i take direction from the board i will tell you i have i have a data point that is outside of myself that is based on quarterly receipts from from from taxpayers and on good authority keystone has made a reasonable projection so if you want to see that revenue realized on on that side of the line i'm happy to make that adjustment and i think i think it's important to consider because we're in the in the term of considering a whole lot of things last year not this board but the board that was sitting last year raised taxes 1.99 it was a struggle for many of us to do that we understood
126what it takes to get there but we also made a decision on buildings last year based around a very conservative budget and then lo and behold a couple weeks later we found some additional monies because we were conservative and fortunately we had soul find some put online and underway and doug your team's doing a great job up there i hear um but you know this may be the year where we we stopped being so conservative that we we go on a little more on the other side just to put a little more into perspective um because i don't want to go through what i went through last year because i would rethink how things went if we knew we had that money um so that would only be as a suggestion um charter schools i
127would hope and i've talked about this in the past i would hope we're recruiting our folks to come back to council rock that have left over the last couple years for whatever reasons uh and the other thing is are we allowed to talk about attrition numbers where are they at you said april 1st i know it's early um are we hitting our numbers we're expecting are we are we in line do we can you even say and if you can't that's fine too i would i would reserve comment for for an executive session particularly related to personality and that's totally fine though there's three areas right there certainly we could grab a couple million dollars which is a lot for this budget and that's kind of i wanted to throw it out there thank you
128mr harris anybody else mr roosevelt i i do have a couple questions regarding fifth special i believe we had fifth five specials before the pandemic art gym music library and computers and i believe that computers were removed because all the kids had their own chromebook on a one-to-one basis so computers were out so now we're talking about re-implementing a fifth special stem steam i'm excited i really like that i think that's extremely important but i just want to understand a couple of elements here as far as why does this impose a schedule change if we have specials on the other four days and we used to have a fifth special on the fifth day and why does it impose new staffing requirements if we have probably teachers that can do this already to mr fellwood's
129point are we putting people in the right position generally to bounce back a little bit we want to give our kids the best education that we can afford and we want the best for them so we're even probably willing to stretch that means we want the best teachers here so i'm not advocating for you know slashing here and there i want to get the best but this is where we're getting confined so if you could just help me a little bit with the fifth special that would be great let me see if i can answer your questions as you as you gave them so if i miss one please um ask it again mr roosevelt so we had uh what was called in the schedule a special for computers however i would not categorize that
130as a special as we do library phys ed art and music the computers was just a time where was designated for the teacher to take their class to the computer lab there was no designated teacher who taught that special so the teacher was responsible for all of that instruction opposed to the the opposite of that is in our our other four specials the students go to the art room and an art teacher who's certified in art teaches that particular um special for those students so there's a little bit of a distinguishing um between what that computer special was and what the what this fifth special would be which would be they would go to a designated location in the building and it would be taught by someone who has the knowledge and the skill set
131to teach the steam um curriculum to the students and it would be a time away from their their core classroom teacher or their homeroom teacher um so that's the distinction there and why there's a need for staff for the fifth special did i answer all of your questions well so i guess we'll we'll jump in regarding the schedule is there something else that happens on the fifth day that requires more schedule i understand the distinction that you've laid out makes perfect sense and i'm and i'm happy to hear and i think it'll help the community was that computer time limit shorter than art and music etc etc i would defer to dr sanka who's shaking his head know that the time was the same as the other specials so thanks chuck for your help um
132that time was not that time was not different the the challenge um or the difference with a fifth special of steam in fifth and sixth grade right now in our elementary schools we have chorus that takes place during the day so for all intents and purposes fifth and sixth grade students would have two specials potentially on one day they would have let me rephrase that they would have two times during the instructional day that they would be away from their homeroom teacher wants to go to chorus and wants to go to that fifth special whether it was art music library phys ed or steam so we have more than one special that could happen on the same day not typically no but in the case where dr sanko just talked about by adding this fifth
133special yes for our fifth and sixth graders only there would be a day where they would have chorus and then would also have one of the other five specials you i think you also asked a question about changes in this schedule so our our day starts and ends at a certain time and within that time frame we build instructional minutes around the the time that we have uh including 30 minutes of lunch that the students have the recess that they have every day and all of the core subjects that they have and the specials so when adding this fifth special one of the things that we look at is how does it impact our instructional minutes across the board so right now on the day that students don't have a special there's additional minutes there
