ESASD Regular Board Meeting (March 17)

001e e e e e e be no no the March 17th meeting to order and sorry for the SL delay on that please stand I the United States of America and to the for stands Nation St first roll call George Andrews present Rebecca bear pres anello here Mike pello here Jason gstr present carut pres debie K pres Broner here Rich Layman pres I'm present uh we welcome all of our guests and ask if anyone has not signed in uh do so at some point so we have a record of people attending we had an executive session was held on March 7th 2025 for the purpose of discussing personnel and an executive session was held this evening before this meeting for the purpose of discussing personel litigation negotiations okay uh we have the motion to adopt

002the agenda for March 17th as submitted with the Board of Education some move any questions all in favor I oppos okay approval of the minutes motion to approve the minutes of the 20 uh February 24th 2025 board meeting so move second questions all in favor opposed okay uh we're going to go to our superintendent report but we are going to start with our can we defer to our students we are G to start with our students this evening so um Alysa you are on from North High SCH good evening Schoolboard faculty and guests to introduce myself my name is Alyssa Dina I'm a senior at East strawberg North and I'm honored to be here St representative I'm just going to wait till our presentation while we're waiting the our mcti rep couldn't come do you

003want me to go over that okay thanks so it was good evening school board members Administration and guest my name is is it Nyla or Nayla nla Joseph and I the mcti student representative on Wednesday and Thursday February 26th and 27th culinary students competed in Pro start here and here are the results um two students placed third so siia de boy from North and ammani Carolina from North also Place third place in cake decorating Amber beckworth plac second place in management and culinary on March 11th 202 graphic communication students competed in the media and design competition at Northampton Community College and here are those results Joselin uresco uh earns second place for logo and design competition in the graphics Communications March is nocti month and all program instructors and their students are preparing diligently for

004success nocti is the national occupation competency testing Institute it's an organization that creates assessments to to measure the skills and knowledge of students in various vocational and Technical Fields these tests are used to ensure that students are ready for the workforce with the necessary skills in their chosen careers this concludes my report okay Melissa you are on so we're gonna start off with academics so we want to send our congratulations to a sophomore named jadden batun for winning first place in the High School North spelling be championships Jaden is not only our defending champ but he's also the 2024 Russell C Hughes Monroe County Champion senior Jaden Gatson secures second place and will join jadden Paton at the senior level County Choir County championships at April 7th at strawsburg Junior High School and in addition

005Junior Amelia D mahati finished third place and will be an alternate so we're gon to move on to some arts on March 5th the North High School and Leman 7th and eighth grade choirs came together for their annual Department concert each group showcased their talents with strong performances and they ended the note with a combined choir edition of Imagine by The Beatles it was really amazing I really liked it um and now congratulations to Valentina gadiva she earned a spot in the pme region five choir Festival she will be performing at Bethlehem Area School District on March 20th to the 21st and has an opportunity to audition for the PM State choirs in April the festival will conclude with a concert in Northeast Middle School auditorium on March 2st at 7:30 p.m. as part of

006music and our schools month the north Coral will have the incredible opportunity to perform at the Pennsylvania state capital Rona on March 21st if you can see that's a picture from last year when we performed um we will have in addition to this performance we will have the opportunity to tour the capital and meet with legislators I believe we will be meeting with Senator Rosemary Brown and yeah it will be really fun this will be a really memorable memorable experience and with April approaching guys get excited because we will be performing Su golden musical uh the show opens on April 4th at 7 p.m. with additional performances on April 5th at 7 p.m and April 6th at 3 P.M and I hope you all come because someone you may know might be wearing a really

007large hat and whiskers so you know believe it' be really protocol to sing a song for us give some see the show to see that um so we're g to talk about some sports um Logan Cruz's incredible performance at the district 11 swim meet earned him first place in the 100 breath breath stroke he will represent eastburg North at the Pia competition at buckwell Bucknell University on March 13th um he we also supported him we create a spirit tunnel the entire school it was a surprise for him while he was going to the the buses for States we actually all cheered for him and he was really surprised I wish I had a video I believe it is on the North Twitter page if you want to check that out um and we're g to

008end with some extracurriculars we are thrilled to announce that the woman in stem Club has advanced to the state level competition for the governor stem competition they'll be competing in late April at State College and representing eord North and this is a really big thing because out of all public private and Charter schools in the state only 20 were selected and nor just happened to be one of them and on March 13th and 14th the north tech crew supported bushka elementary spring production of wiie Wonka Jr and they provided sound and Technical Services special thanks to the crew members Dylan Hugo and heroo with the crew advisor Shan Edwards for making this possible and finally the future educator cohort traveled to the Colonial Intermediate Unit 12 where they explored variety careers in education they learned

009about Fields such as occupational therapy Mental Health Services physical therapy and special education and with that I close my report thank you all for your attention and I hope you like learning about the amazing things that happen this month hey thank you Alissa and all the best to you and the uh crew with the play appreciate that cannot wait to see it yes Coral hi all right every month I kind of think I'll be scrambling for things but somehow my reports fill up so we had another great thing um a great month of things at South you all should have a flyer I believe um but I'll get started with our fifth grade science day um it's a great event it's an effort with our science department and our gifted program to run this event

010this year we kind of one uped last year and brought all six elementary schools um to the high school all of the fifth graders um our department chair one of our science department chairs Mr Scott held like a kind of session did some demonstrations in the auditorium and they rotated through three sessions with our science teachers to learn about different things um and it's a great event really just to get them excited about science and learn from our high school teachers I know there was like chemistry demonstrations they got to build rockets and launch them um ESU came and there were demonstrations on recycling so it was a really great event and moving to our freshman Experience day we brought all of the eth grade students from ATL to the high school on February 26th

011to give them a taste of high school and what their next school year will be like there was an activity fair in the cafeteria where all of our extracurriculars and sports presented um and actually I had I believe it was 45 clubs and sports register so it was a big year for that um they heard from a panel of current freshmen and got tours of the building and we're so excited to welcome them for the next school year and our NHS and Red Cross Club work together to host a blood drive on March 7th and the drive was very successful we had 47 people sign up and a total of 40 donations collected which surpassed the goal of 28 so we're very excited about that and I have our Colonial Intermediate Unit hiring day um

012our introduction to special education students were able to learn interview skills apply for clearances explore various careers and have discussions in the area of special education um at the colonial Intermediate Unit and I wanted to make a side note that Mr Z will be meeting with the students on March 24th to discuss district employment opportunities so that's very exciting um kind of Full Circle you know um and our project search applicants have um sent in their applications a Gates deshan Thomas taan Thomas and Donovan hubard um completed their interviews and they hope to be selected to spend the next school year at Kalahari um learning vital work skills for their Futures our 12 plus students also visited a local radio station um they wanted to thank Danny ocean and other DJs at 93.5 Poco 103

013and Bigfoot country who gave kind of a tour um answered lots of questions and kind of explained what it takes to have a radio station so that was a very exciting trip for them um and I also wanted to shout out our media and design Regional competition uh students that competed in placed for first place in 3D design John Schamus Paxton shimansky and Mia Gardina for first place in animation Caitlyn mayor Allison Mayer and Pablo Soto Marino third place in animation bana Pico and Madison Jimenez first place in web design Elena elely and Emily anise second place in Web Design jwes Richmond second place in programming kwani ke and Miguel Viana and third place in programming Amisa Ellis and jir Grant so that was very exciting we had lots of students compete um at Northampton

014Community College for that now I do have some back dating on teachers of the month since we last Saw I've got two months in here um so the following teachers were named Mrs Jenifer Andrews English teacher um science teacher Miss Katrina Newman our athletic director Miss Denise Rogers and our dean of students Miss Stephanie Reese um we're recognized for all of their hard work at South and we really appreciate them um next I wanted to shout out our Satie Hawkins dance which was arranged um and hosted by the minthon committee to raise um money for the event in April everyone attended um the dance and got a taste of what minithon is like through various activities so it was great night um and very fun and I did want to say we have about 170

015students now registered on donor drive for our minithon event which is coming up soon I believe it's 18 days today and moving on to some music South hosted the region band or uh Festival of more than 140 students who went through a rigorous audition process Sydney or Maya McDonald and Gianna De La Cruz from South participated um and I also did photob bomb that picture I got to play piano for two of the songs so that was very fun um South also hosted on March 5th the department band concert Our Guest conductor Laura SD's premiered new piece of music at the concert so that was very exciting and the corers performed at Shaunie Playhouse um as part of their Cabaret series last month um and it was a very appreciative audience and it was great

016and I just wanted to shout out quickly some upcoming events for you um mark your calendars so our unified track and field team has one home meet this year um as you all know Unified sports are great they bring together uh athletes with and without intellectual disabilities um and they're equal teammates they train together compete together become friends um and it's treated like every other in Scholastic sport at our school so their only home meet is April 2nd at 3:30 um and you are all encouraged to attend and lastly our spring musical is also coming up soon uh is Disney's Descendants based on the popular movie franchise um and the shows are March 28th through the 30th and that's all I have this month thank you so much we thank our Timberwolves and our Cavaliers

017and both in mcti and here are always making us proud to be part of the district thank you so much okay we're going to go to the superintendent report so we're going to start I'm going to defer some of my time to an old friend so Dr toino you are up with Mr Jacobson and chief Parish welcome back is that what I will say is that I've been on that side of the table for 24 years and I think oftentimes as board members and and school administrators we hear some of the some of the things about schools that aren't the best but when you look at these two kids and kids like this every month that we've heard reports from in my case in 24 24 years every month it tells us that the world's

