ESASD Regular Board Meeting (May 18)

001Mhm. >> Stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Mrs. Rosado, a roll call, please. Yes. George Andrews. >> Present. Rebecca Baird. Present. Ann Catrillo. Here. Mike Catrillo. Here. Jason Engelstrand. Present. Keith Carper. Present. Debbie Cullinan. Present. Rich Lampert. Present. Shaniqua Story Present. Nine present. Okay, thank you. We welcome all of our guests both live and online. Ask our guests who are here physically if you could be sure that you have signed the paper outside just so we have a record of who attended here with us to this evening. An executive session was held this evening before the meeting for the purpose of discussing personnel, litigation,

002and negotiations. Uh we have a motion now to adopt the agenda for May 18th, 2026 as submitted with the Board of Ed reserving the right to add to the agenda and take further action at any time through executive session where immediate action on such items is considered to be part of the best interest of the district. I second. Questions? All in favor? I. Opposed? A motion to approve the minutes of the April 20th, 2026 regular school board meeting. I second. Questions? Abstain. Okay, one abstention. All in favor? I. Opposed? Okay, we move on to our school board student representatives. Let's go to the North High School, um Dylan and Lawrence. Hello. Uh this is our East Irondequoit North uh May highlights. Uh first off, we're going to start with academics. Uh the fifth annual Timberlane

003pick up the litter um happened recently. Um Mr. Coppola had um 20 11th grade English students um help with Act 158 service uh Act 51 service um learning project on plastic pollution which included um an essay, uh research, and presentation, and also fieldwork, where they helped collect litter, and they helped make our our area, Bushkill Falls Road, a much cleaner place and a much nicer drive up, which is always appreciated. Um I'm not the biggest fan driving up to school seeing litter, so I'm I'm very grateful um that they they helped make our community a little bit of a nicer place, and this is uh a great thing that we have. We had um state traffic traffic stop education with our 11th and 12th grade um health and physical education students um with Trooper Barricade.

004This is important just to make sure that students are again driving safely, especially um with the roads up at north, they can be relatively dangerous. Um so, I think it's just important that students are more aware of the the rules and everything uh related to that. AP testing Keystones. This is overall a huge and very tiring time of year for many of us, um including me and Lawrence. Um we just finished uh our 2 weeks of AP testing and Keystones, and we are going into makeups. Um our students, from what I've heard, have been fairly confident in their testing, which makes me very proud and very happy for them, and um I'm wishing good luck to the remaining testers and everyone who has to complete tests within next week. The honor ceremony. Another huge thing.

005It's crazy that it's already May, and I'm already talking about all this, especially my last one. It's heartbreaking. Um on May 28th, on Thursday, May 28th, the annual honor ceremony will be held. At the ceremony, we um recognize our students for their outstanding academic performance throughout the school year, and um the overall senior awards for uh like overall performance in certain subject levels. On to the arts. The Master and Grasshopper art show Um, two of our amazing students in our senior ceramics two class, um, Giovanna Ponton and Faith Swerge were accepted into the Master and Grasshopper Art Show at Mansfield University. This is a judged and juried art show, which means to even get accepted into the art show, the judges have to actually look at your your art and be like, "This is good."

006And if it's not good, you don't get in. But clearly it was really good, so they they got in. Um, they they were running uh for a couple of awards and the award ceremony was on May 1st, but I never heard back from who won, but I I'm sure they did wonderfully. Here's uh a picture of their of their creations. Be your own kind of beautiful. Um, uh in a lot of the rooms at North, teachers um have students paint murals and have art that like uplifts students. And recently in Mr. Theos' uh English classroom, uh Ieasha Gray finished her mural for uh be be your own kind of beautiful on the wall of of her home room class and I believe her 10th grade English class. Um, this It's it's beautiful. It's it's absolutely

007gorgeous and I I just love that a part of her will always be in the school and like her hard work and it it'll it'll be a great uplifting thing for future students cuz just like I know walking into a classroom with a beautiful mural on the wall, it would just make me want to work so much harder. And I I love that we get to showcase North talent like this. The band went to Tennessee. Um, this was uh one of the best trips of my of my life and my educational career. Um, it it was just so unique seeing all the different parts of Tennessee. At first I I was a little bit skeptical because they they told me I was going to Tennessee. I was just like, "Tennessee? That's a trip." >> [laughter]

008>> I I I was not half expecting to to see as much beauty as I got to see, to experience as much as I got to experience. I remember one of my personal highlights, I was walking around, I believe downtown Pigeon Forge, and I got to stumble upon a a live bluegrass band playing, which was just such an amazing experience. Uh we went to the Titanic Museum, which was it it was just like incredible. They had this like pool of water that was supposed to like mimic the temperature of the waters when the Titanic sank, which I just like was totally geeked about. It was It was really cold water. There's a Titanic Museum in Tennessee? I don't know. Come on. So, it's not It's like the weirdest thing ever. You're driving on on the

009road and it's like a big like Titanic. Like it's built like to look like the Titanic. Weirdest thing ever. All right. That's cool. What an experience. I recommend it though. It was It was a lot of fun. So, now recommending travel to Tennessee. Yes. It was It was It was amazing. And the mountains were beautiful. It was just like something that I can ever can never forget. And also while we were there, uh which you'll hear more about later, was May 1st or National Decision Day. So, many of my fellow seniors wore on May 1st our college merch to celebrate where we're going. And here's an amazing group photo of the band right before we went into Dollywood, Yeah. it's the best amusement park ever. Okay. Just to Just to be clear. >> [laughter] >>

010The annual spring choir concert happened um on on May 14th. Um the travel choir, mixed choir, and chorale um all performed. This concert was honestly amazing. It was one of the best that I've been able to be a part of and I I was very honored to to be a part of the the music. And just be a part of a group of students like that. Um at the concert as well, our senior members in the vocal department were recognized for their their time in choir. Then again, I talked about this at the last board meeting. It's not directly related, but we have North members in in the orchestra, so I think it's always important to shout out the Pocono Youth Orchestra. Uh we had our concert on Sunday where two of our seniors were

011able to perform a solo with an orchestral accompaniment, which is an experience that not a lot of high schoolers get, and it can be very valuable to to students going into college who plan on continuing their their journey in the arts. And then last, the annual spring band concert is tomorrow, May 19th. I hope to see some of you there. Um during the concert, you'll hear from the jazz band, the the concert band, and a special special senior ensemble will will play the Star-Spangled Banner to to start the the concert. Um I wrote the concert starts at 9:00, it doesn't. It starts at 7:00. Um I I I pressed the wrong uh key on accident. Don't show up at 9:00, it'll be over. Um but I'm I'm super excited. Uh as a a forever band

012kid, it's it's going to be kind of weird to to know I'm stepping on that stage for my last time, but uh I'm excited. And then, Music in the Parks. How could we forget? On Friday, um the the choir and the choral and the treble choir will be traveling to Hershey Park to um compete or participate. It's it's whichever you want you want to describe it as. Um it it in some ways it's a competition. We do usually get trophies, but I I would say it's more participate and um increase our depth and knowledge in in the the arts. Uh it's it's overall a very valuable experience for students to go in front of judges and and perform. It can bring a certain level of seriousness, and even though our what our choir director tells

013us is very valuable, sometimes hearing it from another very um professional person can be an overall important experience. And now I'm going to turn it over to Lawrence. Hello, everybody. Now, we're going to talk about athletics for the last time. Um North baseball, the North varsity baseball team took on um East Stroudsburg South at PNC Park on May 4th. The The unified track, the North Unified Track team competed in the regional competition at Boyertown High School on May 4th. The North Unified Track team finished the regular season in first place going undefeated in each meet, so we're very proud of them. Um and the North Unified Track team placed second at regionals and will now compete at the state championship on May 22nd and May 23rd. Um I think I've mentioned before that this is

014a pretty a pretty new team at North and so to see that we're going to states and this is not the first time since it's you know since it's been started that we've been to the states. So, we have a really successful and really proud of our North Unified Track team. Okay. And the North Track, the North um the North Varsity Track team competed in the district championships at Whitehall on May 12th and 13th. We had a bunch of participants and a lot of freshmen, which is new for you know we haven't had we have we we we haven't had this many freshmen in districts in a very long time and so we're really excited to see what they can bring to us in the future. Signing Day. Each Charles B. North held their signing

015day ceremony on May 15th where our senior athletes signed their commitment letters to continue their athletic careers at the collegiate level. Some extracurriculars. Mental Health Awareness Week. Um Abington's annual Mental Health Awareness Week is May 18th to 22nd and throughout the week Abington students are spreading awareness of mental health issues teens face on a day-to-day basis. Um and we're advertising our school's mental health resources and encouraging students to maintain a positive environment and I know one of the little um things they're doing especially during the testing week that we mentioned was giving out small little treats to individuals who are testing where you can like send out their own little you know write them a note or something, which you know as somebody who has been through the grueling testing weeks um and I still

016have one more test on Friday, um it is helpful to see if someone's just you know some someone's there to lend a hand, so I do think that it's an it's a nice thing to do. Literary Magazine. North Literary Magazine or The Reverie, is releasing their third edition of the magazine this month, which contains poetry, short stories, non-fiction, lyrics, photography, and other art and writing from our students and even some staff from up here at North. Um this is just sorry, like I just think about Literary Magazine and that it was originated or started with its first um editor being a class of 2026 member. And so, you know, as we're graduating, this will be um specifically Corey Sanchez, will be her last year and she will be leaving it behind to, you know, pass

017it on to the to the new generation. And I just think it's awesome to see that something that specifically our class, class of 2026 started is so successful and is continuing to grow. Um The Key and Leo Club, Key and Leo Club has had a great success over the past year. Um among many other events, Key and Leo Club recently hosted their final blood drive, which we've had dozens of students participate in and honestly, every time we have a blood drive, it's always everybody signing up. So, I do think that's an amazing thing about North. And additionally, they volunteered with the East Stroudsburg Lions Club and Sight for Hope to play games with people with visual impairment. And the Key and Leo Club has also garnered 120 lb of plastic bags for the East Stroudsburg

018Lions Club to recycle into a bench within our local community. Um I couldn't tell you how many times I walk into classrooms and we've been collecting, so it was a fundraiser where we've been collecting plastic bags for about a month and in every single classroom, it was whoever got the most, whoever got the most bags got a donut hole party or whatever the case was. And it was just incredible to see in every class, half the wall just stacked with plastic bags. Um and so, I think oh, one of our highest amounts was over a thousand plastic bags in one classroom. So, that was that was awesome. And and 120 lb, which put into perspective, that's a lot of plastic that are now being used for something else and not in our streets, so. Senior

019events, this is personally my favorite part. Um, rep your school spirit day as we were talking about. This is when everybody wears their their where they're going to in the future and basically decision day, that's what it is. And so, we see a bunch of them and it's not only their school. We had some people who are also going to the workforce who wore a shirt from their workforce and also people going to the military who wore like, you know, the Navy or whatever they were going. So, you know, it was really fun day. All the seniors are kind of united there, so. Mock crash, um, just a little background for anybody in the audience or anybody doesn't know what mock crash is. Every year before prom, we always have a mock crash or a

020fake a fake a fake accident between students and we create a real scenario. We have makeup artists, um, in the picture up there we have Mr. Massa and Ms. Walters who they did the makeup, they did all the, you know, realistic blood and all that. And the point of it is to show a demonstration of what could happen coming back from prom and just in general during graduation and the end of school year. Um, it's known as the one of the hundred deadliest days where the most teens die in motor vehicle accidents than any other day of the any other period of the year and it's because of this. And so, we want to really emphasize that we should be, you know, safe no matter where we are, no matter what time of the year,

021how excited we are. And so, that's why we hold the mock crash and I think it's we didn't have any accidents after our prom, so I think it was a success. And we'd like to thank Mrs. Culbreath for her work with that. And they were very realistic. Yes. I had a lot of blood to clean up. >> [laughter] >> But yes, so we finished our mock crash and then prom, um, which was obviously a highlight that happened just this past Saturday. And so, we were all it was very great time. We were at Kalahari, um, and our prom king was a congratulations to our prom king and prom queen. Prom queen Wayne King and Leah Gettys. Um, everyone looked amazing. It was an amazing time. The DJ was great, the food was great. So, I

022just like to say that prom was a success this year. And after working so hard to plan it, I mean, you know, you know, crunching those numbers with the prices and everything, I'm so glad that everything worked out and it was beautiful. And the senior assembly on the same day as the honor ceremony in the morning, there's um the senior assembly where seniors will be recognized for various awards and scholarships. So, um I know a couple of you guys will be there, so very excited for that. And then finally a graduation and thank you. As you guys know, the seniors will graduate on June 5th and during graduation both the band and choir will perform. And, you know, I guess this is our little goodbye. I just want to say thank you so much for

023everything and everything you guys have done. It's been an honor being able to present to you guys monthly and um I wish you guys East Stroudsburg District North and South all the best in coming years. Don't go anywhere yet. We want to thank you. Do you have Do you have something to say to Yeah, I wanted to say thank you, too. Okay, so I want to say thank you. Uh this has been an amazing opportunity to hone in my public speaking skills. That's been great for me. Uh there's another educational bonus for you guys uh cuz I know you love to find those. And it's overall just been a really positive experience for me to help represent my school and make sure that North is is seen and I really appreciate uh having that platform.

024And I also hope you have great summers, too. You have represented North well, so we wanted to give you a gift. So, this is a gift from the board. Thank you so much. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. And I just want to touch on the mock crash. Not only was Bushkill March 11th Bushkill March 11th, but the the Bushkill Fire Company, the Pennsylvania State Police uh Blooming Grove Barracks, um and the Pike County Coroner's Office all actually attend and made it a very realistic event for those kids. It's It's It's an awesome event. So, we had to We had to stop. They said, "You can't go back over there now. They're zipping them up in the bags." Those people who did not survive. >> They had two deaths this year, which is not really

025One is bad enough. >> bags. Two bodies. Students in body bags. It was really very realistic. >> It's very realistic. So, you know. Sorry. I'm an alcoholic by nature, so I speak by trade. So, I can keep it It was there for me as well. Well, we We thank all of the agencies that made that happen for North Pike. Thank you. Well, that's definitely >> They didn't have to clean up the blood. >> [laughter] >> We are now going to move to the South and fill again tonight. Olivia Robinson, thank you for filling in for South this evening. Come on up. And welcome. And welcome. Heads up there. Here it is. So, first we'd like to highlight the teachers of the month. Congratulations to our May teachers of the month, business teacher Zach Cole and

026social studies teacher Sabrina Lapresidy. Both educators are proud Coupler alumni who continue to give back to the community that helped shape them. Thank you both for your passion, student-centered approach, and commitment to building meaningful meaningful relationships. Your ability to inspire students to succeed both inside and outside of the classroom makes a lasting impact each and every day. We have some sports highlights. First is from our track and field team. We recently competed at the District 11, I forget which day, but it was a very good showing. We had a lot of people place, and more um importantly people who got to states. So, they're They're They're going to be competing at Shippensburg this Friday. Um highlights are Elijah Couch who won the 300 meter hurdles, me, uh I won the shot put, um Yeah. Uh

027Ivan Laboy won javelin, Gamora Woods won the 100 meter hurdles, Taylor Cole Walcott finished second in the 100 meter 100 meter dash and took third in the 200 meter dash. And then the 4 by 1 team placed second including Taylor Cole Walcott, Angelica Velasquez, Gianna Senara, and Jasmine Levine. All athletes will be competing at the PIAA State Meet at Shippensburg this upcoming Friday and Saturday. So, very exciting. Good luck. Um in the normal season though, the girls team undefeated with the record of 6-0. So, that's also Wow. We we held it good. Um in other news, the baseball and softball teams um both qualified for districts, um which are happening today with baseball playing against Easton and softball playing today against Parkland. I did not find out the score, so let's just hope they win.