134that they're using for language arts or math or or one of the the core subject areas when we add this fifth special what our principals have been looking at is how do we adjust all of them the instructional minutes to make sure we have that time for that fifth special and still have sufficient time for the other subject areas that uh we're required to to teach students thank you anybody else at this point yes sure dr forward please what kind of certification would a steam teacher have i mean do the do elementary teachers have steam certification or is it just general ed so depending upon how we structure what we call this special if we call it steam then we'll need to make sure we hire people who have a steam like a certificate uh
135you know like an endorsement so additional credits in in steem if we do not call it steam but call it something else we can hire teachers who have a lot of coursework experience in working with steam we have some very strong internal candidates who would be people who would probably be interested in teaching that who have a lot of knowledge um and and would be able to continue to learn and grow and develop that knowledge around the the concepts and and the areas of steam that we would be looking at i just didn't realize there was a piece of paper for steam now too so okay mr hickey i'll just piggyback on what dr thorward said though what's involved with getting this piece of paper how many hours of course work and then my second
136question and just as a follow-up what is the amount of time that we spend in a special each day at the elementary school so i'll answer the last question first our specials are 40 minutes right right 40 am i correct yes 40 minutes um across all grades and um with kindergarten is the exception kindergarten specials are a little shorter and these the endorsement um i don't know the exact number of credits but because it's not another uh full like certification it doesn't typically require as much christine does oh great thank you sorry miss taylor you're fine so endorsements are short short programs not to exceed 12 credits and the endorsements are in new and emerging areas steam is one of the areas so it's a not a long program 12 credits is the max thanks
137are you aware if we have people on staff now with those certs i'm sure we have a couple i could name at least one or two can't give you a definite answer but we do have people who have endorsements there's people there's autism endorsements steam endorsements there's a number of them anybody else good mr harris thank you you can sit now thank you stay away from mr dr lambert'll knock stuff over good evening mrs mckee we're going to go to education committee please thank you thank you mr salman the education committee met on march the 24th we had two agenda items the first being a presentation uh to the board from administrators representing each level along with some curriculum coordinators the topic being supporting our students learning both during and after the pandemic items that
138we covered are questions like what is happening at the building level what does our local data show us and what do we need to do to continue providing support for our students i know that this has been an item really on the minds of of the board how are our students succeeding what do they need from us how are they recovering from uh you know some some disruption in their educational program uh and i know we were very appreciative of the time that each of these professionals took to be with us and answer questions i know that it's been a focus for us i know we want to hear back some information going forward to be updated on this topic i expect that we will be hearing further information in upcoming meetings and while not
139on behalf of the board i just personally want to say how very much i appreciate what's happening in the classrooms every day i've said it before and i'll say it again teachers are extremely aware of what their students need and they are in the best position to provide that and i just want to congratulate them it's been difficult for them along with every family and every student so i want to personally say thank you we are aware of the efforts that happen every day in the classrooms additionally we had a report from cropper a very detailed demographic report uh cropper you may remember as a company that did similar work for us a few years ago in preparation for our redistricting this report will help inform our future decision making regarding anticipated enrollment numbers along
140with building usage and utilization that concludes my report regarding our meeting our next meeting will be april 25th can i have a second please awesome all right second mr hickey with a second any objections any further board comment on hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary mark that unanimous letter c bucks county iu miss pally please so the last fox county intermediate unit meeting uh there's usually a lot of things that happen which is like you know business as usual i just chose to um give you some information about things that may be applicable to cancer rock so the iu has licensed the summary of educational mandates to serve as an informational tool for public school administrators and directors and i forwarded these documents to you earlier today i think they're like great resource
141they're lengthy but it's it's great information so as we know um the pro they provide the assistance with ourselves for the superintendent and they also provide assistance for the superintendent search for for the british to borrow so i guess we're competing with them for like uh superintendent so and something else that was very interesting um they talk about supporting schools with therapy dogs and the central backs district has been using that a lot there is it's roxy therapy dogs if you want to check their website and they can come in at the time of crisis or maybe just if a children have reading challenges they can read to the dogs and it's something to consider especially as we face different crises [Music] so i know we talked about cancer rock has almost zero increase in