018in good hands so just so proud of the two of you and the way you handle yourselves and the things that are going on in these schools it's incredible incredible so here's why I'm here I'm here because of Jake and I'm here because of uh Chief Parish they called me a while ago and and there's a grant that came to Monroe County uh it's a pilot Grant from the state of Pennsylvania and it's called the Community Partnership for gun safety and there's really any number of reasons why it's out there not the least of which is because and the easiest way for me to explain it is we're trying to get people to um come to terms with how they store their guns and there's reasons for that two-thirds of every home in Monroe County

019has a legal weapon in it that might be shocking to some people it's a it's a rather interesting number but there are some people that decide that they're going to they have to store their weapons in a way that are not appropriate and what happens is kids get into those houses and as many times you tell your children not to do something they're going to do it when there's a friend in the house and suddenly someone's going to be shot be killed or maimed through what we call an unexpected discharge because they don't know how to handle that weapon they've never been trained to do that right they only know that it's something that oh wow this is cool let's take a look at it next thing you know someone's killed or maimed so we're

020working on on programs to deal with that the other side of it is clearly the handling side the grant is also going to allow us to provide um the storage to provide uh safety l to people um provide training to people and then of course the third part of that which is so very very important is if you have someone in your home in Monroe County that's struggling with a mental health issue through the Sheriff's Department this is this grant is being offered through obviously the County Commissioners but more most importantly uh it's being run through the prosecutor's office as well and the sheriff's department the sheriff's department will store those hand those weapons for you if you ask we're not going to take your guns from you that's a a comment that was uh

021we had to deal with at at another school district but if you ask we will come and we will store those weapons for you in the sheriff's department so that's really the the the Grant in in a nutshell but something that's very intriguing well so why did Monroe County get this grant out of all the other counties in the state of Pennsylvania well because Monroe County ranks higher than the state and national average in suicide by handgun from males that's a problem that's clearly a problem so of course you have the mental health component in there which we're dealing with and that's uh with Bill parish and I want to introduce these guys I'm sorry I didn't do that um Chief Bill Parish who's a retired police chief from the stad regional um also uh

022the chief at East jur University and Bill you have any please anything you need to add district attorney do is working on a unified response between mental health and law enforcement the loing prices theing uniform and a gun every PR so bill will be the person that we reach out to when we realize that there's somebody that if the household has someone with a mental health issue and they want to get their guns out of the house will get the guns out of the house but Bill will also be the one that try to to coordinate the mental health services for that individual in the household and of course Jake um serves on East on the Stroudsburg Area School Board he's currently the board president he was on the school board when I was superintendent

023there um we've known each other for quite some time so he's the one that called me and saidhe read this grant because it might be something you're interested in um this is as far from something I ever thought I'd be involved in but I looked at the mission and said you know what yeah we're going to do this I want to be involved in this it's important stuff Jake is a Gulf War veteran he's also a retired police officer and detective from uh St Area Regional so he's been in the community a long he grew up here he probably knows all of you better than than anybody he knows a lot of people we can't go anywhere without you not knowing somebody um and he's been a great partner in this so we we're we're

024just getting into this grant so why am I here in front of the school district I'm here because uh as part of the grant through a third-party uh group there's a a survey that's being funded and um the survey is for students and we're also going to be including some adults in the survey it's two different surveys um the survey questions have been validated nationally so it's not like we made up questions we've decided to do this the survey will be completely Anonymous so will not we will never be able to figure out who made Who provided the answers to the questions it'll be done through Survey Monkey um so that's what we're asking for I do not clearly I would never put you guys in a spot to ask for an answer tonight I

025would like you to talk about it um I understand how difficult those conversations can be I did bring along some of the questions that would be asked uh as part of the survey it should take about 15 minutes is all we expect um and it's just it's it's some really important information that we need to do our work going forward so I'll I'll provide some of the questions to you right now um one of the questions and you would you would answer these strongly agree somewhat agree somewhat disagree and strongly disagree I think people worry too much about guns people would look up to me if I had a gun I wish there weren't any guns in my neighborhood people should have be allowed to have a gun if they want one um I'd feel

026nervous around someone with a gun I respect people who carry a gun Sometimes using a gun is necessary so that's the type of information we're trying to get and it goes on um there's there's more questions to that but that's the some of the information we want to get so that we can conduct our work ultimately where we want to end up is to be running uh programs not in the schools is that's the question they came up PV um they thought that we wanted to put a curriculum actually I shouldn't say that 103.1 Gary C in the morning had Jake and eye on last week and he said well are we going to put curriculum in the schools and I said absolutely not that's not what this is about this is a community project

027so where we envision this going um for educational programming would be running programs in firehouses and in different venues on a Saturday or on a Friday night or whenever for people that can make it that that believe in this message that want to learn how to store their weapons properly and also um the the rest of what the grant is all about the mental health side of it we already have quantify media right here in East Stroudsburg is on board with us to handle all of our Market marketing and also our logoing and and branding for this uh for this grant um we started a little bit late so we're about six months behind but you know we're doing a pretty good job in trying to catch up and get our our message out there

028so that's why I'm here tonight did not want to spend a lot of time but wanted to get our message across and we'll be more than happy to answer any questions should you have any right now what's the age of the survey so what age group are you looking for we would like to get all high school kids right now um Dr vitalian there's a there's a reason when I was being asked about this as a school person right I think that's clearly one of the reasons why why they want to be involved um I think some of the push back you'd get if we decided to go k through six or k through eight would be a completely different story so that's why we're staying away from that my recommendation was to stay away

029from that let's look at the high school kids right now that's our our our our audience that we really want to get involved with and gather information from okay perfect thank you other questions or comments just be thank you I mean what you're doing is so needed especially the me mental health component and and the safety and the storage which is you know something you don't think of you a place to store if necessary so um thank you for your work I I'll share a real quick point the way that I explained is to my 88y old mother I said Mom I could take you right now to a local shop and we could purchase you a gun wouldn't be a problem at all it's all legal all the everything the state requires and then

030we could take you to the sheriff's department and in a month if you have two references which she would wind up getting you could conceal Carri a weapon but during neither one of those two parts of the process would she ever be required to be trained how to use that gun or store that gun properly that's a problem right and again it's not I'm not it's not a problem with the with the local businesses that's not what this is about it's a bigger issue for all of us because then what we have is have uh situations that occur all the time where we have uh two 12-year-olds run into a room where someone's handling a weapon and one of them recently get shot that was during my time here at East stoutsburg we have a

03117 or 17y old and 18-year-old that are allegedly wrestling um out in U tanic and the 18-year-old winds up shooting and killing the 17-year-old because said claims the gun fell off the shelf and it turns out the story changed after to that so there's these stories all the time and just recently um we heard the story of a 12-year-old little boy who got his hands on his father's gun and shot a six-year-old sister killed her so those unexpected discharges for people that don't know how to handle weapons that's a problem it's clearly a problem not to to mention some of the stories that we can all talk about and I'm not going to do that with the mental health component with people that are brandishing guns that are hoping to to suicide by cop right

032no police officer ever wants to walk onto the job and expect to kill somebody that day that's just not appropriate so it's all those pieces that we're trying to work on and uh try to make a difference from my point of view um as law enforcement and the funding grant funding comes from the state individuals may especially when you talk about storing gun guns think this is the first step into taking guns that is not the case you've heard the numbers of guns in households it be irresponsible not to address safety measures within the homes I don't know how many individuals have told me in my career that their gun is under the pillow in a nightstand because they need it at the moment that that person breaks into their house statistics show that is

033more likely to be an accidental discharge or used uh recklessly in those situations so we need to get that education I was a d instructor in the middle school for 10 years I know when gar first came out about drugs there was a lot of pushback by parents that we were cing kids about drugs we were learning on the drugs on their own probably on the school bu on the way to school but we need we need to filter this down younger but we also know the push back when you don't want to see that innocence in those children but they're the ones that are going to pick up that gun out of Innocence it's not stored properly and and tragedy will happen so that's that's our my imp here is again this is not

034in any way a sub fuge in order to get people done we know they're there we just want them safe we have no problem with them being there but store them safely put yourself in of whether one of your young children or children or grandchild in my case going into a household Jake okay no I'm good I I just want to say I I received the call um after the Grant I know um John spoke about we we started late we started late I received the call in July the grant started in April and while I was chosen I guess go four veteran retired police officer and reading the grant I knew it's going to take a team and at the time Dr too was right and we're talking probably talking like okay one we

035doin and uh he was actually doing interview with with you do and it was a great night apparently well and I said wait minut so you're soon be retired again what this guy he's got hair that's why he has no hair Bott this this I couldn't ask for a better team and you know we're never going to know how many lives we save because you're just not going to know however whether it's one or whether it's five if it's one it's huge it's but that number is going to be there it's very important to us we're here because you know what everybody here really cares and that's why we're here so we appreciate your suppor Wednesday go the SCH nervous there go um Mr Patrol there's a question from m c got don't off you

036uh for for organizations or individuals who would be interested in becoming involved is there a website is there a way that they can contact someone great question we um quantify media is going to handle the website for us that's all part of the grant it's forthcoming it will be forthcoming website and we're going to be running uh any mail uh we'll be going through um the prosecutor's office but the website will also be up and we're going to be we're probably several months away from the website because we're that we're we're we're we're behind in the Grant and we just got together with quantifi media on Friday Jake and I met with them and they're gearing up so we're getting going so the answer is yes if there are organizations that are interested in hosting

037classes where would they go right now where would they start um I don't I should have brought my car everybody okay I only have one yeah I don't yeah one here before we don't want him on speed right now so um yeah you can just give us a call and we'll get information for you Debbie we're also looking at uh training people on stop the Bel thank you um so I know with your involvement that's probably something that that we we could probably talk about yeah okay we'll talk offline thank you everybody thank you so much for your time is great thank you thank you for your work appreciate it okay we're going to go back to Dr Vali for real this time for real the real talk gentlemen thank you so much we we