028Um other news, high school's drivers the high school South drivers education class um the driver education department received a grant that allowed 45 students to take an educational field trip to the Mütter Mütter Museum in in Philadelphia on May 6th. I think I I didn't personally go, but I heard it was like a pretty pretty cool experience. Like you have there was like a bunch of like well, there was body parts like all along. You got to see like the anatomy of the human being. So, it was all like very educational, also very cool cuz most students will probably not see that in their like school lifetime. So, it's pretty pretty neat stuff. Um the class of 2027 the high school South class of 2027 held a successful fundraiser. Um it was parents night out

029um on May 1st. Over 40 National Honor Honor Society students from high school South helped run the event and 30 elementary students from our district attended. It was a little hectic at first. I was one of the students. I'm I'm also vice president of the Booster Club and so I have planned and had to be there to, you know, make like keep care of the children. >> [laughter] >> We met a lot of interesting personalities, but there's a lot of there's 40 of us who actually attended so we were not short on hands. Um we played games with them. It was very um including. We had a bunch of different events from sports to movies to um we did make DIY squishies which got a little messy. But we all cleaned it up. It's okay.

030But it just gave our our wonderful parents a night off to just breathe, relax, especially during this hectic May season when all the kids want to do is just go outside and play, not be in class. So that was good. And then the computer science competition which Paxton and Chimanski is at tonight. Um Hank, Paxton, and Emily and Nice, Pablo Soto Moreno are competing at the state level media design competition after getting first in their events at the district level. They're incredible kids so I'm just glad to see them succeed and you know, show their talents at the state competition. Um in other news, the Red Cross and NHS um paired up for their final of four blood drives. They collected 39 pints with the American Red Cross at this drive which that's like a

031lot. Um this qualifies one student in the Red Cross Club for a 2,500 scholarship from the Red Cross which I think is pretty amazing to give back to our students who are so invested in the Red Cross and in its community. Um in other news, the PBIS and CAF store um is coming is going successful. So far this year we have had 5,169 redemptions through our school store. Additionally, some of some teachers have created their own classroom stores and we have actively used the teachers rewards within the PBIS rewards. So we're just giving back and rewarding good behavior which is I think is a good thing. Um another implementation of the system was the use of raffles to include students in school-based events like pep rallies. This gives everybody a fair chance to put their

032name in, leave it up to chance to get into the um the like the pep rallies and just just school-based events when some people have said that it's not doable. So, this is all fair chance. I feel like it it leveled the playing field and I I feel like people are enjoying it. Um, Earth Week at South. Earth Week at South was also a very big hit. Um, Ziyara Castillo, uh Riley Dunbar, Sinai Jeter, and Finn Brown and Caleb Green spent this year working on various aspects of service involving conservation, nature appreciation, and rising awareness regarding the indigenous pencil people of Pennsylvania. With knowledge they learned um they learned, they raised awareness to mental health throughout a week in April. The themes included um yoga day, um birds birds birds. That sounds a little weird,

033but basically we learned about the local birds um around our area. Um, it was actually pretty cool. Um, the girl there was a a lady from I put it in there. Pocono Environmental Education Center. >> Center, yes. Um, she actually brought in taxidermy birds, which was like pretty creepy, but once you got up close and you pet them, but they were like it was for it's for good reason to bring awareness to like just the uh like the environment around us and we played games, we made bird feeders. Um, I made mine the biggest. Just so mine was one. >> [laughter] >> Um, on on Wednesday we had a campus litter cleanup. Um, on Thursday we did tie-dye and on Friday we had a mindful outdoor day. Um, I actually participated in the mindful outdoor

034day, too. You got to take a walk outside with like um a towel and you have to pick a tree and you have to name your tree and you have to speak to the tree, which sounds it a little weird, but it was actually pretty therapeutic. I ended up falling asleep near the tree. It worked. What's your tree's name? Uh I name I named it Steve. Steve [laughter] the tree? I don't know. I saw I saw a woodpecker and the woodpecker reminded me of I don't know. His name is Steve. But I fell I fell asleep near him. He's near the softball field if you want to go find him and say hi to him. >> I want to go meet Steve. All right, we're going to go meet Steve. But yeah, it was just

035a It's pretty good day to connect with nature. Especially during leading up to AP exams and I was working during this time on like a like a big research paper for AP Lang. So just the giving myself a moment to relax like just get away from the computer. It was very nice. So I'm glad they the students organized this cuz they really brought really brought awareness to mental health. Um the class of 2026 prom, it was a good I've heard it was really good. I heard I forget where I don't know where it was. It was at Penn Penn State, yeah. Penn State. But I heard it was good. I I saw videos of them with like I don't know like a cannon or something. They were they were living it up. But the prom

036king and queen were John Daughtry and Teddy and Mary Mary Nell Smart Ted. Um in mini in mini thon news, on Friday, May 8th, 125 committed high school self students took part in our annual mini thon. Over the course of 12 energetic hours, students raised awareness for pediatric cancer while enjoying a lively program of events. Together, these students raised 13,000 13,203 in donations for Milton Hershey Medical Center to support families facing pediatric cancer. It's tough. Yeah, we raised a lot this year. I think last year we only raised like around 11. So just the extra $2,000 really helped our cause. It was very It was very fun. We planned a lot of events. One of them like wiffle ball, we had Zumba going, we did gaga ball, four square. We were just keeping ourselves alive

037especially at 1:00 a.m. So, it was very fun and a lot of students collaborated to make it happen and I was just glad it came to fruition. Um and other news, our culture fair is coming up on May 29th. East Brunswick High School South will probably host its annual culture fair. A favorite South High School tradition that brings students, staff, families, and the community together to celebrate the incredible diversity that makes our school unique. The culture fair is vibrant, student-led event that highlights cultures from around the world with food, music, dance, fashion, games, and interactive displays. It's a chance to experience traditions from across the globe while learning from one another in a fun, welcoming, and exciting environment. Uh it's our East Brunswick South is very diverse and I think that's something that makes us

038sets us apart from a lot of school cuz we're we're we interact with people that we might not not have if we didn't come here. So, I'm really glad that we get to show our uniqueness and it makes us learn about also going out into the community as well cuz in the real world you're going to see all kinds of people. So, I feel like this is a good way to really experience things. Um our spring and band our spring band and choir concert. The past month before both the South Band and Choir wrapped up their season with a concert held in the auditorium. It was well put together and well attended. We congratulate our seniors to four great years in the music department. Yeah, really good. Um rain rally. This Friday is the rain

039rally and it's scheduled to take place. The rain rally event is an offshoot of the polar plunge and this annual fundraiser is all about the coming together at the community to support the Special Olympics and the amazing athletes who inspire us every day. I have a little video. I don't know if it's going to play. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Oh. Um there's some fun music, but we're imagining it. >> [laughter] >> They look wet. They're terrible wet. There it is. Oh, there we go. There we go. Well, Perfect. The rain rally is a great event our school holds and it really highlights our inclusion. I think we're like we're one of the most welcoming schools to any type of student. So, it's just good to especially to cool off especially on these these hot days

040that are coming up. It's kind of crazy. It was like 60° last week. I don't know what's happening. Um, but just to cool off and just enjoy people and again um, celebrate each other's uniqueness. Uh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Olivia. And we appreciate you being here. You did a wonderful job. >> Excellent. Thanks for being here. So, we thank you and you are more than welcome to come back whenever you want. We don't have a gift for you cuz you're not our typical board rep, so I apologize. That's Okay, and now representing in CTI, Caitlin. Good evening, school board members, administration, and guests. My name is Caitlin Olatunde Mora and I'm the SkillsUSA ambassador. On Friday, April 24th, the Health Professions program held a blood drive and collected 40 units of

041blood, which can save the save up to 120 lives. 10 business and hospitality students attended Tourism Day at Kalahari on May 6th. Students were able to network with industry leaders and learn about various trends in the industry. Can I put this down a little? >> You may. I'm so sorry. On Thursday, May 14th, MCTI held its senior awards ceremony. Over $60,000 in scholarships and awards were given out. On Thursday, May 21st, six SkillsUSA students will be honored at the Elmer's Gates Leadership Breakfast for their involvement in SkillsUSA and their exceptional work ethic and leadership skills. And I am the East Earl student recipient for that. Congratulations. Thank you. The 2025 and 2026 senior recognition ceremony will be held on Tuesday, June 2nd at Strasburg High School at 6:00 p.m. We have begun planning for next

042school year, so please save the date for Saturday, October 3rd for our fourth annual car, truck, and bike and tractor show. Finally, I would like to wish everybody a wonderful summer. It has been a pleasure representing MCTI, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity that you guys have given me. This concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you. Caitlin, thank you for representing and MCTI. We very much appreciate it. Congratulations. You have to open it because it's an important gift, so you have to All together now. All together. Drum roll. Yeah. Oh, wow, for your uniform. Oh, isn't that cool? It's awesome. I haven't opened mine. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's amazing. Oh, thank you. So, Dylan is going to Penn State, Lawrence is going to Stanford, and Caitlin, you are going to Drexel, correct?

043Yes. Um Caitlin, I am a Drexel Dragon, as well, so I wish you the most luck. Yes, absolutely. So, congratulations. Thank you for representing us so well, and we wish you only the best of luck. We know you are only going to be successful. >> Yes. You're welcome. And we will miss you guys. You're all good. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on and our superintendent's report. Let me just sharing. It says the host has disabled sharing. Uh. I know. Okay. So, last board meeting, um some of our community members came in and they spoke and they asked some great questions about personnel adjustments, and we just want to make sure that we're addressing those questions and being open with the public. So, as a district, we are going to continue to maximize today's potential for

044tomorrow's success. And really, what what this means is that we're looking at tomorrow as tomorrow's success, but also tomorrow as long-term success, and what the future holds for our district. Before we get into all the specifics, I just I feel it's really important because I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea. When we talk about the district cost of a position, we include salary and benefits. In benefits, it's health care, which is medical, prescription, dental, and vision, life insurance, social security, Medicare, unemployment, workers compensation, and the pension component, which is PEACERS. That's about 40%. So, if you take a salary, you multiply it by 40%. That is what each position costs the district. So, if you have a $100,000 that you're paying, let's say, a teacher, it has a district cost of 140,000. Now,

045that doesn't mean that the teacher is getting paid 140,000, but when we look at personnel, that's how we bucket it because that's actually our cost. So, I don't want anybody to walk out of here saying, "Oh my gosh, our teachers are making 150, 160,000." They make their salary, and then that 40%. So, I just want to level set so that everybody knows when we talk about district cost, it's including that about 40% increase for the benefit side of it. Okay, so today we're going to talk about what we did for this school year, so it would be what we did last spring with positions for this com- this current school year, what we did this spring for the 26-27 school year, and then my hope is that I address some specific community concerns that I'm

046hearing or out there. So, let's look at 25-26 personnel. We're going to do it in two buckets. One is administrators, which is apps 93, and then the other side of it is our professional staff. Support staff has basically stayed the same. We have not decreased or increased positions. So, for the administrator changes, we um had our chief financial officer, he resigned in April of 2025 for another position. His salary at the time was 163,000 with that 40% the district cost was 228,000. We hired the school business consultants. Um we did two short-term agreements with them at $8,500 a month. Um we we one needed to get through budget season because Mr. Bard resigned right in the middle of budget season. So we did two short-term agreements and then the board decided whether to look for

047a CFO or keep school business consultants. We are proud and excited to say that we have kept them and we now have a two-year agreement with them um for $7,500 a month. We updated then our director of fiscal affairs position and we increased his salary, which is Mr. Matt Kraus, by $8,000 because he has added responsibilities. Although these are very big numbers, it actually has a savings. Last school year it saved us Well, this school year it saved us 124,000. This coming school year it'll save us 190 139,000. Why did we do this? Um the reality is is one, there's a shortage of business managers and CFOs. They they do not want to work in the public sector. Um so many positions when you apply for a CFO you you typically have a candidate of

048one. This board knows that there there was a very shallow pool. So that was a a factor. Also, there's cost savings with this. So as we say, we're saving about $125,000 a year. Board, if you have questions or anything to add, please feel free to hop in. Uh we did some administrative changes in the curriculum department. Some of this happened at the end of last school year, some of this happened during this school year. But we took our director of secondary and our director of elementary and we renamed those positions. So we took our director of secondary as I mentioned and turned that position into a director of instruction. At that time the director of secondary education retired. Then we had a resignation this school year, so we made the director of elementary education the

049director of curriculum. Why we did this? Because the reality is is that we wanted a K-12 comprehensive approach. When you have a director of secondary and a director of elementary, nobody's looking at K-12 math. Nobody's looking at K-12 English. We wanted to make sure that we were looking at our programs from K-12, the entire student experience. It's vertical articulation and it's making sure that it's a cohesive programming and any of our teachers will be able to tell you that there was disjointedness in the curriculum writing cycle, in the curriculum writing process, in purchasing of resources that elementary and secondary were not treated in the same capacity. So we created a comprehensive approach. I can add for both of those positions, uh just for the public's knowledge, they were both internal hires, uh people who were

050currently on staff who were promoted into those positions. Thank you, Mr. Petrillo. Uh the director of professional learning, this was a position that was created. Um and since I've started, I have talked about professional learning being critical for us to grow as a district. There is nothing more important. We are an educational entity. We value education, so we value education of everyone that we serve. So the district, and we talked about it last June, the district made a very clear value statement that they honor and respect the professional learning of those that we employ, and we created a position for a director of professional learning, which is a K-12 comprehensive approach again. So that did not have the top part had no impact on the budget one way or the other cuz those were positions

051that were already filled. The bottom was with salary and benefits, it was a negative impact on our budget. I would like just like to speak to that as part of EPR. Um when we had the interviews and I believe it was for um the director of instruction and we had two candidates. One was an internal candidate, one is an external candidate that were both phenomenal and it was really those of us who were on the uh actual board committee at the interviews that when we went to discuss who to hire, we really wanted both of them, but what we realized um through the questioning is that uh the Dr. Pyle really had this professional uh development component that was really missing in our district for years and years. Um and I can speak to that