142cost for health care i just wanted to know you to know that the iu participates in baxter montgomery county schools healthcare consortium and there are about 11 districts that participate in that and they provide coverage to 5200 employees and 14 000 members and they benefit from efficiencies in the benefits as well as savings so i'm sure you have looked into that before just something to keep in mind as we go forward and uh the next board meeting is next month is actually it's this month april yeah great thank you nbit mr ricky please thank you all right dr thorward uh pally uh triggered something that i'm gonna kick to mr cox and the policy committee for later you mentioned therapy dogs um i don't know that we have a policy that says therapy dogs in
143our schools are insured or whatever i mean i i i'm gonna ask rob not now but can we look into that should we be caring should we any dog that comes into school should it be carrying a some kind of liability shield or do we own that uh that sort of thing i think it's a good idea i mean i hear about therapy dogs all the time but that can go they're animals that can go sideways and i just want to make sure we're crossing our t's and dotting our eyes as we go forward dr thor we in the past have handled that by having a provision in the contract with the provider that requires them to indemnify the district and carry appropriate insurance and i'll look to our administrative team is are we honored
144we don't have dogs in our schools that don't have a carrier a contract with them we have we have supplemental insurance from from those dog owners that in case the the unlikely case that a dog does attack or bite that they cover the expense rather than the board say that again the the subrogation of the insurance the insurance of the individual the dog owner would cover the the incident rather than the board incurring the expense of of the injury to the student or staff member we we enforced policy terms on that or we just assume it happened no we do i i have copies of of every every subrogation and every additional name insured uh when a dog crosses a threshold counteract is named as additional name insured good okay mbit mr hickey please we
145had a committee of the whole meeting on tuesday and we will have a board meeting on next monday mr specter he gave basically the update of what's happening at the school and what the students are doing i appreciate that every time that they come in and do it uh the problem we have uh we're actually now going through our budget as well at mbit and par budget impacts this budget there was a bit of a surprise thrown at us as you know mbit has had an increase in enrollment and basically what's happening is there's not enough space at the school to accommodate the students who want to attend there at least not in with their first choice so we had a lengthy discussion about different options that could occur and i was hoping to have
146something back from the director of mbit of what we discussed and other variables because as i said what happens there affects here one of the biggest problems one of the biggest enrollments that we've had there is in electrical technology and there's just not enough room there to accommodate the students who want to do it but to add a second room in that area the cost is a quarter of a million dollars of which we share some of that cost um i know that mr harris and superintendent eli they were just made aware of that the other day and basically we found out so i was hoping to have some more information which i'm going to distribute to the board to get some feedback from them on where do you want to be with this because
147this is not an arbitrary decision that is made by me this is i'm representing the council rock board i miss marcel as well and uh i'm going to need some feedback on where we go what are some of the different options i mean what one of the options was you know just to offer the program to juniors and seniors but do you really want to emit sophomores from the programs so we're trying to think of inventive ways and how to use the space up there so we so we can accommodate as many people as possible uh that second electrical room is most likely out i don't see it being within any school district's budget not at this stage of the game and these letters to these kids have to go out next week it's a
148nice problem to have but like i said it impacts our budget directly and hopefully we can find some innovative ways like one of the things we talked about like for example this room here we have one there's one up at mbit to use that for some of the classrooms that you don't need the hands-on you can use you know you can put a bunch of computers there you can have kids there you can break the rooms up and maybe you can accommodate more kids the idea being is to get as many kids as possible into these programs without an exorbitant cost to each sending school district and like i said i hope to have some information for you guys by the end of the week as far as the matrix and i'd appreciate any feedback
149you can give me mr hickey uh we had a meeting earlier today to talk about the capital costs for mbit which the board has already borrowed the money to make the payment in in july and it did come up as a point of discussion and the early discussion was about a half a million dollar ad to the budget of which potentially an 85 000 increase to tuition so that's just a rough estimate on the low end and i raised the flag that this budget their budget is coming to finance committee for review this month and then eventual consideration on the agenda in may so the sooner we have those numbers to get it in front of finance so you can so this board can contemplate impact to council rock uh i i underscored that and