038appreciate your time truly so thank you thank you thank you I shared it Anthony thank you did thanks thank you so this is going to be the highlight of your evening and we are going to do a data dive I already watch is everybody ready are we excited about this I'm sure anon's gonna bring it up soon there it is Anthony is it not working in in zoom in Zoom I'm sharing my screen it was there it was there no he was bringing it up in PDF hold on I just stopped sharing okay okay that sounds good everybody has it in front of them that's a different one that's Mr Barts I do that mine says data dive start diving so I could do this all day so I will try to be as brief

039as possible um tonight's topics we're going to go over State assessments building level scores ADM and enrollment and attendance and then parent teacher conference data and teacher efficacy there are a million data points we could talk about we're going to start here so if you remember a few months ago I gave this amazing analogy of a scoreboard and I'm leaning into it so you cannot equate these data points with anybody's effort or dedication so even though sadly the Eagles won the Super Bowl it doesn't mean that the Chiefs didn't put in all of their efforts a season worth of energy they still worked hard and prepared the outcome just was not as it should have been I like I know you don't we're all wearing green t What and we're all wearing green tonight we

040are all right um so State assessment scores just to level set just so everybody's on kind of the same playing field if we're going to lean into that analogy so for ELA we do pssas in grades three through eight Keystone in grade nine mathematics we do pssas grade three 3 through eight and then Keystone for Algebra 1 trigger course science is is currently grades 4 through eight changing to 5 through eight soon and Keystone biology course why do we care and honestly should we care yes so should we care yes how much we should care we'll put that on you so at the district level we look at these assessment scores based on our core programming so what are we offering our students how is our curriculum are we meeting our students needs when we

041see lowlevel scores it's usually like H we need to look at core programming so that's the district level building level looks at how are they implementing the curriculum and the programs that we're offering and how are they meeting the needs of their students classroom level it's really talking about how is the teacher implementing the curriculum and how are students responding to it and then at the individual student level it's looking only at growth so we're looking to see that the students are growing from year to year and then what standards they are not growing in and how we can intervene so you take one data point and there's four different lenses for each data point depending on what seat you're in okay caution our district is full of brilliant engaged hardworking students Talented Scholars artists

042musicians and athletes DED DC at caring faculty and staff committed focused Learners these numbers that you're going to see are not the prettiest of numbers they're not the numbers we're going to write home about but they are not going to Define us as a district they are going to show us where we need to improve and set the path for improvement but again they do not indicate that our students are not amazing that our faculty is not strong and that there is anything wrong with anything other than the system itself needs to improve I am not going to go over Anthony if you want to go to the next one I'm not going to go over every data point I'm just going to highlight that I'm giving you this information so you have it so

043these are Ela tests for pssas over the course of three years I have mapped it out I want to say for seven or eight years I'm only giving you three years because there's only so many numbers you can look at you really want to look at the green column the green column is the number of students who are proficient in advanced annually and you can see that bottom number in that like beige row is whether we have grown or not from one year to the next so if you look at third grade we grew 4.1% compared to last year just so you can kind of understand the chart the next chart is grades sixth seventh and eighth grade in again that pssa structure and you can see kind of the numbers are not showing as

044much growth I would say any to I don't know 3% or less is statistically not a concern to me so if we grew or not 3% or less within that window that's a good standard deviation for me not to kind of throw everything out and say we need to start so the next chart is super important to me it's the cohort chart so what I was just showing you is how third graders perform in third grade the cohort chart shows you how the same group of students takes the test in third grade then fourth grade then fifth grade so it's following that group of students this is the most alarming to me we should see these numbers growing in each box that when they're with us more we're seeing significant growth every year they're improving

045it's scattered for ELA and and to me when need to kind of understand why but whoever is teaching you data and talking to you about data this is really important data because it's the same group of students and you're seeing how they perform there are pockets of times when maybe your fifth graders last year just really struggled or maybe you had a whole bunch of long-term Subs in there whatever the reason is and then the following year they're going to do better or worse so there's always anomalies when you look at just the grade level this really helps you to see longitudinally how students are doing then you go to the next chart another important chart and this is really State comparison so I have said over and over again and you will hear me

046say this we're never going to be 100% proficient we're public education we accept all students 100% proficiency is unreasonable that goes back to like the old No Child Left Behind and by 2014 we're going to be 100% efficient it was the most ridiculous thing ever however we better be at state or above State average because what this means is that our students are going into the world below proficiency level of the people they're competing with to get into college for jobs locally so not that state average is something to be proud of but to me I'm always shooting to be green in that comparison not yellow so I want to be above State average that way our students can be competitive questions thus far okay the only thing I would maybe point out is when

047we are um even doing the overall comparative part we know that we do have a good percentage of students who aren't here K through 12 so we don't know you know when those new students are coming in and when the other students are coming out I mean I know it's coming but just in terms of these numbers and just in Mrs cacho's kind of to add to that I have had one of our data gurus figure out by grade level how many students in each grade level have been with us since that grade level so from kindergarten on so I now have that data for every single year of our students and we're going to continually track that so we can track our efficacy across the 13 years which is really important to me yes

048and the other thing is too for any for the state test any um family who opts their student out that counts as as below basic for us correct so whatever out percentages of students who are not who are not taking the test they are measured in here as below basic and that's a really important note so families who choose to opt out for whatever reason whether religious beliefs or just they have the right to opt out it goes as below basic against the district also last year the uh state of Pennsylvania changed Passa so Passa is the Pennsylvania alternative assessment so it's for students who have lower cognitive functioning they change that only 1% of your population may take it so many more students who used to take Passa now are taking the pssas when

049we know that they're in life skills programming and that has a huge impact on it as well and that started in 2024 are you able to disaggregate the the data and say these students who've been here for all 13 years compared to those who weren't yes okay do I have it today that's what I want yeah I mean especially when we looked at when we look at our special education population is at with 22 24% only 1% that can take the alternative test so you're having 23% taking a test where they may not you know obviously cognitively be able to take test and do we know how many opt out a year as well within that number I don't but I can get that that I think so I know when with my list year

050as principal that number was Rising like there's conversation about amazing incre St I think we just need to publicly and thank you Mrs cello highlight that when you oped out it goes as blow basing right which also if you're talking the the keystones affects their act 150 graduation pathway right because once you have a below basic on a keystone you can no longer do pathway one two or three right we were as high I remember for one test in keystones as 20 students opting out and we were testing you know 10 and something so when you take 20 you're starting with you know that people who are already Bel basic before even tested anybody which is kind of crazy but that's not for us the side I gu I'm sorry we've gotten off track no

051you're fine I asked if there were questions I appreciate it and I could stay here all night and talk about this so I am in no hurry to finish up this slide deck Mr Bard loves this because just delaying his numbers oh I like this like information so the next slide is is just the Keystone literature so that's 10th grade students who take our literature course that's the trigger course and that's their proficiency rating um and then again you have that state comparison chart which is the next chart Anthony um of where we are in comparison to the state which again is how competitive our students are going to be when getting into college going to the workforce um we we need to make some changes there so the next few charts are math um

052math is going to be not as pretty of a picture as Ela so our scores in math consistently go down every year as students grow so grade three starts off pretty high and then in as they go fourth fifth sixth seventh eth it gets lower and lower um when we look at eth grade pssas you always just have to factor in that students who are in Algebra 1 are not necessarily getting all of eth grade math standards so traditionally eighth grade scores are lower than every other year because the pocket of students who take algebra one do not always perform well on the eighth grade pssa because it's eighth grade standards and and that's okay so I have always said I would much rather them take Algebra 1 because it's more advanced and to move

053them on and know that eighth grade scores are going to be a little wonky and I'm okay with that because then we're progressing them to higher level maths earlier um the next slide then is that cohort data again um this is a much Bleaker picture than Ela but we know we can move forward so we now know this data we understand it and we know and Mr Snider started today and he's gonna fix it all by Thursday no pressure he's gonna fix the budget too by there um the next slide is the pssa math State comparison again as you notice um as every year goes up our scores go down and then the gap between the state level and our proficiency ratings keeps widening uh if we can go to Algebra 1 so this is

054is um alarming so when you look at Algebra 1 so if you think of students in 8th grade that take algebra one those are typically the top of the class they're the most advanced students and their proficiency rating isn't the highest which really tells me that it's a core curricular concern not a student concern it has nothing to do with our students it really has to do with the programming that we're offering them and we need to delve in and understand it better but these scores aren't just the eighth grade algebra one these are all of them but they're included in it correct these are and thank you Mrs Killa so the scores you're looking at so for 2024 63 students that does not mean in 2024 613 students took it it means the 11th

055graders who were in 11th grade in 2024 that's how they performed on the algebra 1 Keystone so it could be the 11th grader who took it in eth grade or ninth grade or 10th grade or 11th grade so it's really lagging data for us to make a lot of decisions on because half of these students could have taken it four years ago and some of these students they test poorly in Algebra 1 but then they go on and take Advanced statistics correct they're they're passing they're passing the course and being successful in the course they're just not showing proficiency level on the assessment or they're passing calculus absolutely DC right maybe passing the AP exam so some of these students 177% proficient we have C BC which is the highest level of calculus right how

056we have multivariable calculus correct so it's like these numbers are not commensurate with the courses that we offer or the Student Success um against the comparison against the algebra one Keystone we are not where we need to be to be competitive with the state science pssas um in full disclosure science is always what all school districts brag about right it it's the highest score um so we're in alignment with that and then the state comparison fourth grade is scoring higher against the state eighth grade not so much Anthony I'm whizzing through these and then biology um we're making gains with Biology in the last year but last year might have been an anomaly compared to kind of 2022 2022 and 24 really match when you look at the state comparison again we're we're not where