052obviously having been a teacher here for uh over 30 years. And so we were the ones who suggested at that time knowing what our commitment was as well to hire both of them, the internal candidate for the director of instruction and uh Dr. Pyle for um the professional development which is what we had. >> we we realized through that interview process that there was a need for a director of professional learning. So then what we did was we built the job description, we posted the job, two candidates interviewed, and we hired the best candidate that just happened to be Dr. Pyle. So Dr. Pyle's interview highlighted an area of need for the district that the board discussed as a gap, but we still went through the posting and did with in good faith interview the

053two candidates that applied. Um any other questions about curriculum or comments? So other changes that we made last spring for this school year, we collapsed the position of an assistant principal at at Smithfield Elementary School. That saved 162,000 with salary and benefits. Uh the reason, honestly, is that there are 300 students at Smithfield and there's no need for two administrators for 300 students. That ratio was just skewed. Uh for social services department, we collapsed two coordinator of social services position. We had a K to 5 and a 6 to 12 position. Totaling 208,000. One of those positions was vacant, but it's still on the books in the budget. So, what we did was we collapsed those positions and created a supervisor of social services and promoted that person who was currently the coordinator of social

054services because the position was vacant. She was doing the K to 12 work, doing it well, supporting our students, supporting our family. So, we promoted her to the supervisor of social services and increased her salary to match the full comprehensive um scope of the work. Again, my hope is that you see the theme is that we're looking for a K to 12 comprehensive approach. We don't want there to be any disjointed for our students, our faculty, our staff. We want to make sure that we are offering a continuum of services that is consistent. That collapsing those two positions and still giving that increased salary saved the district 197,773 dollars and the reason, again, was the comprehensive approach. So, we created we actually collapsed we had a first level supervisor of environmental services. Um that person

055retired and we collapsed that position, but what we created was head custodian positions at each building. Which basically builds capacity within our support staff. It gives our support staff leadership roles and an opportunity to grow the position. That now, as of this contract, they get $2.50 an hour increase. So, between the salary and benefits and then the cost of that head custodian, it saved us $46,000. And again, the why is we're building capacity, leadership, and oversight at every location. Because at that point, we had three first-level supervisors of environmental services and 10 schools. So, now we have 10 leaders in every school overseeing the custodians. So, it's a stronger oversight and capacity within our support staff. So, for human resources, and I know that this is a concern that we've been hearing, we created an

056executive executive director of human resources position by promoting the person who was director to the executive director, and then we posted the director of human resources, and again, as Mr. Cotterell alluded to about other positions, that was an internal hire. Um that was a new position. The why? When when I came, one of the board expectations of me was to evaluate the organizational chart and efficiency. And to make sure that we were offering white-glove, high-level customer service to our employees. We have 1,300 employees in our district and 2,000 positions. So, if you think of all the coaching positions, all of the the department chair positions, activities, advisors, there are 2,000 positions in our district. And there was one administrator overlooking all of that. We wouldn't do that to a school. So, we wouldn't have 2,000

057students in a school and only have one principal. In fact, we have a high school with four principal Well, a principal and three assistants with 900 students. So, when we talk about volume, what we did was we wanted to make sure that we were serving our staff in a timely manner. It offers better customer service for turnaround of onboarding, turnaround of leave, and frankly discipline. So, if the director of HR is responsible for investigating discipline, and the person's out on paid administrative leave, and we have five situations that we're investigating, that turnaround time has somebody out on paid administrative leave for a significant amount of time. There There's an operational cost to that. We have drilled that down, and having a director and an executive director really helps us. There was a cost to the

058district, absolutely, but we feel that the service that we're providing warranted that cost. Uh as a clarification, directors and executive directors of HR cannot sit in the Act 93 agreement because they oversee all. So, if they have to investigate an administrator, they can't be in the same agreement. It's very much like a teacher can't investigate a teacher. So, they are not commissioned officers, but they're on an individual contract. So, to go over the summary of the 25-26, the chief financial officer, all of the adjustments that we just did, we walked away actually saving 145,000 148,000, which is good because we did add positions, but we also deleted positions. When we look at the professional staff, so we're going to get to kind of a final tally at the end. We removed seven professional staff positions

059at the end of last school year through attrition. The dental hygienist is not included in the savings. That's italicized cuz we're going to get to that because I know Mrs. Hartenfels uh had spoken about that, so I want to make sure I address it. So, those seven positions did nothing to increase class size, and it had no impact on programming. In fact, nobody realized that those positions were gone. It saved us about 735,000. So, the dental hygienist, we did decrease that position, we collapsed it, but we created a schedule B position for $10,000 to track the dental paperwork. So a dental hygienist, and if you were at our policy committee, right, Mr. Carcutt? If you were at our policy committee, you would have heard that the dental hygienist did screenings. Not exams. A screening is

060you're looking. You're doing a screening and then you're referring the student to a dentist. The dental hygienist actually moved and was living below the Mason-Dixon line. I don't know whether it was Maryland or Virginia. And had a separate contract that she would come back a few times a month to do screenings, but she was doing all the paperwork outside of school. To me, it just made sense that if we could give one of our people a schedule B position, we could probably collapse that position because there are outside providers that do screenings for free. So we did. So although on the books it looks like we created this $10,000 position, we did, but we also decreased and saved $105,000 by decreasing that position. So when all is said and done, last spring in the budget

061we brought you, we had decreased two Act 93 positions and decreased staff seven for professional staff, and it had just under a million dollar savings, but it decreased nine positions in the district. 26-27, this year's personnel adjustments. So this year we decreased 11 administrative positions. We decreased an assistant principal, director of communications and operations, director of specialized secondary, but kind of put an asterisk by that. Five first-level supervisors, environmental services, grounds, maintenance, and transportation, and then three supervisors of it special education. Let's go through them. So the assistant principal we collapsed an assistant principal position at Lehman. So the middle Smithfield assistant principal retired and we transferred Mrs. Lori voluntarily from Lehman down to Middle Smithfield and we no longer have a second assistant principal at Lehman and the reason is declining enrollment. Lehman has

062492 students when we look at typically you do 450 students per principal. So we have two administrators for 492 students. That's completely reasonable. Um that get us about $158,000 savings. We eliminated the director of communications and operations position. The why is all of the tasks for that individual could be parsed out except for facilities. So child accounting went to district programs, transportation went to pupil services and then building and grounds we created a director of facilities. This saved just that position $178,000. Then we eliminated those five five first level supervisor positions. Two were environmental services, one was grounds, one was maintenance, one was transportation that person resigned um and we just did not replace. The why is um the the low ratio of supervision. So maintenance and grounds had a seven and a half employee

063to one administrator ratio. Again when when we talk about ratio it that's not a reasonable um or lean system. So we felt that we could collapse those positions. The environmental services we do now have the head custodians and we do have capacity. We created a director of facilities because we wanted someone just solely focused on our facilities. We have over 1.7 square feet of structure. We have 635 acres of property. We needed somebody whose sole focus was facilities. So we created that and then kept the supervisor of environment environmental services and the supervisor of maintenance and grounds and then those first level supervisor positions. That saved 366,000. Then special ed did a massive pivot and try to keep with me on this one cuz it's not always easy to follow. So the director of special

064ed, we had a director of special ed K to 5 and then a director of special ed 6 through 12. Again, we kept separating these roles. So we created a director of special education K to 12. That way those students, those families have the same supportive personnel with them the entire time. They know who their contact person is. We collapsed three supervisors of special education. Um one was a retiree, two we offered them positions in the bargaining unit. They um that position became the director of comprehensive student supports, which basically is special education, which is autistic support, life skills, and emotional support. And what we said there was these programs of learning support versus those career other programs are completely different beings. We want to make sure that our students with the more complex needs

065have a focus. And when you look on paper, the students in autistic support, life skills, and emotional support is a lower population, but you typically have more meetings because they have more complex learning needs. And then learning support students, sometimes you only have one meeting a year. So we felt that although the numbers aren't equitable, the workload is. And again, our families who have students in these programs have one solid person that they are always speaking to. We took the director of special education position and turned that into a director of student services. So, previously, the directors of special ed or pupil services had K to 5 special ed. They also had nursing, guidance, MTSS, school psychologist, speech. Dr. Picassy, what am I leaving out? Guidance. English language learners. They had all of those under

066that. Those are really important programs, and because special ed is such a heavy lift, they didn't get the attention or love that I believe they needed. So, we created this position for somebody to focus on those other services that students receive that are equally as important as special ed that weren't getting the support. I believe if you start to talk to some of our teachers or professional staff in those buckets, they will tell you it's the first time ever they've had an administrator meet with them and talk about their programming. They've had support, they've had specific professional learning, they've had the attention they deserve. So, the why of all of this is a stronger focus and attention to our programs, and it explains out all of that. The savings was $202,000. So, although we renamed

067positions, we didn't really create any positions. We actually decreased two supervisor positions. So, the overall savings of all of that is about $900,000 that was removed from next year's budget. Then, um our professional staff union, and I want to be very clear with this. Our professional staff union approached us for a retirement incentive. We did not ask for it. We knew the reason why. The professional staff will tell you they were overstaffed, that our number of FTE and our enrollment has been disparate for years. Our enrollment is declining, the number of staff actually increased a little. So, they knew there was some wiggle room for that. We had 38 professional staff retire, which has a $3.4 million savings after the incentive. Six of those positions are being filled. So, the overall savings for the retirees

068is 2.6, but next year will be higher because we don't have that 50% pay out. Some other moves that we made that I think are important to note, the athletic director at South last year retired, and we hired an athletic director at South who is on Act 93. We made it Act 93 because they evaluate staff. And again, teachers shouldn't be evaluating teachers. Well, when the North athletic director announced his retirement, we went to the professional staff union and said we should be moving this as well. They agreed, they asked for us to move it, so we moved it into Act 93. The Dean of students was a quasi administrator. Each high school had one. However, they can't do evaluations and they don't work the summers. So, you're paying somebody a teacher salary for 184

069days and they can't do evaluations or in school or out of school suspensions. They cannot exclude students. So, it narrows what they could do. So, several months ago, the board made an a decision to add an assistant principal at each, and we created that they would just move from the teachers contract to the professional to the Act 93 and keep their salary. So, it had no cost, but what it does give is it gives us more wiggle room What they do, they can help with evaluations and instructional leadership. They can do high-level discipline, and we have them for 261 days of employment, not 184 days. The special education pivot was was a big change in our district. So, we created two intake specialists, but not really, cuz we always had an out-of-district coordinator. The intake

070specialists basically are going to be When students come to us, they're going to be the ones that receive them, write the transfer IEP, and then off-board them to the schools. There was one person who did that as well as out-of-district coordinator, and then we had 10 secondary itinerant caseworkers. And in this district, what an itinerant caseworker meant was all they did was paper. They didn't teach. So, all they did was paperwork and support. So, what we're saying is is we're creating these intake to pull a lot of that paperwork off, and we're asking those teachers to teach. That they're going to teach and run a caseload. Then, in the same way of supporting our services and our students, we created special education coaches in the professional bargaining unit. We did one for autistic support, one

071for emotional support, two for learning support, and one for life skills. This is going to be the teacher's point person, as well as the parent's point person. This is going to be the people who follow those students from K to 12, and make sure they have the support that they need. When we talked to parents, a lot parents weren't sure who to reach out to, because there were three supervisors, there were two directors, and it was very, very confusing. So, now they have a point person. These five people will be trained in these programs. And if you've ever worked in education, an autistic support classroom is drastically different than an emotional support classroom, which is much different than learning support, which is much different than life skills. So, we are going to train these teachers

072in how to really best support these programs. And again, we believe that it was all through internal transfers. It cost the district nothing, but we're offering better services to our students and family. We are trying to do a more comprehensive approach for our families and our students. So, overall, because we added the two assistant principals and the um the athletic director, on paper, we've only decreased five administrators. Um we haven't increased staff though, because we just moved those positions from one contract to an agreement. We have decreased 32 professional staff through attrition, which gives us a savings. That number doesn't add up. As many times as I checked this, it should be 37. It's a $3.5 million savings. So, a quick summary is in the last two years, we have decreased 46 positions. $4.5 million

073savings. We decreased our Act 93 by 11%. We decreased our professional staff by 6%. Uh we have spent a significant amount of time looking at programming, caseloads, what our student experience is, and what we need. We do not believe anybody will notice these changes other than increased level of support and services. Class sizes are not going to increase. Programs are not going to be cut. Electives are not being cut. Activities are not being cut. Nothing is being cut, except for just decreasing these positions and maximizing our staff. And maximizing that perhaps instead of teaching one block, they teach all three blocks at the high school. Questions, concerns about the personnel adjustments. Just to point out cuz I know it's confusing because we've changed a lot of names. But I know there were some conception that

074we were adding tons of administrative positions when in fact as you could see, we're not and we did not. And in back fact, we've cut So, there were name changes, but they were not additional people who are in the administrative level. And I can understand, you know, looking at the name changes, I'm a part of it and it gets confusing. So, it can be confusing if um to see the name changes and think there are new people involved. Any other comments? Okay, thank you, Mr. All right, so addressing some community concerns. So, there was a board action, I believe January 2025, that gave me the authority to hire professional or student support staff outside of the board meeting. First, this has never been done. And the reason this existed is one, it would never be

075done without the board knowing it. And and my hope is that the board can say like I am communicating all day, every day with you about what's happening in the district. Nothing is happening that you do not know. And every Friday, I do a pretty lengthy board brief of what's ahead and what happened in the week. The reason this usually is done is for those those time periods when you need somebody immediately. So, you need to open an elementary classroom. So, our numbers get really high in the beginning of August and it's like I don't want 26 in the classroom. It's a little too high for first grade. We need to add a kindergarten a first grade classroom. Great. Well, I can't officially offer somebody that job until the board meeting, which is the third

076Monday in August, which is when we start school. So, it allowed that flexibility. If you don't want that flexibility, I'm completely fine with that. I haven't done it. I don't plan to do it unless in emergency situations. Um for support staff, the district has always allowed support staff to start before the board approval date. Um so, that was nothing different. That was just something that had always been done. This was really for those emergency situations where we needed to add a classroom and it was the board meeting was 2 weeks away and we needed to get somebody in that classroom and get them set up so that the first day of school they were ready to go for students. So, as a board, you decide whether you want that action to exist or not. It

077It's It's not something that I wanted to do. It's something that we put in just for a fail-safe. And it's an excellent action because I as a principal I know many times, especially in the areas of physics, chemistry, math, when we offer a position, but it's not board approved for weeks, we have lost people and I remember just suffering through that as a principal because the board they couldn't get hired officially until somebody um the board said so. So, this allowed us, especially in those areas, and I think that's one of the things we consider, math, physics, all those areas that are very difficult to come by, that we are going to offer that so that person can go and resign from their other district comfortably knowing they have a job and don't have to

078wait for nine knuckleheads to vote for them. And not that we are, but And the other thing I was going to say is from the elementary perspective, having the association principal and teachers being really upset because their numbers are going to go up if then you have, you know, first graders, kindergartens who are in your classroom and then it's not till a month later that you're hiring another teacher and those poor kids who've just like adjusted to school, adjusted to this person who was in front of them, you have to decide which ones are coming out, you know, of certain classes to make the other section, which you need because you don't want to have 30, you know, in the kindergarten. So, I mean, I think this is a you know, a really important step