150certainly i want to be able to contemplate that in any future budget that we have but i appreciate you mentioning that it is a good problem to have but it is a little late in the hour uh because we're building our budget and we want to make sure that we are covering the students that we have currently sure and i apologize i mean i can't apologize for something i wasn't a part of however i apologize because i was given the impression that dr elliot and you were made aware of this before this week i was today old sir it's a good problem to have it's just that building is just at its at its limit i mean yeah and like every other buildings that we do here it also has its challenges the roof was
151just replaced they're looking to replace 156 computers um like you said uh they they have their budgets just like we do and they have their issues um so okay thank you mr key council rock education liaison mr tate please thank you mr solomon the hours late so i'll be brief we had a board meeting monday night dr elliott was there we had a real good discussion about some long-term possibilities more later but the important thing is june 20 is our golf outing and it's the best time that you can imagine as mr cox will attest so please put that on your calendar june 29 a.m philmont country club thank you thank you sir we're going to obviously we just did policy we're going to jump down to finance committee mr oldago please thank you mr
152solomon so the finance committee met on march 10th and at that meeting we pushed the last item on the agenda to the beginning and that was about an hour discussion on transportation and at that point we had now spoken to both uh vendors who bid it and uh tonight we are going to uh have a motion up there to get ready for next year because it's important that we get these contracts in place then we went on and we talked about some professional development software old ones sun setting and new ones uh that were proposed and that's going to be on the agenda for tonight as part of the consent uh agenda then we talked about some uh budget uh transfers for uh for pc repair or for computer repair and i was just wondering
153if that was part of the general fund uh mr harris it is uh it's covered in item c okay thank you and then the items for discussion that night we talked about food service update some policies to the insurance uh uh policy that we have some updates and we talked uh first phases of the revenue uh budgets and and process and the five-year projections there's a lot of talking about that and the capital projects updates um or from a finance standpoint i guess and then that's about it a transportation update thank you uh for that and i'm gonna give it over to mr harris if you want to add anything before i go to the consent items no mr hidalgo i think he covered it very well but it's almost a month since our last
154finance meeting so it feels like it's a very long time ago so i'm appreciative of the board's consideration to change the the sequence of events so that we can have best data right before the meeting so that we can put our best foot forward in an action meeting thank you thank you thank you so with that being said i moved to approve consent agenda items b through e as contained in attachment to this agenda second second mr tate any objections any further comments on the board hearing none i want to ask the secretary to mark that unanimous as well keep going joe f right so i moved to approve the agreement for the transportation of pupils with durham school services lp in the form attached to this agenda and the subject to final solicitor review
155second second is dr thorward any objections any further comment from the board on this subject but hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary to mark that unanimous as well do we want to offer anybody a a comment or not or is that up to you i don't know if anybody audience wants to comment no uh no we'll move on okay let's move on then letter g all right um sorry gee okay i moved to approve the tj consulting agreement not to exceed five thousand dollars a second dr thorpe any further board comment or objection hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary to mark that unanimous mrs mckee you want to take the personal actions sure i moved to approve the personnel actions and the personnel actions addendum as contained in the attachment to
156this agenda a second please second second mr hickey any board comment about this i'd like to make a comment uh dr lambert you're on this uh piece of paper this evening um you notified the board a month ago that you were willing they're wishing to retire um a couple of us i think i told you leave your phone on and you did um we asked you to stick around a little longer and you did and you will and uh my personal thank you for doing that um we we need you a part of this team during transition uh i'm sorry to mrs lambert for delaying her around the world vacation um oh you didn't tell her yet i guess i'm sorry um but yeah i needed to thank you personally for that sir i really
157appreciate it yeah i'm sure she did mr solomon i'll i'll second that i mean i i i know i i reached out as well and uh this this is a big deal and i'm i'm appreciative of it i know you had a kind of a rotten week this week and and and it it sincerely a good to have you stick around for a little while any other comment for the board no objections hearing none mark that unanimous please mr mccabe please i move to approve the personnel action assistant director of business administration as contained in the attachment to this agenda second second mr tate any objections from the board any comments on the board mr key not so much a comment um i just have a question um that i need to direct to mr
158harris and to miss taylor and then we do this individually um i just wanna make sure that you are 100 your decision you're comfortable with this decision 100 percent comfortable with this decision so we interview by committee and we have teams i'm 100 comfortable i want to say that first but we have interview committees and teams so it's not our a single person's decision thank you anybody else [Music] okay hearing i'm going to ask the secretary to mark that unanimous consent facilities i'm sorry mrs mcgee just for clarification did you combine hni yes i combined okay thank you from there we're going to move the facilities i don't know who's taking it mr tate mr roosevelt yes i will be brief given the late hour facilities committee met march 17. we got an update on