057we need to be in comparing with the state okay that was a lot we have a lot more to go over but any basic General conversations about State assessments and scores I will never give this to you in this big of a chunk again so we'll give the scores usually in July or August so we'll we'll parse this out this is an anomaly but I just wanted you to know what I've been spending my time doing building level scores so I'm going to show you building level scores what great that I mean we're thankful because it's so nice to finally see stuff like that so my caution with building level scores is I do not want you comparing one school to another this should not be this score this school got this and this school

058got this so this school is better please do not use them against one another okay so building level scores are super super complex formulary so it includes State assessment measures of proficiency growth and then those subgroup scores of students who are ELD English language Learners special education and then historically underperforming it also includes on track measures so it looks for your ELD students their growth and attainment it looks at attendance measure measures and then grade three and grade seven grade three reading gr grade seven math proficiency rates then you have your College and Career ready measures of your career standards your graduation rate for your cohort of fourth years your cohort of five years your industry competencies so like your nocti rigorous course of study and then postsecondary transition all that gets put in to

059some sort of formula and get spit out so the next side is your chart it's on a 100 point scale and these are how your buildings are scoring over the last five years and then I gave you that fiveyear average because I found found it interesting to report out that average compared to where we're at right now 20120 and 21 did not have scores because there were no pssas then so that's why there were no building scores then these scores are part of the teacher evaluation and the principal evaluation these scores go into the rubric and teachers are rated based on these scores just so you know this is an incredibly important number questions about building scores I just I just have a question what what is the is there a reason why if you

060look at the elementary level students the numbers are like pretty decent then they hit middle school and drop off but then they hit high school and pick back these are the same students we're comparing the same students here yeah looking at that too I would argue attendance I would argue proficiency rates on assessments growth of P scores because the 201 and that's something I need to dig into and compare Future Ready index of why some are higher and what some some are not I'm going to think it a lot of it is that age growth time too it could be because just thinking overall of kids when they get to that it's who they are who am I and what am they're trying to figure a lot out things out with a lot of hormon

061joance with their body at the same time and to what I'm saying yeah absolutely um the next slide is just the comparison for the last two years so you can see the comparison just broken out to see how we're performing just so you know all of our building principles got this slide deck weeks ago so that they knew we were presenting this and I was very clear that like it will not be an indicator of their f y just like it's not an indicator of teacher ethicacy okay average daily membership so I received counsel that I should not do these slides but we're doing it average daily membership is not enrollment it is how many student it is not attendance it is how many students are enrolled that debt okay so it is not an

062attendance it's not how many kids showed up to school that day it's how many kids were enrolled good okay so the next slide was it's not on there Anthony it was on my slide deck so um I can't share it so okay oh well sorry somebody created a graphic for me that person is very disappointed right now I'm sorry it was a great graphic all right so our average daily membership this is our average daily membership so this is the trend in enrollment that we have at each school yeah not attendance okay we're good with that and then the next slide is just the comparison to last year of up or down students with our average daily membership okay the next slide is about a now this is super complicated too so I'm giving you

063the information that's on the Future Ready index which is lagging data so it's 2223 data so it's old and see if you can figure this out attendance goes by students who are enrolled in The District 90 days or more and we're present for 90% of that time so these numbers are kids who were here 90 days plus and then out of that time we're in school 90% of the time if our principles pull their attendance it is much different than these numbers so if our principles pull their daily attendance these are not the numbers they're getting their numbers are much higher than what I'm going to show you so here is Anthony sorry here are the attendance numbers so like when you look and you see 60 that is because we live in a transient

064community so any student who's less than 90 days is kind of not accounted for and almost hurting so this is students 90 days plus 90% of the time if our principles are pulling their daily attendance they're in the high 0s 90s every day these are not daily attendance numbers but the reason I'm showing you this and not those numbers is because this is what's public facing this is what's on the Future Ready index and this is the formula that pte and their infinite wisdom has decided to do the bottom is the state average just so you can see kind of where we are again in comparison to the state so we all understand the difference between attendance and ADM so does that also include aaka so for example if there's a South student that attends

065aaka and they log in every day through aaka do they feed into the high school or like whatever great question I'm not sure okay okay so I finished all of this and I almost felt sad that these numbers are not an indicator of who we are as a community it's not the work you as the board put in that our administrative team puts in that our faculty and staff put in and it is certainly not an indicator of the energy our students put in so I said okay let me go looking for other data points so as I was talking to people people were talking about the lack of Engagement in parent teacher conferences so I said oh great we have them on March 3rd so we put together a quick Google survey and sent

066it out to our teachers and basically I said how many kids do you have on your roster how many teach how many parents showed up so for our core classes our main courses 10.27% of our families came and attended conferences now it's really really important because I know you're thinking well it's March why would they come our high schools it's a brand new semester so for our high schools the reason we have conferences in March is because of our high schools and their conferences were almost like two or three% so then we said okay what about special ed and related services so speech mtss all of that and it was it was less than 4% and a lot of our uh special education teachers had IEP meetings so they counted that and then related arts

067electives was less than 3% so then I was even sadder so then I said okay now our parents aren't engaged our data doesn't really show that like we're like this High achieving High performing District District so I said all right let me look at teacher efficacy and I want to show this to you and and I I spoke to the association about this ahead of time this is not to say anything negative about our teachers this is truly to tell you these scores mean a lot to our teachers when I showed you those assessment scores those building scores our administrators our teachers internalize that they live by those numbers they are upset by those numbers and they want change so I said okay what data points can I show you to kind of say okay

068like it's not the teacher's fault they are doing a wonderful job they we are giving them the equipment the tools to teach we are giving them the space to do it and they are putting forth so much effort so much dedication but the output isn't what we want and they agree that the output isn't what we want so teacher efficacy teachers are rated in four domains domain one is planning and preparation domain two is classroom environment domain three is instruction domain four is professional responsibilities and they're rated every year zero is failing one is needs Improvement two is proficient and three is distinguished so they get rated in every one of those domains and then I can take all that data which makes my heart happy and I can look at where every teacher is

069rated and if you look every teacher the average is over proficient we do not have failing teachers in our district we do not have struggling Educators so domain one all very very positive you look at domain two of classroom environment so what kind of Rapport do our teachers have with our students that falls under that um are they safe in the classroom do they feel comfortable to take risks all of that is encompassed domain three is the actual instruction what kind of questions are being asked what kind of assessments are being done our are our students engaged again all above proficiency with their rating and then domain four is professional responsibilities so how engaged are the professional staff in our community at large or their school Community well above proficiency so do not allow these

070numbers to be conflated with our efficacy our dedication or the heart of the district we work for and in an amazing district with amazing students amazing faculty and staff amazing people who want to do well just our outcome isn't where we need to be so if you go to the next slide this is the interesting fact so out of an anticipated graduating class of 468 students 206 of them have been with us for 13 years that's 44% of them have had the opportunity to be influenced by us for 13 straight years is that andth I believe that's North and South that's combined well there has to be there should be more than that there should be more than that that's I can't look there's I know there's 234 kids graduating from nor no no to

07112 let me double check that number I can't get off the screen right now but that is the number I was given in the spreadsheets um but it's still 44% of our students are with us for that 13 years all right okay so what's next so yes right now there's a lot more to do so this paints a picture this makes me want to dig further so I want to collect and analyze more data my biggest point right now is I want to create an Alumni network and I want to know how our students are actually doing once they a what alumni an Alumni network okay doing when they graduate so we see all these scores but like are they employed so two years years out how are they doing five years out the interesting

072thing ask here how many of us came through here for 13 years three of you I'm not from here who off in the back where oh in defense I have five four kids and one grandchild on taret for that I so but look when you see correct I want to see the lasting impact on the work we did and an Alumni network will help that can I just thr just something I experienced as a principal itself and we had one algebra teacher who 75% of his algebra class changed within the semester so we we I asked the teachers to do a little bit of an informal study that was the winner so to speak that we had that teacher had 75% different kids in a semester and was teaching them algebra one and and getting

073kids as you know we get kids from a lot which is a great thing we get kids from a lot of different places but then they're also bringing a lot of different experiences and background um so that is a major issue for us I think and if they come if they enter the school the day before the test they take the test the next dayre correct and get and then go on our score even though they have to be there October one right they have to be there on October one tested immediately they can they will they will have to test but it doesn't get attributed to our district um I also want to look at College boards so College boards shows you persistence rates in college which is super important to me so it

074tells you how many freshmen in our district go on to be sophomores which is a really really important stat for me because if our students are not persistent that means they're struggling and now they've taken a year of debt that they should have never taken because they weren't ready for college so I want to dig into that I also want to dig into kind of an internal attendance and discipline data to better understand that I think collectively as an organization we need to determine our path forward we can't fix all of it if we try to fix all of it we're going to fix none of it I guarantee you so we need to be very intentional with streamlining our area of focus as I talk to our administrative team I keep telling them this

075that we see so much that needs help and support but if we do it all we do it none of it so we need to be very very intentional I think as a group we need to set our values and mission of what we're doing so I I know they they sit on a wall I I really want to dig in and what is our goal what do we want our students to leave here with what is important to us I think we need to continue to focus on our data of benchmarking students making sure they're growing and improving by doing that we need to look at our core programs our instructional practices and our intervention processes so we do a lot of mtss work which is interventions but any educator will tell you you

076cannot intervene out of a core problem if our Core Curriculum is not need meting the needs every intervention is great but it's never going to fix the problem um we need to look at what's happening in the classroom how can we make it better and bring it to the next level and then interventions and then I'm going to launch within the next few weeks a detailed climate survey so I launched the soft one of like my entrance survey about kind of what people thought this climate survey will really really dig in there will be questions about to our families to our students about are your teachers meeting your needs is our program meeting your needs are you getting extra help are you getting support very very intentional questions to let us know how the services