079for us in terms of making sure everything runs properly for teachers and students. I don't think this should be construed as a like an after the fact. Now, that's something being done. The communication that we get is is daily. Um and if a position were to come up and we would need that position, we can't make as a board that decision until a board meeting to make it official. Um and so it wouldn't be as if you offered somebody a position, hired them, and then say, "Oh, here's your here's your your monthly packet. By the way, I that would never happen. And so I don't see this as an after effect after the fact document. I see it as giving you the leeway to fill those positions for our students before that need arises. Like

080you were saying, you don't want that to happen a month after the school year starts. And to be really clear, this is only professional support staff. >> Yeah. So, their wages are defined by their collective bargaining agreement. So, I'm not making any choices of their wages. This never and can't happen, nor would I want it to happen with an administrator. No. Yeah. Mhm. Any other talk about that? So, this one has gotten a lot of energy if from what I'm being told. I'm not a social media person, but I'm being told that this is getting some energy. So, let's talk about administrative salaries and positions. So, there are two trains of thought when you hire people to replace others. There's a train of thought that they don't have the experience, so they should get paid

081less. There's also the train of thought that the workload isn't different. So, what's expected of me is the same as what was expected of Dr. Reiker. I I can tell you our high school principals. So, our high school principals, we have two high school principals. Mr. Lenhart is in his first year, Mr. Triolo is in a year five or six. Because Mr. Lenhart's in his first year, I can't say I don't need you to do the same workload as Mr. Triolo. I can't say, "You know what? You're new, you get to slide on expectations." So, if we're not sliding on expectations and we're not expecting them to do less, why are we saying a disparate salary? And when we say disparate salaries, that's when you become discriminate in your choices, and that's when you open

082yourself up for that you've paid one classification of human a different salary than another classification. So, in your protected classes, that's when you become susceptible or at risk for some claims of being discriminate. So, we match salaries. So, when the assistant superintendent for district programs and the assistant superintendent for pupil services were offered positions, we offered them the salary of the outgoing person. And their salaries match. This was not something the superintendent decided. This was something that the board offered a contract to these people. So, the directors were hired at matching salaries of directors. How do I have an office of a director of curriculum making $30,000 more than a director of instruction when they're literally working together side by side doing the same work, supporting one another, doing the same hours, and there's a

083disparity in salary? It It It is a difficult decision to make. It's expensive, but but it's not as expensive as we would think because we still had savings. So, you can either say their experience, we're going to pay them more or less because they're new. Or you can say we value that they're we have expectations for them and we're going to hold them accountable. So, that is what we have done and that is what we have done since I started. As for the interview process, we we have a pretty hefty process. So, we do paper screenings where before we even look at the candidates, we determine for an elementary principal, I only want to see somebody who taught elementary and who has leadership experience. So, then we go in, we create all of these categories,

084we go through every resume, we determine who has that, we see who meets the threshold, and those are the people that we invite in. I'd like it noted that the board president was involved in the assistant superintendent paper screening. Because assistant superintendents and superintendents serve the board. So, he was in that room doing who we would interview. We always do two rounds of interviews. Um when it's needed, sometimes there's a shallow pool and if you have two candidates, there's no reason to do two rounds of interviews. There are always performance tasks assigned where they have homework that they have to do. We always have a panel. So, we have board members, no administrator has been hired in this district without a board member sitting in the interview. We have Act 93, we have professional or

085support staff, and we have central office members. It's a collaborative decision from the entire panel. We discuss, and if you're in the room with me, you know what's the rule, we only discuss in the positive. positive. In the positive. So, we never say what we don't like about candidates, we say what we like about candidates. Every single administrative position we've hired has been unanimous from the panel. And I would like it noted because people are saying very clearly that I'm hiring friends when I'm friends with none of these people. I'm not social with them. If if I was not allowed to sit on an interview panel where I knew the candidates, I probably wouldn't be able to do any interview. I've been in education 25 years in this county my whole life. I've known almost

086every single candidate. I've worked with probably more than 50% of them. However, I also recognize that my voice in that room has a different kind of meaning. So, I speak never. I have never once said the candidate that I wanted, who I liked, who I didn't like. I facilitated the conversation, so we have a Resica principal that's on the agenda, and I said, "Let's talk about what Resica Elementary School needs." The teachers talked about what they need, and then I said, "Let's now talk about which of these candidates fills that role." So, I facilitated, but I wasn't slanting one way or the other. I don't do it. I never speak in those interviews because I don't want it to be that I'm slanted. I want us to hire the best candidate that the whole panel

087agrees on. And to this day, every single one has been unanimous. There was one split position, and we actually decided not to hire either because we didn't feel that it would be fair to either candidate to hire somebody that everybody didn't disagree because you're setting that up for failure. Um there's been some questions of some qualifications or certifications. One I just I think the public should know all of our certifications are public. If you go into TIMS, and I can send anybody that link, TIMS has you type in somebody's name, and I'm a public servant, all my certifications come up. We have not hired any administrator that's not certified. Now, certain administrators, so Mr. Romagno is on tonight's agenda for director facilities. There is no certification for director facilities, but any of our instructional leaders

088that work on the curriculum or instruction side have admin certs. They are all certified. We They We wouldn't employ them if they're not. It's one of the qualifications and when I go back to that paper screening, it's on that paper screening. Um are they certified? If the answer is no, they get red and they're not interviewed. Um Can I interrupt you, too? I I just need to address something else. I've heard the word Abington Heights spread out often. Um yes, we did hire Three people actually came to us directly from Abington Heights. One came to us, had worked there previously, was in another district and came here. Please understand, Abington Heights is one of the top-rated schools in the state. For us to secure administrators from Abington Heights to come here to work with our

089students is an amazing accomplishment. And we're proud of that. We shouldn't look at that as a negative. We're taking people from a top-rated school who are coming here to work for us. So, why that's being perceived as a negative, I don't know. It's a win and it's not uncommon in the business world and in the education world, someone's worked with someone and they get along and they understand that person as Dr. Vitalis's work ethic and the way she operates to say, I want to continue to work with her. She does a good job. And I want to be in that place even if it involves me traveling a little further and doing whatever else. So, please don't equate Abington Heights as a negative. It is a very big positive because there were very talented people

090running those school that school district and their scores and everything else, their curriculum, the accolades they win at the state level demonstrate that. So, I think that's a win for us here. Any other feedback about administrative positions or salaries? No. Okay. So, I I I I feel I need to address this because it's my understanding that there's been a lot of feedback on social media. And this is a slide that I did in my first administrative team meeting with our entire administrative team and also with our first board retreat that we had. And I think people need to realize who I am at my core. And these are literally the three tenets that I live by in all aspects of my life. I suspend judgment. So, when I see something or I think something, I

091don't jump to a conclusion. I ask a lot of questions. I I want to understand it before I say, "Ah, that seems fishy." I don't go there right away. I just I always ask questions. I also assume positive intent. I assume that the person who's coming at me and having a conversation with me has the best of intention and they're doing their very best on that day. I also like to challenge the status quo. I want to understand why we're doing what we've always done and is there a better way to do it? I ask and I realize that this is perhaps an unreasonable request, but I ask all those around me to help us live by this. Let's not jump to judgment. Let's ask questions. Let's ask a lot of questions. There's not one

092email that I have not answered in my entire career. There's not one question I haven't answered. There's not one person that's wanted to meet with me that I have not met with. I always assume that people are coming, they're advocating for what's important to them. We're not always going to agree. So, there's been a lot of conversation about broken trust. And I I I I feel that I need to identify that. Because you don't agree with me doesn't mean that I broke trust. Breaking trust is by being dishonest or misrepresenting. I've never misrepresented. What I've done is done exactly what the board asked me to do, and the board asked me to look at the organizational chart and make sure that we were streamlined and that each department was done. And we have gone department

093by department. And if you look at the board agenda since I've been here about every three or four months, we are going at a different department cuz I was able to evaluate and then adjust that department. So, there's been questions about communication. I'm always open to feedback. I I say it every day. Every day I want to be a little bit better than I am today. I want to be a little bit better than tomorrow. Um I want feedback. There's been some conversations about retaliation. I don't know where that's coming from or why, but I go to why would I do that? Why would any of our leaders do that? We want our people to be the best they can be so they can support our students. If they're not the best they can be

094and they're in an uncomfortable comfortable environment, they're not doing what's right for students. All of us have given our careers to education, to public service. All of us are well-educated, multiple degrees on the wall, and if we were in the private sector, could probably add zeros. But we chose education because we love this work and we love making a difference in students' lives. Now, when we talk about that I'm hiring friends and ruining the district, I I I I literally don't understand it and I'm trying to, but why would I hire people that I'm friends with? Why wouldn't I hire people that are the best people? And the people that are being accused of being my friends, it diminishes their careers in education when we say they were gifted a job. These people have worked

095in decades in amazing school districts supporting families and children, and giving of themselves, sacrificing time with their families to be with other people's children. They have given their lives to public education. And when you say they were gifted a position, it frankly devalues their work. A lot has been said about me, and I I literally it's not concerning. I don't take offense to it. But when you go after the people that we've hired, that we're we're assuming they're not qualified or quality humans who care about children because they've worked with me, it just it it's unsettling to me, and I feel very badly. And I've literally spent the last month apologizing to them that they know me. That they've worked with me. And I've never had to do that in my life. Um and then

096there's a lot of I'm trying to ruin the district. I'm from here. I'm born and raised in this district, have never left the community. Why would I not want what's best? It is the privilege and honor of my life to be here. I am honored, truly honored and humbled to be the leader here, and I want our students to be more successful than everybody in this room. So, that's what we're trying to set up. We're trying to set up the future success for our students by making sure that we're making fiscally responsible decisions, not cutting programs, and making sure our students have exactly what they need by the best people in front of them. Questions, thoughts, or concerns? I I just have to add one one thing there. One and cuz it's the email I

097received on my district email that I need as board president to get the superintendent under control. Please understand to the public, we are a team of 10. Not nine versus one, 1 versus 9. We make decisions together. We have lively conversations sometimes and disagree and that's the way it should be. But we make decisions and we, everyone up here, is a team of 10. So there's nobody running rogue here. We know things are happening as Jason said on a daily basis. We get a report. We know what's happening immediately. And we are able to talk about it. But this is a team of 10 people united to make this district the best. And I I really I agree. I've given my whole career here as a teacher, an administrator for 39 years. We want this

098to be the best district and why anyone would think anyone up here or Dr. Fatally would decide we're going to ruin the place here or we're going to retaliate and we're going to do these other crazy things that are being said. I'm sorry. You know, we're here as a team of 10 to make this the best district we can for kids. So um that's my point. Thank you, Mr. I just want to make a comment. Um I know I'm known as a person that asks a lot of questions and I will continue to ask questions and I know you like questions. >> Um but I've had the honor of sitting at this table for on and off for over 20 years a couple times and worked with I think about four superintendents. There were a

099couple in terms in there. Actually collecting it might have been five. There was might have been a temporary one in there. Um and I will say one thing. I'm I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to be, you know, pro administration, but in my history of being on the board and for those that I am public it's when we were at a couple forums we don't get paid as board members and a couple people thought we got paid. We do this for the fun of it and for and for the love of our students. That's the key. I mean if we're not here for students we're we're up here for the wrong reason. Um but one of the things I'm happy with this administration in general and and I'm I'm speaking to the

100public on this one is they don't hold anything back from us. Um and and not that we speak behind closed doors cuz that's been accused we've been accused of speaking behind closed doors. A communication from the superintendent to us as board members let us know what's happening is not speaking behind doors. She she updates us sometimes three times a day and and and you know and sometimes in the middle of the night a few times. Um and and that in the past has not been um has not happened. And then going through my school board training over the years that you had to go through, one of the things they always used to say was a team of 10 and up until this term working with you I really never realized what a team of

10110 is. And I think this board at the table I can speak for each one I can speak I always say I can't speak for the other eight, but tonight I think I can speak for the other eight. I think we are one of the most most cohesive boards in my career. And and and it's because we all are working for one goal, the students. And and I'm just honored to be on this board, okay? Doesn't mean we're going to do everything right and people are and everyone has and as Dr. Vitali says, you can ask questions and I'll be happy to answer everyone's questions also, but um I just think I'm honored to be on this board and and see where we are aimed, you know, and and I like seeing that up there

102now. Um we're looking for the future. Um tomorrow's success, you know, we're maximizing kids' potential for tomorrow's success. I mean, that that that mission is growing on me. So, um but yeah, or so vision division division, right? It's the vision statement. But yeah, so I'm sorry. I just want to say it's been a pleasure so far and um I'm looking forward to where we're going. Thank you. Anything else? All right, Mr. Mirabella, you are up. Follow that. Sorry. Good segue, budget. Are you able to pull the presentation? You want me to do it? So, do I have the best the most updated version? Or is our friend in the back doing it? You know, while while you're getting that together, I just wanted to compliment the students at Resica for all their work on the

103celebration of the art and also their play, their second grade play, which was tremendous. And I also wanted to to thank Middle Smithfield and Resica's students for participating in the art contest held by Middle Smithfield Township. There were over 150 uh children participating. Okay, I filled in the the empty. And it was amazing to see how excited the kids were to do the art projects in the hallways. To see them excited to show their parents everything that they created. And I loved the that glow-in-the-dark room. That was really cool. That is cool. Okay. You're on. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Matthew Kraws. I'm the Director of Fiscal Affairs for the district. Tonight, with Mr. Jim Arabelli, our school business consultant, we'll be presenting the proposed final budget for fiscal year 2027. The

104fiscal year for 2027 spans from July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027. Following a motion and approval by the school board tonight, the proposed final budget will be placed and for advertised and posted in compliance with the PA school code. Going. I'm I'm One more slide. I'm trying. Next. As we've talked about numerous times tonight, the district's mission statement, maximizing today's potential for tomorrow's success, has been at the forefront of our decision-making for the fiscal year 2027 budget. This budget is an opportunity to bring the mission statement of the district to life by providing the financial resources necessary to enact the district's vision. You can stay there for now. In February, the first draft of this budget was presented to the finance committee. And that first projection indicated a $34.4 million deficit for this year.