159current projects and progress is steady with no major problems we got a lot of details from mr taylor and appreciate that very much we discussed the agenda items and as well future work including we had a lengthy discussion about richboro elementary school as well and there is an agenda item that i want to call out because it's real positive um and it has to do with its item b the capital improvement project close out change orders um mr taylor if you would just uh summarize that for us sure that's a close-out change order from the project here at chancellor center from a few years back we've been working with the contractor on getting the painting issues resolved here and we finally have completed that and to our satisfaction so this is the remaining allowance monies
160from that project and that's for twelve thousand dollars almost 13 but the grand total there is uh 465 000 um that's a summary of other change orders is that true yes that's a summary of credits back uh to the district from those projects we've had a very successful run of summer projects and uh and the wrap up of the star center as well so we're we're doing well as a team thank you sir um our next meeting is april 28th so the agenda items i move to approve consent agenda items b through d as contained in the attachments to this agenda second second mr roosevelt any objections any comments from the board on hearing none i want to ask the secretary to mark that unanimous as well moving forward the second set of public comment
161i want to go down the list of the checks that were non-agenda items mr cox you have your handy first up is wendy nowicki from newtown good evening thanks for sticking with us i'm sorry i can't hear you thank you i think enough was said earlier by the students so i'm fine for tonight thank you great thank you next on the list nicole khan good evening um i too will pass on my time this evening thank you okay next up is susan turner good evening how are you um susan turner obviously i'm the president of newtown borough council and i apologize for showing up without any notice but we had a discussion at our work session last night that i found really concerning and that was urgent enough to come and talk to you folks
162about tonight we have some parents who are really concerned about the routes that their kids are walking to school and specifically they're crossing washington avenue at norwood and as we all know washington avenue is not a great place to cross officially we were asked to put in a crossing guard we agreed to do that but after investigation it looks like that's really not appropriate based on the manual of uniform traffic control devices i guess part seven that talks specifically about school access and so the recommendation is that the kids walk down to lincoln cross there then walk back up washington but parents have expressed a lot of concern about that being even more dangerous than crossing at norwood we talked about petitioning to have a crossing there and i i don't actually know what your
163safe school routes map looks like but we talked about doing that but that would almost certainly require putting a stop sign on or putting stop signs on washington at norwood and it appears that that kind of a request has to come from the school board not from borough council so we wanted to to urge you to consider that and also to offer our support and help in whatever we can do we also have a wac-friendly traffic committee that that is very passionate about trying to improve access so i i'm very concerned we all know about the accidents we've had with pedestrians and little kids crossing washington street it is a real concern so i i would very much like us to take some action before someone gets hurt just may i ask is this your
164official notification and i apologize we will certainly send that's right or we can but our meeting was last night and because you were meeting tonight i didn't want to that's great because art i mean the teams here that would dive right into that so i really appreciate it i think it's really important and thank you absolutely yes thank you next up is is it tara mclaughlin from newtown borough hi good evening good evening tara going to mclaughlin newtown borough uh i actually did come here for 109 and put myself in the wrong slot and thank you very much for your vote uh and my primary point was that every single book in that library of every school i was put there by either the librarian the counselor or a teacher all of them professional educators
165put there with choice and care so as dr elliott's um i'm calling it yours because that was sort of your idea having that putting that policy into place to have a process and not just on each individual principle you know i urge that to be considered in that process that it be looked at carefully and [Music] with real knowledge of the book and what and the educational purpose that there was uh seen in it uh when it was initially purchased um and then uh a follow-up a completely different topic uh but on the agenda tonight was the uh the list of initiatives and uh one of them was the early start and i know that got delayed and due to the pandemic but it's still an issue and we have that report which i didn't
166come here prepared to speak on this so i don't have the name of it but i think you all know what i'm talking about the one that came from the state of pennsylvania not too long before the pandemic talking about the mental health issues about uh the academic difference that is really truly seen when adolescents of the high school age have to get here early so um as a parent of four council rock children uh i've had students in the district since 2003 uh high schoolers number three and four are there now while they may not see the benefit of it i hope my freshman does and i really want to strongly advocate for that difference for the kids and to really keep that initiative on top i know the budget is a struggle um