077we provide are being received by the stakeholders and also on the other side of that to support staff and faculty it will be about the supports that we're offering them do you feel supported by professional development do you have what you need to be successful F and if not what is that and then moving forward what do you think we should work on all of this will help us determine that path forward and make sure we are very intentional and strategic with what our goals are every administrator will have goals I will have goals as well that will be kind of public facing of what we're working on and it will be very very cohesive that we're all moving in the same direction and focused on very similar goals and that is all you have

078for me tonight I'm sorry thank you that is not no apology it's refreshing just say it so the question is how do we make lemonade from our lemon right I mean how do we make something out ofre and I think thisinformation sets our our sense of urgency so every leader will tell you oh gosh you need a sense of urgency we have it now we know what it is and now as a leadership team we need to set what that expectation is and start moving toward good positive change but again very intentional and hyperfocused on one thing at a time may I ask a question is since you're a numbers kind of person and you like this maybe could you look at maybe 10 years back pre pandemic because the pandemic really know does not

079going to affect anything think I did so I I went for 20 said I went back I actually most 2017 back and the numbers aren't much different okay I did because there's a there's a that that was a major for a lot of students I I don't disagree with you um but but the data doesn't fully support that okay I I wonder I wonder if it like like Middle School age would is it able are you able to disaggregate some of the data of boy versus girl like the learning styles of males versus you can do it by gender race I'm single yes yes you can you can pull it out by almost any demographic category you can dig down right and um we're gonna have some some good conversations we have an ad just

080like you had a workshop we have an admin Workshop this summer where we're just going to Deep dive into data and they are going to really understand not that they don't now but we're going to have a common shared understanding of how to make decisions on what your goals are and what you're working toward that are based on measurable data points yeah absolutely okay um Dr matal would you like to go to the business or would you want to do committee reports I don't know where he went he just gave so he's on his back okay so I guess let's go do committee report okay uh we're gonna do our committee reports we'll start with mcti Jason Jason passes I how do I follow Alissa Carl doc I don't even have a we met and

081we're going to meet again next month the building is moving along on Monday uh March 3rd 2025 uh the mcti J met to discuss following items uh finances curriculum and instruction Student Activities and Personnel items and of course the progress of the conference center uh the J started off with apparently Dr vitoli or V excuse me he's doing it on purpose so sad um because she read Miss Joseph's report so uh J approved payment for invoices and investment information we me or excuse me we motion to approve the articulation agreement with the Northampton Community College for the following programs Hotel restaurant and event management for business hospitality information security for computer information science and networking and science Administration for computer networking and security the J also appr excuse me approved board policy 601 for purchasing

082uh bids and quotations we also approved field trips in March to read Across America at Arlington Elementary School in straussburg the sports medicine program at ESU in straussburg the Northampton Community Campus Automotive Department in Bethlehem and poono Mountain School District Swiftwater Elementary presentation in Swiftwater and finally Pocono Mountain uh Toby Hannah Elementary for the presentation in Toby Hannah the J also approved the substitution appointment for Reese Jacobs as the CTE instructor and we also approved the occupational advisory committee for the 2425 school year uh and with heavy heart we accepted the resignation for the purpose of retirement uh for Mr Frank zazo Mr zazo has been the supervisor of career of the Career and Technical education as well as our supervisor of buildings and ground uh his resignation will come effective become effective in September

083of the 2526 school year uh he'll be greatly missed with in mcti community and finally the next mcti meeting will be held on Monday April 7th at 7M thank you okay thank you Chason I 20 our report will be for me at our meeting the bulk of our meeting we spend listening to the Financial audit uh from the colonial IU um the uh condensed of a long presentation would be uh there were no issues found with their financial report um everything is sound in the uh u20 which we are a major contributor to uh so it was good news to hear that report they received um many uh compliments and um the way they do things and uh we could be confident and where our money is going for mcti if you want more detail

084in public to if you go on their website there's more detailed information about the audit the other thing that was talked about at the meeting uh was their amazing Special Olympics program from the IU which is uh simply amazing we have an amazing program here too at eastburg um they are into uh Sports they highlighted their winter athletes and they do skiing um snowboarding they had their athletes there they had the people who coach them um and just the the enthusiasm that you feel watching these students talk about and seeing their medals and and you can if you ask they'll they'll show you the medals and tell you about them so really an amazing job and we can be very proud of what's happening at IU in Special Olympics and remember many of those in

085IU are our students so um they are experiencing that and then the final thing they did um little highlight of actually what our two students presented tonight uh with the education cohort uh they two run an education cohort much like we have here at our district and uh what they did was something unique is presenting I know Easter rburg was there poke at a mountain uh they are not only showing the teaching profession which is very important to get our people to think about that but these other occupations I think Carl you mentioned them occupational therapy um visually impaired careers that students May absolutely have no idea about and they did presentations on that which are very good careers especially for those who want to be in the helping type profession so um please know

086that our students are exposed to that and again it's simply amazing to see that and I'm so excited that we are actually finally in education um telling our kids that this is a viable opportunity to come involved in the education field and and please look into it so that's my report uh property and Facilities Mr rer okay property facilities met on Wednesday March 5th uh committee made motions to recommend um hold TI here give me a sec I'm really not used to this um recommended LV floor covering for $ 53,1 180 for the JM Hill flooring project the committee made a motion to [Music] recommend um again on flooring replacement for JT Lambert hope flooring for $545,500 and for R uh Elementary School recommended lb floor covering for 159,50 5 the committee made a uh

087motion to recommend payment of CHA invoices um which include uh South Field House for $738 30 North Campus storm pipe invoice for $548 26 Cents the JTL partial flooring replacement invoice was $7,000 350 resc for the flooring replacement for $5,500 JM Hill flooring replacement for 4,450 and East stury Elementary sprinkler replacement project an invoice for 14,000 um I am hopeful that was for the uh construction plans that are supposed to be um being drafted up as we speak uh the committee made a motion to recommend option three for the north bus garage to complete the bus driver's Lounge at the North bus garage uh the committee's next uh meeting is Wednesday April 2nd here 5:30 you education programs and resources Mr Mrs cillo we met on the 6th of March at 5:30 um Mrs Lori

088presented first the be Alliance update highlighting the various holidays and celebrations for the month of March this list along with the support materials and articles is emailed to all the staff so that they have it in advance on February 20th they had a workshop why words and language matter and the next topic is going to be on cultivating high expectations um after our second look at the proposed science curriculum and materials we had many questions that came uh about so those are being addressed currently and we'll be bringing the science curriculum to the full board next month hopefully in addition curriculum news um there are 82 courses that are on deck over the next few months that will be presented to the Eep committee as well as course planning guides for our high school math

089and science courses um as we saw mentioned through the data dive today that Dr vital presented and as I always say at the end of all my reports but I'm going to say it in the middle this time because of the 82 courses this is you know really epr addresses all the curriculum um and programming within our district and I really highly recommend that you know everyone attend um those meetings or you know zoom in or listen even later on just to you know get an idea of what's really happening and you know the really the the course that we're trying to make because we have been and I think that's part of what we see here in the results our curriculum really hasn't been touched you know in certain areas in many many many

090years um and so we're really trying to begin that process and I just think it's important for you know parents community and everyone to uh you know be part of that and be and be aware of it and um you know I want to thank the other members of the epr committee um Rebecca Jason and Debbie because um it's a lot of work you know we're getting all the curriculum and going through it and um you know and really taking a look at it because you know we this is what is the core uh and the Heart of education so um I just wanted to kind of say that to everyone um we also uh had the special education plan presented uh by Mr Brian bck and Dr Mary oesi additional work on the plan

091is ongoing so once the plan is completed it will be posted on the district website for feedback uh additional feedback will be given by the steering committee we'll have a few meetings yet for that um and then that plan will come to the epr for uh final review on our April 10th meeting so again if anybody wants to be you know wants to hear about that uh to definitely be there um and then that will be presented to us as a full board on April 28th uh to vote to push it Forward um the deadline is in May um lastly at our meeting we did have a few shoutouts uh the first was for Dr wear who was uh sponsored engaging luncheon for current and aspiring uh NHS students up at High School North our

092second shout out just to kind of go along with our um science day um was to Paul kernin and his gifted students and all the South science teachers for planning and executing uh a successful and fun science day um as was already mentioned um you know last year it was uh first time it was done it was housing all hosting all of the fifth graders uh from uh South and this year it encompassed all of the fifth grade both North and South so I really wanted to um again just give that shout out to all the science teachers all the students fifth grade students were you know so great and really had a fun time um and really it's again just highlights the interconnectiveness of our district you know you hear so many uh things

093we have the reports and and you just see really how our um students faculty and staff really work together even as writing the curriculum as just as an example you know North and South all the different elementary schools uh you know really uh working together so I just you know we have a great district and uh it's a wonderful thing to witness and whether it's our mad scientists you know of fifth grade or you know whether it's uh all of our teachers and students working together so again our next meeting is Thursday April 10th 5:30 here or uh on Zoom so I welcome and encourage everyone to attend thank you okay you finance committees we met on Monday March 10th and we had a full meeting and you're going to have Mr B's presentation after

094this and so we are um moving forward the purchase of Apple computers for elementary schools and teachers and we do this every couple years with the contract we have the purchase of HP computers for our staff as also at theary schools and in the offices and the purchase of our Lenovo Chromebooks for grades K five and nine they're on the replacement cycle and we're also um on the agenda is the approval of the 2025 senior rebate resolution which is in line with the Commonwealth guidelines and also we are replacing a crw a crout cab dump truck and we're getting $8,000 trade in for the old dump truck and we took the lowest of the three quotes which is from boner Chevrolet you'll see that on the agenda we also um spoke through what Wayne went