105Since that time, a lot of work has gone into this budget from the administration team to lower the expenditures. I'd like to say thank you to all those who contributed to the development of this budget. The administrative team at all levels, the building, the departments, and in the central office level. We've reviewed every single line item that has gone into this budget. And grappled with it against the district's mission statement. And I'd also like to say thank you to the business office and all the staff that works in there. Numerous of them are heavily involved in the budgeting process regarding trend analysis and position control. Next slide, please. Our agenda this evening. So, we're going to take a look at our revenues and we're going to compare them from the 2026-2027 budget that we're presenting

106to last year's budget, the current budget. We're going to look at notable revenue variances. We're going to discuss the real estate taxes. And we're going to look at the Act 1 index impact. Then we're going to move into expenditures um comparing the proposed 26-27 budget to the current 25-26 expenditures, um also discussing notable variances, and then we're going to give the overall budget at a glance. Mr. Mayor Donald. All right. Um I'll start with a quick quick recap. The last time I was before the board, uh we were talking about where we've been and where we are. Now we're talking about where we're going, right? So, just a quick recap um one of the key takeaways um is we noted in previous presentations, real estate tax revenue in East Stroudsburg has remained flat and in

107fact decreased uh from 89.3 million in 2015 to 88.5 million in 2024. Okay? So, that is really an impact of of decrease in assessed value over time through appeals, largely commercial appeals, and also not raising the millage rate during that time. Um And during this time, expenditures have continued to rise, outpacing revenues, and creating a structural operating deficit uh that the district officials are working diligently to reduce. Um we also noted that East Stroudsburg realized an actual loss of $10.3 million in the 2024-25 audited fiscal year. Our projections, if you'll recall, have a a loss of about $14.7 million in this current fiscal year, uh which leads us to the the 20 26-27 uh budget that is before you. Um Two conflicting revenue streams here. We had stimulus funds that were about $5 million a

108year that came off the books in 24-25. Thankfully, uh the state stepped in with some tax equity supplements for about $5 million in that year. Um so, that actually closed that particular gap, but we still have those increasing expenses um to take care of along the way. And um Okay. So, now I want to take a look at revenues with that sort of introduction. And whenever I look at revenues, um it's easy to look at budget versus budget, but I I also like to give some basis in reality. So, we provide the last fiscal year audit so that you can have that comparison. We talked about this with the finance committee as well. Um so, just taking a look, if you compare 25-26 to 26-27, there's really two major things in play here. Um State

109revenues, and we talked about the tax equity supplement, the state has put forth um $5 million in the current year, which was deferred into next year. So, we know we're getting that full $11 million next year. We can account for it next year, right? So, that's $5 million in additional revenue year over year. The other local revenue increase is largely an Act 1 index uh real estate tax increase that we're talking about here. So, those are the two major drivers uh in increasing revenue. Um and if anyone has any questions on this really high-level uh revenue analysis, I'll take any questions now. Okay. So, just want to trend it out for you. And overall, you'll see that revenues we're budgeting to increase by about $10 million year over year for those two um large-ticket items.

110Okay. Now, we talked about the two big-ticket increases, there is actually a decrease in revenue as well on the state side. Um and that comes from the refinancing that is proposed on our bonds. Actually, we're we'll see a decrease in revenue of somewhere around 750 to 800,000 in reimbursement because we're delaying the payments for the bond out, so we won't get be be getting reimbursed right away for that because we're not outlaying the debt service, right? Uh so that's an estimate. We are still waiting for PlanCon documents to come back. This is our best estimate based on what we have available. Could be a little more, could be a little less, but this is our best estimate. Um next slide, please. Okay, so now I'd like to talk about real estate taxes. And what is

111proposed and what is included in this budget um is an Act 1 index raise of 5%, okay? Up to the Act 1 index. Um doing so, increasing that millage rate to the Act 1 index, yields about $4.9 million in additional revenue to help partially close the deficit, okay? So the the deficit is reduced in this budget. So doing anything other than going to the index will increase the deficit dollar for dollar, okay? Um so millage rates for 25-26, I just wanted to break them down on what it would look like in Monroe and Pike. So the millage rate uh in 25-26 was 31.67 for Monroe and 128.71 for Pike. The new proposed rates would be 33.01 for Monroe and 138.62 for Pike. Okay? Um just a few things because multi-county districts are required to rebalance.

112So, we use strictly county assessed value data and we use strictly the PDE prescribed form, which is in the RETR section of the proposed budget, which is before you. Uh it's a fairly complex uh calculation. However, the state does it all. It's all prescribed for you in the software. So, you can see the underlying factors which go into this uh and you'll see um the the the proposed increase, you'll see there's two. Is this within the 100 index? And both counties say yes and yes. And that's how you know index on that page. Um So, one thing that we saw is your assessed value again remained fairly uh you know, steady. It increased by 0.1% between both counties. So, we didn't see a real material appreciation of the mill, which is common over this uh

113time period. Uh but we did see market value increases. And market value and assessed value are kind of detached from one another, right? So, house value values went up significantly um according to STEB, which is the State Tax Equalization Board. Monroe County went up 14.6% in assessed value. Pike County went up 18.5% in assessed value according to state data. Okay. So, that is where the rebalancing takes place between the two counties. And that's why when you look at the the rates, they're not exactly linear, right? Every year this this kind of balances out. One county kind of does um shares a little more of the burden and it shifts back and forth within a tolerance of about 2% of the burden. Um so, just to give you some nuts and bolts on how that works.

114The State Property Tax Reduction Allocation another component of this, which is impacts the tax bill. The our allocation went down this year by $3,000. So, nominal amount we get I believe it's about 7 and 1/2 million dollars. We're still roughly getting about 7 and 1/2 million dollars. But, the number of homestead and farm studs that are approved went down slightly. So, the homestead farm stud credit that everyone received last year was $776 and it is going to go up to about $778. So, about two more dollars on the tax bill. Um so, I know we were hoping for a bigger number there, but that is that's where we came in. So, on the next slide, I just want to talk about impact per taxpayer. To go to the Act 1 index, on my in Monroe

115County, the median assessed value is $140,000. $140,320. The millage rate is 33.01, which would equate to a median tax bill increase of $278.60. In Pike County, median assessed value is $27,665. Millage rate is 138.62 and the median tax bill increase is similar, but slightly higher at $281 and 24 cents. So, that is how it will impact our taxpayers should you decide to adopt this budget as presented. This is not a final budget. This is a preliminary budget, okay? Um so, adopting this will just move it forward and make it publicly available. Um and uh I I would say um just to just to wrap it up before I hand it back over to Mr. Kraus, Um the $4.9 million in additional revenue is in my view needed and necessary. You're doing a lot of hard

116work on the expense side of the equation, but as Mr. Kraus said, you were $34 million in the hole to start and the fact that the the deficit is down to where it is now is a real testament to the job you're all doing here, but I do believe that both sides of the equation do need some balancing and that's why we have included a recommended at one indexing. >> verify the math on the tax bill increases per household because when I take no offense, but when I take 14320 and multiply it times last year, which is the 31.67, I come up with 4,443 and then if I multiply 14320 times the 3301, I come up with 4631 and the math is 18896. I I can pull up my spreadsheet and share it with you.

117I I This is the result of the math we're doing. >> the math right here. I I appreciate it. I like I said, I I can pull that out and share with you. >> curious just so I get that impact. Your number is lower. Yes. Yes. So I want to make sure the impact to the taxpayers is what it says here or if it's the math I'm getting because my math is $100 less. Certainly. And that makes a lot to the taxpayers' pocket if I'm going to say yes to something, I want to know what the accurate number is when I do the math. Sure. I'll double check after this. Okay, I'll hand it back over to Mr. Kraus. Okay, we're going to move over to the expenditure side. Could we advance one slide, please.

118Yes. Uh like Mr. Mirabella highlighted with the revenue slide, um this is a a quick big-picture outlook of the 2025 2024 2025 actuals with 25 2026 budget and the 2026 2027 budget request along with their associated variances. We're going to deep dive uh into these a little bit on the next few slides, so this is just your highlight slide, um but overall, our expenditures from 25 26 budget to 26 27 budget decreased by nearly a million dollars. Next slide, please. So, these are some of the spending categories that are making up the expenditure side. The administrative salaries and professional salaries have both decreased. The administrative salaries by $475,000. The professional salaries by $923,000. Um I do want to highlight based on Dr. Vitali's presentation, the savings looks different because the teachers are also receiving a

119step increase from the current year to next year, um as well as they are able, if they earn the college credits, to advance in column placement. Um so, those numbers look a little different because of those reasons. Um the next several are based on trend analysis that we do in the business office for substitute salaries, um professional staff with the schedule Bs. That's all of your sports-related stuff. Um the big one-time expense that you're going to see on here is the professional ed paid leave and retirement incentive that the board approved. So, this is a the last year this will be in the budget. This will not be in your fiscal year 28 budget. So, that will be a savings that you'll see next year. Um I do want to highlight the the bottom there.

120Uh, you the board approved a new support staff contract, so there are some different associated increases for some categories. Um, salaries and benefits account for 76.1% of this budget. Um, so that's important to note as well. Uh, medical insurance, we're going to dive into that in a few slides after this, but um, a 5.9 million dollar increase in medical insurance. Next slide, please. On this slide, we're starting off with the professional services for the IU. This is in relation to the anticipated need for three new additional classrooms for autistic support to support the growing population in that area. Um, we've done an extensive work reviewing line items based on actual expend and need for properties and our grounds and facilities, so you see decrease there. Um, the next few categories are based on trends, trends

121in direct tuition for special education for alternative placements. Um, votech general supplies, we've done a lot of work maximizing the supplies we currently have in the district before we place new orders. Um, electricity went up, so our rates that we pay for electricity did not change, but what did change is the um, the mandatory grid capacity costs related to reliability that goes to auction every single year. Um, so that is outside of our control and by law, it's passed into currently existing agreements. Um, capitalized tech equipment replacement, you're going to see a decrease there due to changing um, cycles for replacements. And then finally at the bottom debt service, a near $10 million decrease based on board actions of debt restructures in August of 2026 and anticipated in 2025. And anticipated for July of this

122year a board action for estimated conservative $3.2 million decrease in debt um spending. Um on the next slide we're going to take a look at um our health care trust that the district participates in. It's called the EHTP health care trust. Um our funding rates have significantly increased over the past 2 years. I put a a complete history there for you to look at how of our funding rates have increased over time. Um notably last year our funding rate increased nearly 13% and then this year the the actuary that we work with is in requesting an increase of 18.27% to our funding rate. So this funding rate is per per employee that participates in the trust per month. Um this is these increased costs are based on our claims. The actuary determines a 3-year um

123trend of cost based to determine what our funding rate should be to keep pace with the current claims we're experiencing. Um this is not a problem or a unique situation to East Stroudsburg. Health care costs have increased significantly in the post COVID-19 world. Um they're driven by increases in GLP-1s as a significant cost driver. Um the average EHTP funding rate increase that we're seeing this year is 13% um with ranges from 0% all the way up to nearly 23%. Um it is important to note that these funding rate increases does not address the district's reserve balance, which is quickly being depleted by high claims. Um the trust expects us to have 4 months of expenses in a reserve balance. We're projected to be at just 1.5 months by the end of June. And based on

124this increased funding rate for next year, um we're saving or we're we're stopping some of the bleed and it's anticipated that we'll only be at 1.4 months of reserves by next June. But just to clarify, we self-fund our insurance. That's what the trust is. Mhm. So, we're putting money in to pay for any health claim that our employees or district staff have. But we're behind. So, we're but we're self-funded. Yeah. So, if I go to the doctors as an employee, I pay my co-pay, the district pays the other portion. Just not like Blue Cross doesn't pay it, the district does or the the fund does. The the trust The trust does, yeah. That's what I'm saying, yeah. And claims are just increasing all around. Um and man, I I just want to highlight as well.

125We have almost 1,300 employees and every month it's $2,302.09 for their health care. Yes. And we have around 1,150 um enrolled, whether retired or active employees in the trust. Um so, just to note for the reserve balance, um the finance committee uh made a motion to increase our contributions for the the past 3 months by an additional 5% um to show some good faith effort to the trust that um we're aware of our low reserve balance and working towards correcting that. Um but to To us back to 4 months as of right now would be roughly $7 million. So just to note that that $6 million increase you're seeing in the budget does not address our depleting reserves. That just addresses keeping pace with current claims. Do you know Do you know the last time

126we were at the 4-month period? Uh not off the top, but I can look that up that for you. >> Thank you. It's been been depleting at least over the past year that I've been involved with it. Since I've been here, we've never had 4 months. Uh the next slide is just showing how how drastic those funding rates are increasing over the past few years, but like I said, it's not a problem that is unique to East Stroudsburg. Um Closing out the budget at a glance for 2026-2027, our revenues are at $197,529,785. Um with anticipated expenditures of $213, $70,700. This leaves with a deficit of $15,540,914. Are there any questions? You want to You'll have to spend some time looking at them. Yeah, I'll look at them later cuz I was doing the math quick

127on my calculator, but that's okay. I'll figure it out. So our next steps, uh the board would uh make a motion to approve to move the proposed budget tonight so it can be advertised and publicly available. Over the next month, we'll continue refining the budget for any staffing changes or other changes we become aware of. And then in June, the final budget passage at the June 15th board meeting. Do you have an idea of what the real estate transfers will be for this year? >> 1.6 million dollars. And that's figured in? Yes. Yes. So, the revenues are as accurate as I can forecast at this moment. Now, that being said, we'll be closing April's books within the next day or two. We're going to run a new forecast, and then we'll see where those revenues

128come up. And then, if they approve or we'll we'll make those revisions between now and the final budget. Oh, absolutely. The expenditures, I think, are very accurate, particularly with the staffing work that the work that this team has done has been remarkable with the staffing. A lot of detail, and I think I had a slide in the finance committee meeting where we talked about how accurate that salary and benefit number is to the position, to the person, to the building. Like, it's That's a very accurate number. I think it was like 99.92% is what the budget came in at last year actual 24-25. You didn't really have an option either way. Yeah. I have I have a question. The county's in the process of trying to reassess because we've lost some a lot of money

129in the past in the past few years with uh businesses appealing and and so forth and and when you talk to people from the county, they're stating that if this reassessment comes through, it will give it will right-size the business. That's what some of the people in the county were saying. >> what will happen is it rebalances, so it's a net neutral for us. So for us, it it gets us nothing more, nothing less. Oh, okay, that's not what they're saying. Okay. However, what it does is it re-proportions out where commercial versus residential. And and I've done some research in trying to understand the inequity of why we needed a tax equity. And when we look at our other school districts in the state of Pennsylvania, an average school district in the state of Pennsylvania

130has 80% residential and 20% commercial within a 5% variance, right? So some have 85, 15, most around 80/20. We have a 90/10 split. So 90% of our property is residential, 10% is commercial, which means that the tax burden is 90% on our residences and 10% on commercial property. My hope is that that balances it a little bit better, but the reality is is we need more commercial property in our day. I've said it all along. I mean, I'm not >> That that does balance things out. It absolutely does. It takes a The only reason the only reason I brought that up there, I was hoping that maybe there was a chance that you would see an increase in the revenues from the the the commercial side. >> It's it's absolutely nothing. It's neutral to the

131district. Yeah, it's I'm going through reassessment in another county. It's absolutely has to be neutral. Now, when you get to the 2020, I I do have things that you need to be careful of when you go through reassessment and how to identify outliers in the county's tax status that you can protect yourself from huge overvaluations that then you restart that whole Remember the slide where the the value drops? We don't want to restart that. So, you really have to know your tax base and really have to go through with a fine-tooth comb. So, you know, we're we're helping a few districts go through that right now. Are the I'm sorry. >> I mean yeah, go ahead. Are the LERTA increases figured in? Are they As people are moving through their LERTA and their tax bill

132is going to increase, are those figured in? I'm I'm trying to see if we can somehow weigh it for our uh residents so they don't get hit with the whole thing. >> They would be, Jim, right? Cuz the numbers the county assessment office gives you has it. Yeah, so the the the county provides us but we legitimate we literally take the county's assessed value data, which would include those variables, and we plug them into into the budget. Okay. Any other questions from board members? Okay. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Anything else? I think we have taken enough of the board's time. We appreciate everybody's attention. Okay. We will move on now to our committee report starting with MCTI, Jason. Uh here we go. I'll do my best to read

133this. Uh MCTI met on uh May the 4th on 2026 at 7:00 p.m. Uh we had discussions regarding administrative and student reports. All those detailed reports can be found uh via MCI MCTI's board docs. Committee moved forward uh several key appointments for the uh treasurer's appointments. The JOC officially appointed uh Mrs. Susan Kresge to the board uh of Pleasant Valley to serve as the board treasurer for the upcoming 22 26 27 school year. The revenue return after following the completion of the independent fiscal audit of 24 25, the committee approved the transfer of excessive revenue back to our local sending schools. Webmaster, the board approved an agreement with Finalsite to approve or excuse me, to provide 20 extra hours of virtual webmaster services at no cost to us. And routine approvals of invoices and payments.