167we go through it too so thank you thank you appreciate it next up is barbara simmons also from newtown barrel barbara simmons okay thank you next up is ellen from washington crossing last name starts with an r yes next up would be steve kikay good evening can you just say your last name for the record sir i want why borrow some of ellen's time anyway earlier tonight the students spoke so eloquently about such an important subject of the students they give me so much hope for the future i didn't want to lower the quality of the discussion then so i'm speaking now about the subject uh although from the point of view of first principles i got a copy of the constitution uh although we have won the battle this evening the war for the
168soul of american democracy rages nationally so i feel these words must be said to steal you for future fights again my name is steve ck i moved to newtown in 1985 along with my wife and two children since i heard stories about the excellence of council rock public school system luckily for my family those stories turned out to be true my son graduated from council rock high in 2000 and was accepted into an ivy league school brown university my daughter graduated in 2004 i received a full scholarship to bu i recently asked them what books they read in high school i promptly received a list of over 30 great works of literature which evidently made a memorable impression on them there was no talk of censorship or limiting access to books back then on the
169contrary their minds were open to a wide diversity of authors and ideas which is what education should be all about i didn't want to talk politics tonight because the focus should be on educating our children but this un-american issue of censorship and restricting access to books is here before us not because of a sincere concern for how best to educate our children but because of an extreme reactionary well-financed agenda of the far right to create an emotional divisive culture war issue in the hope of restoring the political power they lost in 2020 for it is self-evident that the minds of our youth are not expanded by restricting their diet of great creative ideas found in books the minds of our youth should on the contrary be exposed to as many diverse voices as possible as
170they develop critical reading writing and thinking skills that will aid them later in life as they greet a complex world full of exciting new challenges more not less is the watchword of a good education the far right often brings up our beloved constitution when they express their fervent desire to cling to their lives 30 seconds sir when to this day kill so many of our children even in our schools but somehow they're asylum about the rights in our constitution abided in the first and fourteenth amendments when it conflicts with their radical reactionary and sometimes racist and homophobic ideology americans are guaranteed freedom of speech by our constitution and his first amendment and yet there is an ugly national movement underway to ban the reading and discussion of books history reminds us of nazis burning the
171books that threatened their ideology and before long they were then killing people who did not fit in with their sick agenda who decides what we can speak about sir that's three minutes thank you i'll make no law abridging the freedom of speech thank you appreciate it next up bernell holmes you're not burnell good evening well can you state your name for the record please um good evening i am bernie holmes and i'm a resident of richboro and i stand before you as the mother of four children in this district with my youngest in the autistic support program at holland elementary in 2021 the board adopted a resolution supporting the development of an anti-racist school climate my children attend four different schools and i am here to tell you the district has and is failing its
172students since this resolution was adopted there has been little to no improvement in the culture of this school district this is also evident at every board meeting when there is when there has been discussions about eliminating anything pertaining to diversity equity and inclusion and sadly this trickles down to the very fabric and walls of this school community my children are one of the few if not the only black children in their classes and every year i have to contact teachers and principals to discuss why black history month was not acknowledged i want you as a board and the school district to know that my seventh grader and her friend took it upon themselves with the support of their english teacher to hold their very own black history presentation because your schools failed to i have
173had teachers tell me how amazing my children are but they are never included or recommended for gifted programs or honors classes even after receiving all a's my children have had students try to touch their hair they hear the n-word used repeatedly they have to educate others they defend themselves and i just learned recently that one of them wanted to attend a different school so now this has turned into a mental health issue it is not my children's responsibility to educate others or to be the ones to address every racial slur they hear and slurs being heard are also directed to students with special needs my children are raised in a home where they are affirmed exposed to different cultures and different abilities and this is why they are compassionate they're bold confident they are advocates
174and they are what the future looks like and i refuse to let this district or anyone try to tear down the work that my husband and i along with our village do on a daily basis listen my six-year-old with autism he's pretty cute now and he melts the heart of anyone he comes in contact with 30 seconds one day he will be older at the middle and the high school and this mother will be at the school every day if needed to ensure he is protected and i am already aware of our high school students harassing students with special needs in the hallways of council rock north change starts from the top down and what this district needs is strong leadership accountability and honestly a miracle my hope is that a miracle happens before we