095through with f properties and Facilities his recommendations and that is it and our next meeting will be Monday April 14th at 5:30 both via zoom and in person okay thank you Rebecca Keith has the report for policy and he also has another announcement another exciting evening with policy uh we talked a great deal about a lot of different policies and uh on the agenda tonight we have our recommendations that will we asked for last week that were're up for public review uh but tonight we discussed uh and we're asking to be posted for further public review and then be discussed at next month's meeting we discuss these policies uh policy 103 discrimination harassment affecting students policy 103.1 non-discrimination qualified students with disabilities policy 104 discrimination harassment affecting staff policy 234 uh pregnant parenting married students

096policy 247 hazing policy 249 bullying policy 37.1 educator misconduct policy 336 personal necessity leave policy 339 uncompensated leave policy 807 opening exercises moment of silence flag displays and policy 708 lending of equipment and books uh as well as policy no that's it our our next meeting will be April 28th uh here at 4:30 p.m. as well as online um and that's my policy um report okay okay a question Rich okay um and then uh on March 11th uh George um and I were had the honor of attending um we were asked to attend um the esya um they had a fundraiser parents versus coaches um it was a it was a basketball game it was at JTL and uh we were asked to just show up and we we got there and and they presented

097our school district with an award that says with sincere gratitude and appreciation for your dedication and support of esya basketball 2025 they gave us a plaque so I'm gonna pass it on to the school to hang and display um it was a really neat game the uh the coaches won the game so and it was pretty interesting um it's a really neat program and I'm glad we're able to support it and uh and also I want to give a shout out to um the science day I was able to to attend the science day um at the high school because I I am loan some equipment to them and it was really really neat to see all of our it was a great thing to see all of our schools coming together even you know

098North End South it was awesome so um I know that wasn't what I was told I was gonna say sh TR but a shout out like I said our next meeting April 28th right here be be here and for more excitement okay and a quick repeating I encourage the public um people either live on at home or here or you can watch them whatever you want even later on just can't comment obviously later on um the bulk of our detailed work of all these things goes on in committees so if you want to really want to hear the the nitty-gritty discussion um those are the places really where you're going to hear um and also can comment um at those meetings so if there's a particular area that either you have an expertise in or

099or you feel you know for all the public they have an interest in you are welcome at these or at least watch them on Zoom or watch them later toml I'll pass that on to students too especially in the area of curriculum um you know those are the curriculum decision especially for our younger students freshman may want to watch that and see what's being talked about for future programs so that's really the detailed bolt work does in our committees and it's those are really the places to um decisions are made okay and speaking of decisions we have Peter will present some updates on the budget oh boy when everybody everybody's leaving Peter you scared them away way to clear the room it's not on That's Not Unusual so thank you everybody for coming I'm gonna

100stand at the podium as my as my C is my thing now do I'm not moving it in the middle so I can see the taxpayer so I don't get accused of missing the taxpayer so I there's no time either um so this is the 2526 budget for those I presented this same exact presentation at the uh the finance committee so I'm sharing it with the board as a whole um hang on one second I don't know why this isn't start okay so the first slide I want to talk about is the the district enrollment this um Dr Vitalia talked about this a little bit this is different than adms this is the enrollment that is present in the school district for the last 10 years this goes back to 2015 and it shows a

101distinct Trend in the district over the last 10 years and it shows a declining enrollment from close to 7,000 students down to about 64 33 which is in the present day now and this is just a snapshot in this school year as to where the enrollment is and this will be important as we go through the budget because this will show a per pupil spend as I will get to in the future so we'll talk about our P pupil our per puple a general fund expenditures for the last uh four years and and the budgeted per pupil expenditure for the current fiscal year so if you look at it you'll see that we are spending 23744 per pupil then it goes up to 27,000 down to 26 it SP it hovers around 26 to 27,000

102goes up to 28,000 310 last year and this current year budgeted expenditure is at 31,6 A7 and that is on the current budgeted expenditures based on our district enrollment and this is important because this is showing exactly where our dollars are going to per the per each individual student that we are that we are educating in the district so this is a current number to to to show you so you might be thinking to yourself well how does this compare to the rest of the of the rest of the schools not only in our region but also in the state so this is a a pretty interesting chart to show you as well because this goes all the way back to 2013 the blue line on this chart um is the East the the the

103our district the orange line is the colonial IU and the green line is the state so it shows us much above the not only the state average but also the colonial IU average which is the regional districts and this is all this this is the and so it all stops at 2023 because the 2024 data wasn't available to a Frontline at the time of this publication um so this is this data comes from the actual money calculator on the this goes by average daily membership and the and the regular data is not available so let's talk about the 2025 2026 Revenue summary so the 2025 2026 revenue for the local is 107 million the state is 76 million the federal dollars are 4.9 million the other is 50,000 which is sale from fixed assets bringing

104the total revenue at 189 mil3 39,44 or an increase of 1.55% from the previous year um this assumes a 0% tax increase this assumes the loss of the continued loss of assessment values and this this assumes the governor's budget stays exactly as it is proposed um and that there's no additions or subtractions as as as proposed um so I want to talk a couple of things about this this budget um about the local Revenue I've rounded up I've continued to look and study the the local pieces of this Revenue so some things that go into the local Revenue the biggest piece of this are 88 milli dollar or so of this is their local real estate uh collection the other big piece of this local pie is the u local earned income tax uh previously

105in the previous budget I had three 4.3 million I've rounded it up to 4.7 million I anticipate that I should be able to increase this even a little bit more to $5 million as the trend has been that we are anticipating uh a $5 million collection rate um instead of 4.3 million 4.3 million has been entirely U overly conservative we've gotten some estimates in that we've been collecting around 5.3 million over the last several years we should be able to increase that that has been some of the reasons why so a lot of the so what's what's let me let me back up a little bit here um as you guys know in the past you guys have seen budget deficits that are budgeted in the 78 million range and you come in at the

106uh even or slightly def slight a slight deficit for example the 23 24 year comes to mind some of the reasons and one of the reasons that happened last year was for an example we budgeted $179 million in revenue and we came in at around $182 million in Revenue so that helped offset some of the deficit some of that was because we were overly conservative on the revenue side of the the the puzzle so what I'm doing in this year's budget is to help trim and not just trim but also look at ways that we can be and rightsize the ship so you're going hear me say rightsize a lot in this budget we're going to right siize the revenue piece to be more aligned with the variances that we've seen historically in in the

107budget so for an example um the real the not the real estate the in the investment on earnings have been around like $1.2 million budgeted but we came in somewhere around 2.5 million now that's a very big variant variance that we that we should not have we should be closer to a two or 3% variance on on the Investments so I'm going to make that number a little bit higher and I have in this budget to reflect what the current market values are now the feds are continuing to um adjust their how many times they're going to cut their their budget or they're going to cut interest rates so I'm going to be a little more conservative so I'm not going to go right to 2.5 million but I'm going to raise that number from

1081.2 million to a better more realistic number so don't have that variant now the downside to all that is you're not not going to see that swing where you're going to have that $10 million swing on the the deficit in the 2526 budget when we talk about what we are anticipating in the later slides we'll get to is you're going to see that we're going to have that variant again come through in the 24 25 budget which will benefit us as we're planning and future planning but we may not have that in the 25 26 year so the board has to be cognizant when that comes in that it's not because our team isn't doing a great job or the board is spend in spending the budget the way it has been appropriated if the

109fact is that we we eliminated the variances to make it a more a clearer picture and these are historical variances that have existed for many years and and you guys have talked about it we've all talked about it for years as to why this has gone on so the state the state budget has included a also we've gotten a little more money also in the state budget from our transportation subsidy our transportation subsidy has gone from 2.5 million to 3.1 million so we to account for that in our in our pieces that's gone that's come from better reporting and also the state has increased our allotment due to the inflationary in in the inflationary index so we've included that in this budget as well so before I go on into the next slid do you

110guys have any questions any board members have any questions about this before I go on to the next you address what you talked about by the the real estate market changing and the commercial or is it residential can you please address that um our highest taxpayer um appealed their their real estate and we lost $43 million in assessed value which is actually a $1.3 million in actual in tax revenue that we're going to take we have to take off of this of this piece so we're trying so in the in the in the interim to try to make up for that without accounting for necessarily a tax increase which we'll get to in the very end of the deck I want to try to make up for not make up for But realize that we

111were being overly conservative in the other areas of the revenue to try to paint a more realistic picture for the public and for the board as to where the other local pieces of the the revenue come in so that if the board does make a decision later on into what the administration or what I make a recommendation the board does you don't come back in the at the in June of 2026 and we have another wild swing where the deficit isn't as W isn't as big and then everybody's looking to you know um yell yell at PE for saying hey you said there was gonna be a big deficit but now we had a a wild swing where there wasn't a big deficit um I want to make that realistic picture so that we have

112addressed every single we want to turn over every single Rock so that there's not anything that we weren't talking about before asking the board to increase Revenue by the last really lever they have and that's the the real estate Revenue but our largest taxpayer did um assess or appeal their assessment we lost and we came to an agreement on on their assessment so we have lost a significant amount of money um that's why uh EAS rburg Area School District was the largest um recipient of the tax Equity payment that they got in the state which was the $5 a. half million doar tax Equity payment that we received um was because the state recognized that East rburg um and all all the count all the districts in Monroe County I think all four of them

113were in the top six of all the tax Equity payments that came out because all Monroe count is going through the same thing and then the per pupil spend that's not just salaries that's everything buildings buses everything including Deb service special education everything every special education Debt Service payments it's everything divided by the number of enrollments the number of the enrollment correct so it's it's not just salaries it's no no it's not buildings it's everything it's everything it's maintenance of the build it's maintenance of your physical plants it's Transportation costs even if your student doesn't get it take a bus they drive it's everything that's included in there that's want make sure those was clear as well yep so let's look at the 25 26 budget summary um the revenue is pre-mentioned at 189 309