134JOC also approved the 26 27 final MCTI school calendar to ensure it aligned with all of the other regional school districts scheduling policies and procedures. MCTI students are expanding their learning through the health professionals two program. The field trip is going to take place at Northampton Community College in Tannersville. Which is going to be May the 15th. The committee accepted some bittersweet retirements from a custodial and our instructional staff. We also had some new appointments. Within part-time the assistant chef position. And the substitutes position for the CTE program. Our next meeting will be held on June 1st, 2026 at 7:00 p.m. Okay, thank you Jason. The IU 20 I was unable to attend the meeting. I did read over the minutes. I don't see anything that was affecting us directly, but I'll have a better

135report for you next month. Let's move on to property and facilities. All right, the properties and facilities committee met on May 6th. And we discussed things and we adjourned. But in between that time, [laughter] we also had a discussion about train and what we're going to do with that is we're going to use capital funds to provide uh to redo all of our lighting that is not LED lighting and we'll get our savings off of that and some controls as well to control the temperatures in buildings and make sure we're within a certain range to uh provide us some economy there in heating and utilities. We also uh selected a vendor for our yearly fire safety training and I believe we went with um Ty Barker. Did we go with Ty Barker? I can't Yes.

136And so we chose Ty Barker. We are going to have Ty Barker as well in addition to that inspect the ESE fire sprinkler We're going to take care of the sprinkler fire pump and they're going to go and review all of the piping in the sprinkler fire system to determine what elements are uh need to be replaced. The JM Hill is going to have a screening of the hallways using Wayfair sports. We reviewed the invoices from our engineering firm CHA. And uh the Smithfield boiler replacement we approved we recommend the uh payments for the application payment number one, the JTL boiler replacement application payment number one number one for that one and then a change order on the field house equipment at high school south. We're recommending that be accepted as well. And that's what

137I have. Did I miss anything? Sounds like everything is All right. Everything else is on the >> agenda. Okay. Thank you, Rich. Educational programs and resources, Anne. The EPR committee met on Thursday, May 7th at 5:30. I'm trying to summarize as much as I can. It was a 3-hour meeting. Um truly though showcased the dedication and hard work of our teachers and the CNI department. Um I really have to say thank you again to all of our teachers who presented so thoroughly and represented the hard work of the teachers and their teams and their departments, uh really showing their dedication to our students. In summary, we had presentations for our elementary health and physical education teachers who presented on Quaver, a curricular resource for our health and PE teachers. The ELA 10th grade presented the

138first reading of the 10th grade curricular framework. Once again, for our board members, remember this is available for board members before I vote next month. Just a reminder to um everyone who is listening that when we do our curricular frameworks, they're presented to us first. We have a month to, you know, preview uh and ask questions. Sorry. Sorry. [laughter] And ask questions. >> happened. So that um we can vote on it the next uh meeting. So ELA, which is uh high school uh English, is in their major review. So last month, if you remember, we did the ninth grade first reading. And this uh last meeting was ELA 10th grade. So coming before us this evening is our second reads are now on the EPR recommendations for the following curriculum frameworks for our approval: English

1399, General Science, and Personal Finance 2. In addition, the curricular resources for ELA 9 through 10 are coming from the 25-26 budget totaling $42,749.30. Thanks again to our high school teachers for working together to create these frameworks so that we will have a consistent curriculum framework throughout all of our disciplines. Uh in addition to our curricular presentations, Mr. Snyder and Ms. Polmanter presented the monthly EPR newsletter. This month's newsletter highlighted the instructional rounds at High School North. And Dylan, who is still here, um presented for all of our administrator on student voices and life at north. So thank you for doing that. Everyone said it was wonderful. He did do a great job. He was in a room full >> I know administrator that's a pretty fun experience. Honestly talked about great things but also

140pushed us to do a little bit better. Good. Excellent. Good for you. Thank you so much for doing that down. Appreciate it. Uh some of the other topics that were in the newsletter that data highlights of the administrative walk-throughs, student participation in our dual enrollment and moments in our schools that continue to make us ESASD proud. Just a reminder again to everyone that the monthly EPR newsletter is on our website so that you can kind of you know keep up with everything that's going on so beautifully in our schools. Uh next Mr. Snyder presented a proposed change to the high school bell schedule including in this presentation with seven goals, overall purpose, a look at the current schedules in both high schools, the differences between block scheduling and more traditional high school schedule, sample schedules,

141the pros and cons of both schedules, graduation requirements, and the all the feedback that he has received so far from his meetings with teachers and students. Um this is an ongoing process um as Mr. Snyder will continue to speak to our students, teachers, and families to better understand the impact and then moving forward making any kind of decisions. No decision is being made now. Implementation of any new schedule, even if it were to happen, will not take place for at least two years from now. Mr. Snyder's presentation is attached to the EPR's May 7th agenda. So if anyone who has not seen that yet um and would like to look at and get the details, just go to the agenda portion um and you can pull up that presentation for yourself. Lastly, working with our

142math teachers, Ms. Polman presented the first read of the ESASD portrait of a mathematician. If you haven't had the opportunity, again as I always say to look at the attachments in the EPR agenda, please do so as they demonstrate how much work has been done by our professional Act 93 staff in moving our curriculum and district forward. It's truly really exciting to see all the things that are happening in our district. Our next meeting is on Thursday, June 11th at 5:30. It is the second Thursday, not the first. Um just wanted to let you know that was a change there. Uh we'll be both here and on Zoom. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Matt. And it's the second Thursday because the first Thursday is graduation. Oh, that's true.

143That's why it was changed. Okay, uh Finance Committee, Rebecca. Yes, the Finance Committee met on May 11th. And you'll see on the agenda the Intrado One Cisco Flex subscription, just a renewal for a 5-year agreement. There's also some new phones being put in for Intrado One Cisco phones in buildings that do not have them yet. Um Parent Square, which I learned is the is the Remind version is a Remind app. Nope. >> Nope. It's It's there. It's replacing Remind. >> Remind. Yeah, it's a similar app to Remind. Yep. And that's $4.11 per student. And we had the presentation that you guys heard on the budget, which we moved forward. And then also we reviewed the recommendations for the Properties and Facilities Committee. And all the invoices as well as the ELA curricular resources that Mrs.

144Cortellessa presented. And our next meeting will be Monday, June 8th, both via Zoom and here in the boardroom at 5:30. Okay, thank you, Rebecca. And Keith with Policy. Policy met tonight, another exciting meeting. Um we are um I'm just so overwhelmed. >> right, Mr. Carter? it >> less than only 30 minutes. We We act fast. >> We are very efficient. >> Yes, we are. We asked them administration to put a motion to authorize and direct administration to post the following items and policies. We're asking to post policy 103 discrimination title nine sexual harassment affecting students policy 103.1 non-discriminating non-discrimination qualified students with disabilities policy 104 discrimination harassment athletic staff affecting staff policy 247 hazing policy 249 bullying policy 252 dating violence policy 800 records management policy 901 public relations objective policy 902 publications program policy

145911 news media relations just for the reference of the board and the community these policies were just updated with some wording that affected the the change in administrative structure and who is responsible for what decision and and what title it's just some clerical clerical corrections. Then we move on to the policies for discussion that we are asking to push forward policy 123.1 concussion management policy 209 health examinations policy 810 transportation policy 815 point one website and these were all recommendations and and updates that you can you can there's a lot that we we read you can listen to it online if necessary. Our next meeting will be next on June June 15th at 4:30 p.m. right here as [clears throat] well as online and love to see you there. Okay, thanks Keith. We're going to

146move now to public participation which is remind everyone when you come up please identify who you are and limited to comments on the agenda by residents and taxpayers of the school district. We have some people signed up. I'm seeing Did you guys need to speak? I saw you had papers in your hand. Yeah. Come on up. We'll start you up. I saw you move up with papers, so we want to get you up there. Just right up to the mic and you can lower the mic so we can hear you. And if you just tell us who you are and what school you're from. Okay. Um hi, my name is Cara Hayes. Um I'm from Lehman Intermediate School and Uh hi, my name is Liam Lee and I am also from Lehman Intermediate School. Um

147so we do have uh two separate things. We'll try to make it quick. Um again, my name is Cara Hayes and I'm from Lehman Intermediate School. I'm the current president of the National Junior Honor Society and the current president of the Model United Nations. And um I'm here tonight to advocate for something that should not be considered a luxury, but a necessity and that is a full-time librarian for the year 2026 to 2027. Right now, the other middle school in our district, JTL, does have a librarian and I believe that our students do deserve the same support. Um anyone here who has been in a library or even worked in a library cuz there's probably a couple knows that a librarian does so much more than just check out books. Uh librarians help students learn

148how to research, identify good sources, develop reading skills, and just so much more. But more than anything, build a lifelong love of learning and reading. Um especially in today's world, it especially in today's world where students just like me and all the other students in this room are surrounded by misinformation online. Um having someone specifically trained to teach students correct information is extremely important. Um I would also consider myself a pretty significant member of our student body and I've asked around in preparation for this board meeting. And a lot of people said that they enjoy reading a lot more than when they did in elementary school and it was a lot of fun to learn through our library classes. Um in addition uh our librarian right now teaches uh a library class for each reading

149class once a month. And um I'm not going to dig too much into it but she does do some really fun and amazing and engaging activities like for example off the top of my head blackout poetry. And uh I would have never known what that is without our current librarian. And um without a full-time librarian because uh the North High School librarian to my understanding will be splitting her time between North High School and Lehman. That's the plan I'm pretty sure. But without a full-time librarian those classes and the opportunities that come with them will disappear. And um he's going to get more into it but Mrs. Riley our current is also the advisor for the Model UN Club. And that club for the gist of it has helped so many students grow in so

150many ways. And without her students will lose that too. And it's a pretty significant club. And uh most importantly though this is an issue of fairness. I'm not trying to get too into that but if JTL students have access to the support a full-time librarian provides so should the students at Lehman no matter how like no matter the difference between the numbers of Lehman and JTL. Um I just want to say really quickly every student in this district does deserve Keep going. does deserve equal investment in their education. Um And I know the motto for this district is maximizing today's potential for tomorrow's success. And I think uh a full-time librarian will do that for Lehman. Hey, thank you so much. Very well said. Thank you. Okay. Um You're up. Uh hello and good evening

151to everyone who came tonight uh to this board meeting. My name is Liam Lee, as I already told you. Um I'm a student from Lehman Intermediate and I am the current secretary for Model United Nations. Today, I'm here to talk about Lehman's club, Model United Nations, and the loss of our school's librarian, who is our current advisor. Model UN gives students the opportunity to learn about world issues, practice public speaking, work together with others, and build leadership skills. It's a club like with students can grow more confident and become more informed about the world around them. Our advisor and librarian plays a huge role in this poss- in making this possible. She helps organize meetings, guide discussions, support students, and and encourages us to participate and learn. Without that support, our club may may like

152struggle to continue giving students these opportunities. Students in Model UN care deeply about it because it gives them a place to learn, belong, and challenge themselves. So, I ask that you please consider it that the impact that losing only that not only losing our librarian, but also our advisor will have on the students involving Model United Nations. Losing our librarian means that we're also losing our advisor. As you all can see, librarian our librarian does so much more than just sort books. She supports students and encourages them to look deeper into the topics they're interested in. No matter the idea, she always encourages students. Some members of the board, taking all in all of these factors, please consider why the students at Lehman shall have a full-time librarian next year. Thank you for all for

153listening. Okay, and thank you two of you. Very well said. Um Dr. Vitali will be in touch with you up in Lehman, so you know. We will have an answer for you. Dr. Vitali will be in touch with both of you. >> So, I'd love to come up and meet with Model UN, so I'll schedule that with Ms. Metzger, and then we'll find some time either this week or the beginning of next week. Okay? We would love to have the conversation and explain kind of how the decision was made and why. Okay? Thank you. >> Okay, but again, thank you for being here. Appreciate it. >> Ms. Riley for creating an environment that you have this connection with her, that you're coming and advocating for the position. So, I I you guys did a wonderful

154job representing, but really it's because you're so connected to Ms. Riley, which is exactly what we want out of our staff. So, thank you both. Okay. Um we'll move on to people have uh signed up. Somebody Ian signed up online. Okay, Ian. I'm I'm sorry. Absolutely. Up to the microphone, just tell us know who you are and Hello, my name is Madeline Malkowski and I attend East Stroudsburg High School South. I'm in the 10th grade and I'm here to speak on the newly proposed schedule. Um I would like to make it clear that I am not against change in our schools and I believe that this topic should be continuously be brought up even if the start date has been postponed. My biggest concern surrounding the schedule is the limitation it brings to the students.