175send another student out into this world unprepared every child should attend school free from harassment and discrimination just like your resolution promised and i leave you with a quote from martin luther king jr it is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all thank you ma'am [Applause] from there we'll move to board comment any new business from the board sure you stayed this long come on up you in the back just state your name for the record and you know this drill three minutes my name's kevin campbell i'm from upper mayfield the students tonight exemplified the pride of this district the students see the strength and unity in this community unfortunately this board has become infected by out outside politics that ultimately led
176to the removal of our superintendent who only wanted to put the kids first some even advocated in their campaigns that that was their primary goal a decision was made and the community was not involved with that we were asked just recently what we think a new superintendent should be well if you ask me he was already here the students tonight mentioned the lack of leadership super and what a lack of superintendent is in the school they're feeling it your actions have come down to the students there were two students here tonight that mentioned it i find it ironic that the board wants our input now we elected you you should know what to do you should know what a superintendent looks like and what the characteristics are if you're going to use that survey down
177the road to slap us in the face and say well this is what you want you can throw it away you guys know what a superintendent is and what it should do and you already had one and you let them get away your decision has taught the students it's okay to bully someone just like this speaker earlier it's okay to bully someone into resigning or making them in a scapegoat you didn't do anything for this community when you let dr frazier go you brought us down and you tarnish the school board not the student body but this board and i find it's going to be very tough to bring someone in here to replace him giving what you have done recently and it's a surprise that a lot of people haven't come up here to
178say that but i would bet you there's a lot more people out in the audience today that feel the same way i do lastly on the budget there are people sitting on this these chairs today that voted so fine stone down for the right reason and it came back wrongly to be voted on and we're feeling in the impact today with the financial burdens that it's going to cost us downstream so i would applaud you guys to listen 30 seconds listen to what they're saying some of them are right on the mark with what we should do and what we shouldn't do listen to each other take the politics out of it do what's right for the community and do what's right for the students thank you thank you if you would just state your
179name and what township you're from good evening my name is valerie mahalik my family resides in newtown first of all thank you all for being here uh to serve the way that you do is not easy so we appreciate it i sent this email to my school board member back in march i'm just going to read it to you to expedite the time we just wanted to make you and the entire school board aware of what an outstanding job the faculty at both council rock north and newtown middle school did with their most recent school play in school musical as a former teacher myself from new york who has a theatrical background and has directed school plays i understand all of the time creativity dedication commitment and patience that are needed to pull off a
180good production trying to do this however in the middle of a pandemic where plays and musicals stopped for two years is not an easy thing to accomplish both of our daughters were fortunate to be in their school play our one daughter was in steel magnolias at the high school and our younger daughter was in the sound of music at newtown middle school with mr dolan we just moved to this district in august and being a part of the plays not only helped elevate their confidence but enabled them to feel as if they were now a part of the school additionally this has been a challenging year for our family i was recently re-diagnosed with stage 3 cancer and had surgery at memorial sloan-kettering this past october additionally our 12 year old daughter in december fell
181and ended up having major surgery at chop in philadelphia with three screws inserted into her hip she was on crutches for most of the sound of music rehearsals but always felt welcome while navigating how to walk around with an injured leg watching her on stage this past weekend in march even dancing was a huge accomplishment it could not have happened without the support of mr dolan and his team our 16 year old daughter who had major upper respiratory infections in september also thrived in steel magnolias especially at a time when she was helping me with my recovery both girls cried when the plays came the plays came to an end because it brought them so much joy we truly feel so blessed to have relocated 30 seconds incredible district where the children feel cared about
182kudos to the directors and staff who work relentlessly during such challenging times and i also just want to acknowledge mr harris who joined the um pit band with mr dolan at the last minute and it was wonderful to see one of our administrators involved with the children so if you're ever looking to cut anything from the budget please reconsider the arts because when you were at these performances the audience went crazy seeing our children on the stage socializing and feeling like they have a life again thank you thank you fantastic is there anybody else in the audience you stuck with us this long all right any new business from the board any old business from the board all right hearing none that adjourns a meeting you