114uh 441 the expenditure at 213 just shy of 214 the projected deficit at 24, 57866 like Dr vitalus previously mentioned please don't um this is the the the worst case scenario so please don't you know um have a con you know don't have heart attacks or don't I mean this stuff keeps me up at night don't let yourself keep yourself up at night this is the worst case scenario we're going to trim it down and begin the trimming down process um right away the general fund balance that we have is 50,400 uh 50, 400,000 even that was the audit amount from the 2324 audit the anticipated amount is what we just talked about a few minutes ago what I talked about was the the where we're anticipating we're going to land in the 2425 budg

115we're going to land somewhere between 6 and 8 million I landed at the $7 million mark because that's right in the middle so we're going to anticipate that with the funds to balance the 2526 budget I anticipate ending the 2026 fiscal year with the fund balance of18 milon 821 340 we also have a capital reserve fund balance of 15, 2041 191 um the difference between the general fund balance and the capital reserve is the capital reserve can only be used for capital projects that have a a lifespan longer than five years or more so there is money that is we have over 32 million as you can see in the fund balce which is still healthy for a district of size but there are the warning flags the warning signs are there and the district

116needs to take um the district needs to be concerned and the Board needs to be concerned that if the trend continues and I will show you that in the future um what will happen if if we don't stop the uh if the if the deficits continue to be realized so some of the the deficit did increase slightly from the last presentation we had um the reason it did increase slightly was because we went through every um all 10,000 lines of the budget and reclassified um some of the accounting lines we also discovered that one thing wasn't imported into the budget properly and it was $173,000 expense for for a curriculum purchase in special ed so we had to add that um that was it was an error uh so we had to put that into

117the budget to make sure was properly accounted for we are now 100% confident that we have not missed anything so now the task that we have begun and we're beginning this week and next is to find um and we'll go through the different data we're going to present with you guys to present you guys with is a 5 to 10% reduction over some of the building and some of the budgets that we can cut some of the supplies with and some of the other things with but I say 5 to 10% doesn't mean 5 to 10% of 23 million because some of the stuff is static we can't cut it's 5 to 10% of some of the discretionary spend that we can cut so that we'll reduce some of this budgetary spend and also continue

118to look and analyze our Revenue side see if we can um find some other um Revenue sources that would not um that would not affect the the people's in programs so let's go through some of the expenditure details now the salaries up rest at 88 million which is a 2.5% increase from the year before the benefits are at 64 million which is an increase of 7.7% the health insurance cost make up the P the primary driver of this are 11% projected increase the professional and Technical Services are 11 million 11.5 almost 11.5 million or a 19% increase um this is where we house the uh the IU services for special education um that is what's driving primarily um this number the purchase property and the purchase Property Services is 2.6 million or a 17% increase

119um some of the services that are in there um are the garbage removal snow removal different things of that nature things that we have to subcontract out to bring in the other purchases Services um some of the big things in here on the 15 that drive the 15.4 million cost which is a 4.7% increase in the Charter School tuition which is a $9 million uh impact uh the liability insurance for the district um which is about it's about a $1.2 million uh cost and also the ODP stands for outof district placements so any students that have to be um placed uh out of the district for whatever reason they are accounted for and there for when I say out of District place that's a tuition that we pay for out of the districts could you

120clarify how the for us or for the public how the Charter School tuition is done and like what we pay in like difference from other districts yes so the district the out of the we calculate our Charter School tuition via pde 363 the data is housed on the PD's website under Charter School you could find all the districts of of all the districts data from all 500 some districts on there It Is Ours was recalculated in November to match the current legislation um I believe our uh our regular EDS around 28,000 and our special EDS around 52,000 per student um so it's based on our budgetary costs minus some they take out some of our federal expenditures and things of that nature they also take out Debt Service as well to figure out that number

121um and that number is is a calculation form um it is different every school district is completely different so um East sturg area is different than strawsburg which is different than Pleasant Valley which is different than Pocono Mountain so every school district is completely different there is no set standard or or um reform that's why we need Charter School Reform um to take place if you guys talk to any of your legislature uh your legislators that are that that represent you we should be speaking in one voice that we need to reform the charter school reform so that everything is uniform um based on one single rate that would benefit us the problem is with that and what you're going to hear is what may benefit um our representative and our Senator here may not

122benefit somebody in Western Pennsylvania or a smaller District because the flat rate might not um benefit that particular District depending upon where they land um so that are some of the challenges that exist with that but our particular District it would benefit um some of these where I know Dr Vitali and Andy have a very very aggressive plan to get some of these students back and so this is a key to drive our costs down um and so it will be a it will be a a struggle but it will be something that we can Undertake and something that we have to undertake for the for the cost expenditure yeah I don't think the public realizes how much no anytime a student so one thing you should get out to the public is when a

123student resides in eburg if they were to leave the district and go to Commonwealth Charter Academy where it says a big billboard it says tuition free school it's not tuition free the taxpayers of this District pay for um if they were so that is something that I think a lot of people uh really realize and so that's why we need Charter we only we also need charter school reform because I think a lot of times these students go there and then sometimes the charter school finds ways to make them a special ed student like they need if student gets diagnosed with a speech goes up to a $51,000 charge for our district and there are really no ways that we can track not only their success in that school but also whether or not they're

124being successful especially as a special ed kids like these those kids are the most at need for services and the most needful where we where we want to get them to be the most successful and we don't have a check to make sure that these students are getting the services that they need and they're the most vulnerable so I think that's where that's where the the struggle is that we need that I think the struggle is with the the Char schools and all that data that we just looked at doesn't exist for Cyber Charter Schools because they don't have to so they are not held to the same standard that we are held to of accountability with Future Ready index assessments all of that so there is no metric to measure whether they are supporting

125students and students are learning or growing sorry that's a problem so we'll go on to the supplies which is a 9 mill $9.8 million uh line item which is a 7.29% increase this includes electricity natural gas water and school supplies please we're not spending $9 million on papers and pens or things of that nature it's a much much smaller number than that most of this is is is our is our uh yeah most of us is our utilities to keep our buildings warm in the summer cool wait cool in summer yeah reverse that cool in the summer warm in the winter sorry so when it came out it was too late I can't you can't put tooths back in the tube but that is some that's where our our our our costs are coming from

126um the property 3 125 million or 24.9% increase the reason this is an increase and The Debt Service is a decrease is because the original proposal and the original budget I had money um allocated in The Debt Service because I thought we were going for leases and we're going for purchases Compu for the computers so the computers are booked differently because of gby requirements and they are in which I'm not going to explain the gby um definitions because it's I know you're going to get me because you lean back in your chair and have that smile on your face I'm not gonna I'm not going to get on the gby definitions but the gby requirements require leases to be booked as Debt Service and not as a property purchase so I had to reverse them

127as we went to that um to buy the computer replacement so that is why you see those differences um in the budget that's why there was differences from this presentation to next um so this is some different so B we took the feedback that the board was been giving and um Dr vital and I decid decided to give you guys the department and the building level uh budgets from and also go from the 2425 to 2526 differentials so these are we are these are the some of the things that we're talking about uh the cutting back the five to 10% reductions on um if possible some of these are not um some of these are not going to be able to be reduced because they are Grant related and I also want to point out

128a couple of things um uh when I get to them I I'm going to go I'm going to go a couple of things I want to point out first off the library when it goes from 181 7437 and the difference is 181 7437 there was an error in importing the library budget into the budget system last year and it wasn't noticed until um the library The Librarians began to order their materials and we noticed that there was an error coming up saying that the budget was overextended for Library already um and it was July 1 so that was not uh that's what we not noticed the the mistake in the in the error in the export so the budget was missed so unfortunately that's why it looks like that um I decided just to let

129it roll instead of coming to to edit the budget when it was already passed and uploaded um so we left it in there like that um so we so that's why it's looking like that the library did not the library did not have a $181,000 increase uh so that's that's not that's not there we will be looking at um scaling back and cutting some of the things that can be cut in some of these departments I've already sent out the emails to look at some of these some of these different things um and some of these uh budgets are are higher because they already making purchases or doing projects that are not being paid out of the capital fund they're being paid when I say Capital fund I mean capital reserve and they're not being

130paid they being paid at the general fund um so I want to go through this this is also um the charter schools the budgetary reserve the colonial Intermediate Unit is the special ed um a lot of special EDS service that come out of there this also includes the colonial IU budget that was proposed to us um before their General operating budget which is just covers their administrative team and doesn't cover that the computer leases this is the this will be the last year for the computer leases moving forward The Debt Service increase uh the 1.27 five million is the uh School Bus purchases that we um approved the insurance premiums are the uh the 10% increase that we're expecting for the insurance premiums I do want to touch on the grant piece at the bottom

131at the finance committee meeting I misspoke a little bit saying that we uh we decreased um in Grant uh bringing in we actually did we actually did not necessarily decrease in the grants the grants expenditures that you're looking at there are actually the grant expenditures for title one through four money that are not tied to salary and benefits so a lot of our um Title One money is tied through uh salary and benefits um our our grant wrer Angela burn has actually brought in close to $900,000 to a million dollar in competitive grants this year that are paying for a lot of projects you're actually going to be voting on and approving them one of them tonight at least so there is a lot of work that she does um to bring that money in

132and that's not um the $18,000 decrease is not because of a um because we're not bringing in as much grant money I mentioned the the I mentioned at the finance committee meeting that we're having a decrease in Grants the title money did decrease by 36,00 but has nothing to do with grant writing it is a it has to do with the title money being decreased and this is proportionate to um the grants being uh declined she also wrote an uh she also wrote an EC an eitc Grant which is a competitive Grant to help make up for some of the costs that we lost through the title programs there's some like for an example the steamer program that we run in the summer the eitc grant um pays for some of the school supplies that