155My understanding is that with this schedule, students will be restricted to about two electives a year. Not including the mandatory classes that will be take place during these times. This is extremely unfortunate for those students who want to be both academically and musically involved. Open spots are necessary for both APs and the arts. For students who are in band and choir will either be forced to remove one of these those classes or not take APs, which is wrong on a multitude of levels. Though our district is lowering our graduation requirements, colleges are not lowering in their expectations. Most colleges look for around three completed years of language. With the schedule we have now, the majority of students are able to finish these levels before their sophomore year is over. With the new schedule, a student

156would have would have to use three out of eight of their electives in their high school career on language alone. Another major concern that comes with the schedule is the workload it brings to the students. As a student who fairly high grades, participates in school activities, and gives respect to all staff and students, I understand the immense amount of stress most high school students are under. As well as the loss of interest in classes over time. For students who are not particularly interested in school, electives are some of the most important parts of their day, as it exposes them to different interests and keeps them in school. Giving students more work on top of their already vigorous schedules at any level is extremely unhelpful. Money will also become a problem if students have to seek

157out um outside organizations and clubs to build their knowledge or college applications, which would happen if we are limiting all of their electives. Lastly, a student's ability Lastly, a student's ability to focus and care about school will not be changed with the schedule, and I actually believe making classes year-long will lower test scores in the long run. As for teachers, prep times and daily teaching periods will decrease, which will result in more homework and confusion between teacher and student dynamics. As a future educator myself, I believe it is extremely important to re-evaluate the schedule and look for the best intent for both current and future teachers and students. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. At first, I just want to say I am so happy that you are going to be a

158future educator. So, congratulations on that career goal, and thank you for being here. We appreciate it. Dr. Vitali, I'll turn it to you. Madeleine, have you been in contact with Mr. Snyder? Um I was at the meeting. Um I did not get a hold of his email, actually. Um he said Mr. Trillo would send it out, and he didn't. So, I would like So, yeah, absolutely. And Mr. Snyder is kind of continually going and talking with students. We're not done with this conversation of trying to find a schedule that meets everybody's needs. >> Yes, I would like to make it very clear that this schedule should be continued to talk about, no matter how much we push it back. It's >> Absolutely. kind of deflecting the problem. So, I think it's very important to keep

159it in focus. >> That's our plan, and we we value what the teachers say, Mr. Krammes. We value what you say. But, really, in speaking to Mr. Snyder, it's really what the students are saying. And that is the most important, because we want to make sure that the student experience is a rich experience with a vast amount of opportunities. And Mr. Snyder is listening, and pivoting, and making sure that we ensure you get exactly what you need as a student. >> Okay, yes. I just wanted Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. So, we have another student who registered online to speak, and Ian. Is Ian here or >> Ian, are you online? Hello. Nope. Yeah. Okay. If he pops on, we'll come back to him. And Okay, then we're going to move on to

160those who signed up. Um Lauren? Oh, okay. Lauren, would you mind sorry. Ian. We just want our kids to get to bed. They got to get up to work. Ian, can you hear us at all? Yeah. can you hear me? Yes, we will make you a little louder and then we can hear you fine. >> [snorts] >> Okay, go ahead and we'll see how we do. Perfect, go ahead Ian. Okay, yes thank [snorts] thank you for greatly appreciate it. I would like to also talk on the proposed schedule by Mr. Snyder. So yeah, I'm a student of High School North and after seeing the schedule I figured I should speak up against it. Now, I understand that this proposed schedule seems to have only the best intentions behind it. Intentions I fully agree with and

161entirely support. >> [snorts] >> But as we all are aware, intentions are not the end of the story. See, this schedule reduces class variety and and thus taught less skills in all aspects. Aspects Mr. Snyder admitted to me directly when I asked him that. Simply put, we cannot expect students to learn more when they are taught less things. Nor can we expect them to have a deeper understanding of subjects when we make them choose between having more education in core subjects and having a more diverse education in other subjects that they may possibly need more. >> [snorts] >> This schedule promises to reach goals that I believe we can reach with modifications to our current schedule. And this schedule brings with it a complete change of school operations and all of the complexities of that.

162As well as a myriad of severe and inexcusable deficiencies inherent to the schedule. I agree that we need change, but this schedule is not what we need. Through High School North, I have learned how to sew, to solder, to film, to act, to speak German, and most importantly, to think. And to deprive us and to deprive us of such a tremendous amount of skills, all of which I am certain to use in my life, would be simply unacceptable. So, I do hope that you will agree with me on this. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Ian. I appreciate your input. Thank you, Ian. Well done. And And I'm going to echo what I said to Madeline. It sounds like you've been in touch with Mr. Snyder. Um and we are definitely listening to make sure we

163we figure out a schedule that best meets everybody's needs. Okay, and thank you for uh taking the time out tonight. All right, we're going to move on. Lauren. Thank you for waiting, I'm in. Good evening. Lauren Langton, resident taxpayer parent in the district. I have far more to say than time in this agenda allow, so I'm going to focus on the budget. After reviewing the superintendent's presentation alongside the proposed final budget, the community deserves far more transparency than what's being provided. The superintendent's presentation claims savings through restructuring and position eliminations. When you follow the numbers, many of those claims don't add up. The administration is presenting nearly 4.6 million in claimed staffing savings over 2 years, but if 46 positions were eliminated, why are expenditures still increasing in key areas like salaries by over 4

164million and benefits by nearly 6 million in a single year? For example, slide seven states that eliminating the CFO position saves approximately 139,000 annually. However, the same presentation includes ongoing costs for school business consultants at roughly 102,000 per year along with increased compensation for fiscal leadership. So, where's the actual $139,000 savings? Because between those two items, those costs already total roughly 110,000 before additional considerations. Slide 11 is even more concerning. Two new HR leadership positions now total over 320,000 in salary alone compared to the prior position at approximately 133,000. That's a substantial increase in cost being presented as efficiency. Slide 19 claims 178,000 in savings from eliminating the director of communications and operations, but the same section redistributes responsibilities and creates a director of facilities for 114,000. That's not elimination, it's reclassification of cost. Across-the-board

165budget, health care costs rise by over 18% and paid leave and retirement incentives increased by 3.2 million. So, taxpayers deserve to know the true net savings after consulting contracts, retirement incentive, health care continuation, separation agreements, raises, and newly created admin positions. But honestly, the financial contradictions are only part of the problem. The morale crisis in this district is real. Staff feel unsupported, unheard, and afraid to speak honestly. Employees watch long-time staff members with decades of service suddenly eliminated. Community members spoke out publicly, yet the vote still passed unanimously with no board discussion. Even with some proposals, Sorry. And now, while morale is already collapsing, the district continues proposing enormous district-wide changes. And even when some proposals are eventually taken off the table, like school closures, The larger issue remains the same. Every proposal being introduced

166feels massive, destabilizing, and anxiety-inducing. People are exhausted from the constant uncertainty. The district does not have a budget problem. It has And until the numbers are presented in a way that clearly reflects the true net impact, this community has no reason to trust what comes next. Okay. Thank you, Lauren. Um next up we have Peter Begley. Peter, are you here? Oh, I'm sorry. Here you are. Hi there, folks. I'm Pete Begley. I live in Smithfield Township and uh full disclosure, I'm a former borough councilor from the fifth ward here and uh currently the um chairman of the Monroe County Republican Party. My main concern is the first duty of any school is educating kids. And uh I looked up the reading and math scores. I think those are the two most important subjects. Fourth grade

167here uh reading is at 51%, math 43%. Get to eighth grade, it goes from 46% reading 40% in math. The high schools uh reading in North is 52% passing rate in reading, 22% in math. And South, where we are is 57% reading and 25% in math. That is alarming. That is really bad. Uh so that's your first duty and your these these results cost us what, about $26,000 per year per student? Is Is that how the math works out? I think I think it's about 26K. How many students have you got? I don't have that in front of me. We're going to keep going. We don't Keep going. Yeah, well, when you divide 213 million by uh I don't know, 6,000 or so, comes comes out to about 26K per student. Again, that's for for

168For these results, it's quite concerning. Um I I was at the the polling places when um the election for school board was was 2 years last year. And the unions had their person there. And this is a union-approved school board. I would quote the head of the American Federation of Teachers some years ago, Albert Shanker, who said, "Quote, when school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children." That's really bad. That's evil. That's really bad. Um so, that's what we're dealing with here. Um the superintendent mentioned losing people to private sector. The private sector doesn't pay as much. No, the Dane teachers don't get more than these teachers. And I think they get better grades for less money. Uh the the board president talked about the team of

16910, sir. Only nine of you are elected. You are the people's representatives. The supervisor is not. It's a team of nine. And to say it's a team of 10 is a bit disrespectful. I hope you will reconsider. No. Finally, Governor Shapiro uh campaigned on school choice and of course broke his promise. Stacy Garrity will not. Vote for her. Thank you. And uh we are a team of 10, and I would stand with that. Okay, just saying. Keep going. All right, our next person up is Danica. Good evening. Danica Hartenfels. I live in Smithfield Township. My children go to the schools in the district here. He's actually at Colonial, Mike, just so you know. So not a lot to talk about. Thank you so much for listening to me last time. I felt very seen and

170heard. Maggie, we had a great conversation afterwards, and thank you for addressing tonight. Just a couple of things to call out from the presentation. If I understood correctly on your slide around HR, that you said it is not part of Act 93, yet you have it summarized on Act 93 summary of adjustments. So that's not clear to me. I think it's probably not clear to other people as well. If you could just clarify that. And then I understand you don't understand where it's coming from, morale, but that is so heard that I would strongly recommend, and I've already said that to Rich and to Keith, that I would strongly encourage the board to consider for the 2026-2027 school year a third-party survey to your to your staff. Just that way that's non-bipartisan. You just have

171a third-party survey go out, and then that's the true pulse that you would have for the district to to kind of start the school year. It's something that I wanted to add. Just for everyone else, for the record, we had a lovely community night. Veronica and I hosted co-hosted where we had a list of questions that we submitted. You all received that today. So I don't expect you all to have those answers by any means, but thank you for being open and transparent. I wanted to say thank you for that. We look forward to continuing conversations. Um I do lead with assuming positive intent as well. So, you know, I spent a lot of time in corporate America, so that we were taught that as well. Um and I wanted to just say that uh

172we all here are trying to show up and we just want the right answers. I know sometimes emotions can get intense, um but I do truly appreciate you serving. I know you don't get paid, Keith, but uh I know you've been here for 20 years. I appreciate you as well. And have a good evening and I need to go home because I have an early morning. Stay safe and well. Okay, thank you, Danica. And uh Veronica? Hi, everyone. Again. Uh my name is Veronica. I want to start by saying thank you to Keith and Rich for coming to the meeting. It really meant a lot to everybody and when you guys left, I the messages I got um I had posted on Facebook that you guys had attended and everybody was very grateful for that.

173We weren't expecting that. So, it meant a lot. Um I want to start by saying that I am not in any way saying that I can do your job or that I know what it takes, cuz I don't. I run a restaurant. This is nothing to me. I I I've no idea what you guys are doing. I do know that um when you have a whole community coming to me and I'm telling you my my my phone blows up with numbers that people won't even tell me their names. They're scared. You blindsided people. You fired Eric Forsyth, who's here since he's 17 years old. You took four first-level supervisors, one being here 28 years of his life. Kindergarten, both of them. His son works here. You didn't even tell their supervisors what was going to

174happen. You blindsided them. That creates division. How you guys do not see that, I don't understand. This wasn't in my speech, but I just decided that this is what I need to present. I have to tell you that I'm not saying that you don't know what you're doing. That's not my I I have no idea. But there's a way to go about it and you guys aren't going about it the right way. These people are humans. They have lives. I watched my boyfriend cry. I watched him struggle every day. Yes, I do get that life is hard. It's tough. I have to fire people, too. But, there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. You guys have to think about what you're doing. You're literally going into these schools.

175You're going here, you're going here, you're going here. There's no ask. There's no communication. Had you talked to maintenance or grounds, could you have said, "How can you save us some money?" Did you do that? No. You just fired them. And as for bringing in friends, it's not that. Why aren't you looking inside East Stroudsburg School District? Yay, Abington Heights. They're so classy. What about the people that we have here? I'm sorry, but I feel like they're getting overlooked. I didn't like what you said about that. I thought that was rude and disrespectful to people in East Stroudsburg. Okay? This is why people are feeling the way that they are. They're getting overlooked. They're scared. And sometimes the way they're being spoken to by the superintendent makes them feel this big. That's what I'm hearing.

176I'm relaying it. I also just watched you today give a whole presentation. You didn't look at us. You looked at them. They already know. We're the ones asking the questions. Look at us. Why are you looking at them? This is serious. I'm not spending my night here. I don't want to be here. I do not want to be here. But, I feel like I have to be here. I also feel like I'm probably not the right person to be sitting here. Thank you. Mr. Thomas? I got the quarter. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening everybody. I'm Barry Krammes. I'm a been teaching here for 20 years. I've been living here for about 24 years. Um I'm a parent. I live in the district. I'm a taxpayer. And um I just want to say I appreciate

177what the board is doing. I want to say I also appreciate what the superintendent is doing. My My father was in the same plant for 52 years. My mom 32 years. And I just appreciate the work that you guys are putting in here. And the fact that you guys come in every day and do the work that you're doing is really I I think commendable. And I also want to say too is um there's so much good going on. I know it seems negative and I know I'm hearing like bad morale, but I I must be blind to it, but I know there's a lot of people like me and teachers and no disrespect to everybody in the crowd. I really a lot of you guys I I I know and I love, right? I

178really do. And I I just want to say that we come to work that the future educators program that I'm involved in, that we had the vision of Amy Pol Mautz and what we do able to do with that and the fact that you guys bought into that. We go out in the field every day, every Wednesday and work with James Hill students. And when I leave James Hill, I leave with like 40 hugs and I I feel so good and so happy. So like from the bottom of my heart, I really appreciate and I love this community and I love this school. And I just wanted to say like um I I really just appreciate the teachers trying to stay positive. I got I do take offense of the the one comment about our

179teachers and and our test scores because we have a really transient population and sometimes we don't understand that and I see our our teachers come in here hard every day to get our our students up to par. And I get a little a little angry about that when I hear when I hear my teachers aren't doing their job because I know what they do. You know, I've been working here for 20 years and I got to cover I used to I used to substitute for elementary school. I covered almost every class and I see the passion that these these [clears throat] teachers put in every day. It's not about the union. It's about us as a community. You know, I'm here speaking from the heart. I don't have anything written down, but I just had

180to say I really love what this board is doing and I I really appreciate everything. Yeah. Thank you, Barry. Okay, that's all the cards I have. Is anyone else out there? Anyone else online? Okay. Then we're moving it along. Oh, what part? Okay. What's the name? Jack Bloom Leonard. Okay. Uh, Jackie, are you there and want to speak? I am here. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead, Jackie. We hear you. For some of you may know me, some of you may not. I have been a kindergarten teacher in the district for almost 40 years. And I am here today and I know you haven't done the vote yet, but I'm here tonight as a proud kindergarten teacher to welcome Caitlin Gelino to our school district. I know you haven't taken the vote yet, but

181I'm going to guess that hopefully that vote goes through and I taught Caitlin in kindergarten and I'm proud of her and I'm also Oh, that's great. I'm also very proud to say that the two teachers of the month at High School South were also students of mine. So That's great. Go, Jackie. Yeah, go, go, right? So, you know, I just want to say I know there's a lot going on in the district and I think for those of us that come to work every day and think about the students, hopefully that's still occurring. So, thank you and that's all. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jackie, for being with us and your kind words. Thank you. Did she teach you, Dr. Vitali? I went to Middle Smithfield, not J.A. Healy. I had Mrs. Colson in

182kindergarten. Another great And then Mrs. Olson in first grade, so they taught me to rhyme. So, I'll say [laughter] Mrs. Colson, Mrs. Olson. Okay, I think we have everybody there, right? All right, I'm sorry. I just have to get my stuff together here. Okay, seeing no unfinished business, let's do a motion to adopt the board policies as listed. So moved. Second. Questions? I second my policy. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? A motion to appoint Matthew Kraus as board treasurer for the period July 1, 2026 through June 30th, 2027. The district shall pay the cost of the required bond. The treasurer shall serve without compensation other than mileage and actual expenses. So moved. Second. Questions? Just a reference. Um, I know some people ask why our board members are not president, uh, treasurer. That's because of

183the classification of our school district and the state requirements upon us. Correct? The I just want to clarify that cuz I had people why aren't we as board members treasurers? I looked into that years ago and the state does not allow us to be a treasurer. It's a state law. Thank you for clearing that. Appreciate you clarifying that for the public. >> Pretty cool. And the other point? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? A motion to approve the following curriculum framework as per the recommendation of the education programs and resource committee. So moved. Second. Questions? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? A motion to approve the ELA 9-10 curricular resources from the 25-26 budget in the amount of $42,597.50 as per the recommendations of the education program resource committee. So moved. Second. And the finance committee. And

184the finance I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Rebecca. And the finance committee. And we had a so moved. I can't say it again. So moved. >> [laughter] >> Second, anyone? I want to move the meeting. Second? >> And the policy committee would be involved if we were allowed >> All right, we have a second. Um, any questions? Oh, okay. I couldn't >> All in favor? I. Opposed? A motion to authorize the field trip that is listed. So moved. Second. Questions? All in favor? I. Opposed? A motion to approve the implementation of the high school South Major at Dance Club. So moved. Motion. Second. Questions? All in favor? >> I. I. Opposed? A motion to approve the agreement as presented at the meeting between the East Stroudsburg Area School District and the Club Exploreria Management LLC for the

185use of its golf course for practices and matches by the high school North Golf team effective April 1st, 2026 through September 30th, 2026. So moved. Second. Questions? All in favor? I. Opposed? A motion to approve the issuance of a high school certificate, otherwise known as diploma, to each candidate listed subject to their individual successful completion of the prescribed course instruction and graduation requirements established by the board as part of the school district's comprehensive plan. So moved. Questions? Okay. We are going to We are going to make a whole lot of students happy with this one. All in favor? I. Opposed? You are official. A motion to approve the recommendation to modify expulsion requirement agreed upon expulsion waiver of school board hearing and release agreement in the case listed in substantially the same form as presented

186at this meeting contingent upon the receipt of any manifestation terminations indicating the infractions were not manifestations of a disability subject to final review by the school district's administration and legal counsel. So moved. Second. Questions? All in favor? I. Opposed? A motion to approve the affiliation agreement between the East East Stroudsburg Board of Education and Lehman College for use of the district as a student teaching site. >> So moved. Second. Questions? All in favor? All right. Opposed? A motion to approve the addition of New York Life Insurance and Annuity Corporation as an authorized investment product provider in our 403b plan. Second. Questions? Who decides who we add or not add to our 403b? Um honestly, the unions make requests of providers. Right? Mr. Zell, that's my understanding. The The union requests the providers. Okay. Sorry, this

187came in after the Yeah, cuz I That's my That's what I do for a living. That's why I asked that question. And cuz usually you can't hold an annuity inside of a 401k or a 403b. Usually there's something separate on the outside. That's why I asked that question. Cuz that's usually how they work. They usually separate annuity from a 403b. You can roll something into a 403b, but usually within that, it's usually like a mutual fund or an ETF or a target date fund. Very rarely do I see an annuity inside of one of those. That's why I asked the question. If only we could have this kind of conversation, right? Yeah. Yeah. But so So they do things other than annuities, correct? >> No. So New York Life only does annuities? >> I believe

188so. They're Annuity >> Life Insurance and Annuity Corporation. Yeah, they might have more than one. >> are listed as an authorized investment The big company. So our union has requested this to be added as a 403b provider, which means that they provide access to 403bs. Okay. In our CBA, they request and we should be approving. Okay. Okay. Good. Good point. Hopefully they sell other things besides annuities and not just, you know, mu- do mutual funds, hopefully, and stocks and So, the only thing we're worried about is 403(b)s. That's all we're approving. 403(b) is the vehicle, not the investment. Correct. An annuity is an investment. A 403(b) is the holding of it. They are set up as a provider a district employee may choose to enter into a a contract with that provider. Okay. And then

189that's set up through the the business office through payroll, should they choose. So, it it should set up that they have to be association themselves have to recommend to the board who they want added to that provider list. So, this is an option for the storefront for employees to pick their retirement right. We're not saying they're going with that. We're just making it an option that they can utilize. Yeah, there's there's a lot of options. Right. Okay. So, we're adding to the list at this point. Mhm. Okay. Just making sure I understand why we're adding more when we already have them. Okay. Good to know. All right. Good good points. I think we have first and second. All in favor? All right. Opposed? A motion to approve the notice of charges for employee 11939. So

190moved. Questions? All in favor? I. I. Opposed? A motion to approve the termination for employee 10542. Motion. Second. Second. Questions? All in favor? I. I. Opposed? A motion to approve the following memorandum of understanding between the East Stroudsburg Area School District and the Support Professional Association regarding secretary student interns. Okay. Second. Questions? What exactly is this position? >> Yeah, I was going to ask that. Just for my edification, not for So, I I want to say Steve or Karen, right? Yes. So, that that's an MOU with the sports association for an outside agency uh that that is providing internship opportunities for their client, I guess would be the best way to say uh where they're able I mean, identify job skills Okay. >> and jobs they could maybe hold uh for themselves. Got it. >>

191is sort of an internship with that agency. Understood. If no questions Okay. It's Right. I'll let's Mhm. Okay. Perfect. So, Okay. Good. Thank you for the clarification. >> Thank you. All in favor? I. Opposed? A motion to approve the employment actions listed in accordance with the associated applicable policies, procedures, and contractual agreements subject to prior completion and receipt of all necessary documents and clearances. And that's the large agenda list. So, move by you, Steve. Second. Okay, we'll go back to that other We already did it. Okay, let's do it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Do this Is it the general HR one? The general HR one. >> So, this is important to someone in the room, so let's get this one done. Okay, we got it. We had a first and a second. Any questions? All

192in favor? I. Opposed? Okay. Excellent. Congratulations. Oh, is that uh What did I say? You just skipped this. Oh, well, okay. Got it. Now, I it. Don't worry. Motion to approve the following memorandum of understanding between the East Stroudsburg Area School District and East Stroudsburg Area Education Association regarding an interim athletic director. Second. Questions? All in favor? Opposed? Mr. Meckley, your first order of business is to please cool it down in here. 80°. He turned it off. All in favor? I. >> [laughter] >> Next month my dry cleaning bill goes to you. >> [laughter] >> Okay. We're saving money. We put our >> [laughter] >> air conditioning on 85. Okay. A motion to adopt the proposed final budget >> [laughter] >> for 2026-2027 in the amount of $213,070,700, which shall be posted and advertised in

193accordance with the PA School Code as amended and the said budget together with the taxes proposed herein after proper additions and amendments be adopted no later than June 30th, 2026. The tax levies for Monroe County shall be 33.01 mills and the tax levy for Pike County shall be 138.62 mills. So moved. So moved. So moved. Second. Question? Yeah. I'll take Kevin first. All right. So it's not so much a question, but I I think more of a statement and that was made earlier, you know, it's not $26,000 per student. It varies based on a number of factors, including our special education, which is very expensive. I just wish people would stick around to hear these kind of things and be informed about it, but it's more than just you know, you can't just take $1

194and associate that way. I think the other thing that this budget represents is, you know, our continuous movement towards making improvements. For one of the gentlemen speakers made statement that our test scores are lower. If we don't make structural changes in how we perform education here, those things won't change and that's what we've been doing and focusing on for the past year and a half and I really think that we're making the right direction on this. Yes, the budget we don't want it to be where it is, but we're making good progress towards that and I it it's it's a challenge, but at the same time it's our opportunity to really fix some of the structural issues and and really address the the outcomes that we see in our district and we're not focused on

195the test scores, we're focused on individual performance. This is the This is the way we get there. That's all I wanted to say. >> And you know what though too, with excellent test scores, it doesn't define a kid. No. No. It's can they be a functioning member of society and and aspire to do what they dream to be. Like I could tell you 100 kids that got bad test scores, but they're like rocket scientists now or teachers or something else. You know, I was terrible at tests. You know, a lot of people are. Test scores don't define you. It's a part of what it is. And I and I agree, you know, with all of you and Rich, you know, so much that we don't you know, people are only getting a snapshot. They're not,

196like you say, staying through the meetings and not coming to the EPR meetings where where the real work is going on of education in our district that we see how much how many changes that we're making so that students' lives are, you know, improving and the extracurriculars, you know, and I mean everything that makes for a well-rounded and full student. So, um you know, and it costs money to do that. And I'm going completely a different direction. >> Okay. Mine is um I'd like to see us maybe consider 4%. increase. Well, is it my turn? George, it's my turn. Let me make my little Let her finish. Thank you. We'll come right over to you, George. I would I would like to see us go to 4%, but I want to explain why we're going

197to 5% and that is because we are not encouraging commercial development, which will help bring down the tax cost for the average taxpayer. And because we haven't encouraged that, we are going to have to go to 5%. I don't like it and I know many people will not like it, but when we see good businesses or businesses coming in, we should encourage that they come to the correct areas and encourage them to settle here so that it it helps every taxpayer. Okay, George, now you can speak. I see I had you waiting, George. >> [laughter] >> George Okay, good. Any other >> I I know this is difficult and but you know, there's two things I want to vocally say is as a resident of East Stroudsburg Borough, I've watched our taxes in the borough

198go up with double digits in the last 3 years and no one complained. Mhm. No one complained. I've watched our county taxes go up double digits in the last couple years. Absolutely. This district has not raised taxes in over 15 years minus last year we raised them 2%. And I know this is painful for the taxpayers, Debbie, but we all sit at this table are also taxpayers in this district also and I feel the pain, also. And I'm not saying that to expect some, you know, pity for me, but I mean, we all feel the pain, too. And and when your electric bill went up like it did each month for the last couple years, so did ours. Mhm. And and 5% I did a rough it's under $300 a year per household if the

199if it all lines up for the right way. So, $6.75 roughly a week. That's a Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Mhm. For the quality of education of our students and to make sure that we can help look at test score scores that are struggling and we can make improvements and constantly strive for tomorrow's six future and success. I and I I had it memorized, but now I have to look up there and that's messing me up. But >> [laughter] >> But that that's it, man. I I'm sorry. I'm sorry. >> [laughter] >> That's throwing me off there. It It it's painful to do it, but you know what? I'm sorry. I I'm sorry. Go ahead. I Okay. No, excellent points. I'm just going to say really quick piggybacking on, you know, the test scores don't define a

200student, you know, Y'all are still sitting here. He's still got to hold them up. Right? Okay. Um >> [laughter] >> but I'm but I mean like like for for students to come out and stand in front of the board and talk to the board, um that's that's what we want to cultivate. That's what we want to grow in this community. Test scores don't don't mean anything with regard to that. And and building those citizens of tomorrow Um Go for it. No, it's it's really important and and knowing that we're building that into our children, um I want to say, you know, money shouldn't be an object, but it it really shouldn't. What's most important is who we put behind those desks to teach those kids and and we've got some of the best. And uh

201contrary to what other people believe, and you know, you still being here sitting here is you know testament to that. So, thank you. And since we're on test, well, I can do my principal homily. Remember that every student who opts out of the test, which many students it's a becoming a trend in opting out, counts as a below basic score automatically. So, >> realize either. >> People don't realize that and that that to me makes never made any sense to me. Absolutely no sense. Students who work um in special education who operate most of the year below grade level will have a grade level test that they are given and forced to that. I've seen students crying in front of tests that they just are not ready for and they're forced to take it. So,

202you know, I will all end homily on test scores. >> Or students that may join the district a week before the test that we never even educated. When you see When you're president, you see students crying during Keystone or PSSA testing. It just tells you how wrong it is, but I'll end that homily. Any other comments? I just have one. Nobody else has spoken. I just want to say like it's really important that people come out to the committee meeting. Um there's incredible work being done by our teachers. Um what we had at the education committee recently um just shows the strides that are being made. So, it's important that people come out, that they listen, and really please assume best intent and know that everyone's working for the best of our district. That's all

203I have. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else have anything to add? I'm fine. Okay, then all in favor? Roll call. Oh, sorry. Roll call. >> right. Rich Leaman? I. Keith Carcaci? >> Yes. George Andrews? Rebecca Bear? Yes. Amy Cotterell? Yes. Mike Cotterell? Yes. Jason Gostra? Yes. Debbie Cully? Yes. Shaniqua Story? Yes. And then Sarah? Okay. thank you. Motion to approve the following agreements as per the recommendations of the property facilities committee and finance committee. Motion. Questions? All in favor? Aye. >> Aye. Opposed? Motion to approve the pact agreement with Trane US Incorporated as presented pursuant to Omni Partners Cooperative Purchasing Contract R221504 in the amount of $5,293,953 as per the recommendation of the property and facilities committee and finance committee. So moved. Second. Questions? I just want to state that this is capital funds that are

204restricted to capital needs, so this is not impacting our operating budget or additional monies out there. And this will return an investment back to us as we lower our utility costs and then file them back into our capital budget. Good point. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. A motion to approve the payment of bills and unaudited treasurer's report listed in the agenda for 25-26 fiscal year in accordance with Section 687 of the public school code, recent directors from the Department of Education, and interpretations made by the Auditor General. So moved. Second. Questions? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion to approve the payment of CHA invoice applications for payment and change order for services rendered in accordance with the recommendation of the finance committee and property and facilities committee. So moved. Questions? All in favor?

205Aye. >> Aye. Opposed? Motion to approve the request to renew or establish the special activity funds that are listed. So moved. Second. Questions? All in favor? I. >> Opposed? Motion to accept the EITC grant funding from the Pocono Mountains United Way for the East Stroudsburg Area School District's Summer Steamer program in the amount of $7,200 via to via donations from I2M, a manufacturing company, and Weiss Markets. So moved. Second. Questions? I'm going to abstain. I have to abstain. Okay, two abstentions. All in favor? I. Opposed? A motion to approve the contracts listed for their specific services, rates, and effective dates subject to the review and recommendations of the solicitor and approval of the administration regarding the terms and conditions of any final contract other than price or cost. So moved. Second. Questions? All in favor?

206I. I. Opposed? Eight. Um, we have any other new business to be brought up? I do, real quick. Who is writing Dylan an excuse note for tomorrow? Yes. He [laughter] should have an excused tardy at home. I think so. Yeah, but I agree. It's not going to look good coming from me. >> [laughter] >> It doesn't mean anything. Who's this guy? Okay, uh, nothing on enrollment. So, we need if there's no other announcements. >> the inflatables and the donuts at your senior event. They sound yummy. Inflatable donuts. Yeah, yeah, I saw that. Oh, they're in there. All right. Enjoy the effort. A motion to adjourn. All in favor? I. I. I. We don't want to It doesn't matter. It's a Can you pass this down to bring it to Show up late. I was saying

207to Matt. I just know