133we lost um out of the steamer program because of the decrease in the title money that goes to pay for some of that she has actually wrote a competitive Grant to help pay for some of the supplies that we lost out of that uh out of that Grant so she does a phenomenal job and um I just wanted to draw your attention to that because I know at the finance committee I said that we we lost some grants but we actually we didn't we just had a a slight decrease in the title money that we're getting um and has nothing to do with Angela or anything of that nature address the board budget there so the board budget has the 97 ,500 where where we the primary drivers of that um particular uh line item

134is where we house the district audit so the audit costs about $30,000 so that's about a third of the board's budget currently the psba um membership for the board where we get other policy recommendations and also um where they they do give us legal advices also $188,000 as well so that's almost half of your board budget already so that's where the that's where all the current um uh that's where all your current that's what drives the the budget so the board isn't spending so the public knows the board isn't spending 97,5 on themselves there's nothing like that going on there so please so members of the public please don't think that that's where the board is spending so so the $31,000 increase is because our audit went up a little bit and the psba raised

135their raised their their uh I think that went up a couple like a thousand or so but that's not the reason why um that increased as well we're also going to be looking at that at the board budget as well to ensure that um all that that increase is is taken care of as well there also some print and binding supplies and stuff like that that goes in there but it's not a it's not it's not like that um so this the next slide is the pro bill okay can I ask a question please yeah um the the colonial Intermediate Unit is showing a $9 million for an increase of 1.6 but when the colonial IU people were here with their budget it wasn't it wasn't that much where's the rest of that money coming

136from so that was only like a $36,000 charge that $36,000 charge is only their General operating yeah their General operating budget which is basically their admin team this 9.27 five million is actual purchases services that we buy from them for our special education students so we are actually purchasing services for our district from the IU yes abud that go there yes they come here that that much okay yeah so that's so we buy mental health workers or mental health services and things of that nature we don't buy them I mean we yeah so we we buy the services and they provide the services to our students is it not roughly 25% of our student population somehow receive Services it's about that correct yeah um so the next slide is the 2526 expenditure details um by

137by this is by this is up by building um I want to draw your attention mcti the mcti line I wanted to this is one of the reasons why I left this in on purpose um I know because I knew it was an error but I wanted to leave it in on purpose because I wanted to show you some of the encounters that we had going through the 10,000 line items the number is going to be lower so you're already going to see a lower budget presentation next month because that number wasn't wasn't the number that the mcti budget is because you're going to vote on it tonight and the reason it wasn't in there is because you had so we talked a little bit about why the deficit comes in um lower than you

138expect well in this budget line item you saw a 20 there's a $25,000 buffer in there between a North between North stent between $225,000 for north and a $25,000 for South but to for the life of anybody in my office no one could know why because we don't the MCT doesn't Bill like that you they bill on a yearly basis so there's no need to have a buffer in at all for that particular space so we're going to take it out we're just going to build exactly what mcti is going to charge and so that will be the exact charge that mcti is given us for the uh the 25 26 school year so that number will come down the rest of the buildings we're meeting with to and including the athletics department um in

139both schools in both high schools to go over their their budgets and see where they can tighten their belts sharpen their pencils and um eliminate 5 to 10% from their budgets and um move from there so some of these numbers should come down some what and uh and work from there as well so we're looking to make we're looking to eliminate some cost from here that we can eliminate some some some things that they need um like we've said in the past we're looking for having a chrismith with socks and underwear not with shiny toys or Cadillacs or anything like that and we're trying to do that and this is going to be one of those things that we go through every single year um moving forward as as we continue to flesh out the

140the budget process so before I move on to the forecast the budgetary forecast for the next four or five years does anybody have any questions about those slides very clear than so I want to look these these slides are a little more difficult to see because of the contrast but I wanted to show you guys the projected forast that was done with our Frontline analytics system for the next year this is assuming so a couple of the things on this slide is assuming a 0% tax increase for the 26 year and in 27 28 and 29 it's assuming a 3 and a half% tax increase so that's the first thing you guys um need to need to write down is that that's what that that's what this model is is assuming so it shows if

141you look at the graphical uh analysis here it shows the widening um the widening gap between orange and the light blue which is a widening deficit between 29 28 27 even with um a t a a nominal tax increase um so that just goes to show you the the nominal the nominal uh or the uh the widening uh deficit so now on the next slide it will show the projected fund balance this does this is remember this is the worst case scenario this does not include the anticipated fund bounds this is the projected fund bounds so that has to be taken into account when you're looking at this this number as well so the projected fund balance in 26 is a little over Z the projected fund balance in 27 is close to um -20

142million the projected fund balance in 208 is close to um negative $60 million and the projected fund balance in 29 is close to is close to netive $80 million now that is assuming the the tax increases in the pre in those years that I mentioned at the beginning and that's also including that's not assuming the absolute worst case scenarios that deficits are realized in the full to every single year so I put this in in in um in uh uh words so that you guys can see instead of looking because I know it's kind of hard to see by the fiscal year 2027 the district is expected to Trend towards a fund balance of18 million and the net loss for the year which would be the deficit is - 26.5 or4 million now by the

143fiscal year 2029 the district's fund balance is projected to Trend towards negative 81 million with a projected net loss for the fiscal year 2029 at negative 33.3 million and that is assuming a 3 and a half% tax increase in both of those years now remember that is the absolute worst case scenario so that doesn't include doesn't mean the projected fund balance that doesn't remember we're projecting a fund balance to be adding additional $10 million that doesn't include that but you could add the $10 million on to that that doesn't avoid um these these numbers a little bit and it also includes that we didn't make any that the state keeps flat funding in place and there's no Charter School Reform there's no other things that could that could happen or take place it also assumes

144nothing more worse happens where we lose other sources of revenue either so I think it's important to note that we are at a Crossroads in our district and so we need to begin to look at it and right size our district in a way that makes sense in a way that is um is fair to our students I mean you look at our student reports and Maggie made a statement to me earlier today about why we're here and why we do things and um I do a lot of self-reflection and I really reflected on that and she's absolutely right and I look at these numbers all day but there's students Behind These numbers that it's not there's nothing more important than making sure our students are educated with the best possible professionals and I'm just

145really the probably the least important person um in in the in the district because all I do is is C beans all day and in reality we need to make sure that we have we need to make sure that the district is solvent and the district is moving forward in a positive uh clear and concise Direction and the most important thing we do is that we don't miss these Crossroads that we take each year because we will we will meet Crossroads every single year and this is an important Crossroad this year so I just want to show you these Financial outlooks because next month um I'm going to show you forecast models based on the feedback that I gather you guys can send me feedback via email phone calls pigeon pigeon mail uh Stone through

146rocks through the window however you want to get rocks window sorry Peter window thr my car windows not through the district Windows because I have to pay more money um and we're going to offer we're going to offer models based on possible tax increase to the base Revenue um and we're going to ask and we're going to make the models based on realistic forecast Trends we also have some ideas on how we could lower and and decrease expenditures without hurting without hurting the community and without making and without hurting the students or people's or programs so we're going to do that we're going to do it in a very um a very painless uh process then we're going to ask the finance committee in May to make recommendation of which budget um choice to move

147forward and present the prelim uh the preliminary final budget for the board for consideration and passage and in June we'll ask the board to make the final budget vote and passage and throughout these processes even in May and June we'll continue to look for ways to trim um the expenditure and and just remember that every every decision we make is a crossroad and every Crossroad we make has has has has ramifications and all I want to do is give you guys the best information that I could provide and move the district forward in a in a positive way that maybe hasn't been done in in quite a while so if you guys have any questions um please reach out to my extension below or my email and I'll be surely to get back to you

148um with that are there any other qu there any questions I could answer right now no I I just want to just I I say this every year for many years and I'm going to continue to say this this budget is based on a state budget that we will not see or recognize till well after we've already determined what we are going to be able to spend so we're not you're not it's the government our our state government does not tell us how much they're going to give us until after we tell them how much we want it which is wrong how can you budget or forecast when you don't know what you're supposed to be getting from the state where they're going to go with it second of all is what's alarming and and

149it's not alarming because the that the flowchart that showed our spending versus other the average State spending uh it doesn't take in consideration the unfair formula that has been enacted for many years where Western PA schools don't don't get as we get a lot more per student in smaller districts if you look at what with no no square miles with no 11 12 you know we have 11 buildings you know if you want to get technal 10 plus the Cyber and and we have hundreds of miles it it's and I'm going to say this to him blue in the face and and the public needs to just address this with the state legislatur is that we need to be it's that extra money we got this year from the state was not because they were

150being generous they were trying to make up for lost money and and we need to make up some more lost money and the fact that we PID $9 million a year to Charter School and the charter school right and that's that's the thing and and it's it's it's and and they and they don't they don't follow the same standards we are held accountable for charter schools with no accountability correct so and I just want to say the the district when the district got their their budget allocation it was in in August and September and they set the rules for spending that money and five and a half million dollars that we just received from that allocation we can't use until 25 26 so it is one of those it is one of those uh things

151that we can't consol thank you Mr B appreciate all of your energy thank you that was very clear thank you I appreciate the clarity onot motion to motion to approve whoops I skipped that thing okay um next uh public participation limited to comments on this agenda by residents and taxers of the School District 3 minutes each anyone is pres have okay Anthony we have anyone online they're all napping I don't blame thank you okay well seeing none then we'll move on any unfinished business okay everyone's afraid to BR um okay motion to adopt the board policies as listed so move second questions all in favor I opposed motion to approve Matthew Krauss as the treasurer for the completion of Diane Kelly's term ending on June 30th 2025 from the recommendation from the finance committee second

152questions that's just so we can also get them as a sign on the checks and all of that and too correct mostly correct that's that's to um the an Kelly is retiring so you want to change all the checks over and add Dr vital and just and and now um Andy as well so we want to going to get it all done in one F thank you for clarifying that yep if it's all right with the Mover and second i' just like to add a sentence that we the district will pay for Mr cr's Bond required by Statute okay okay hearing all that um all in favor okay motion to approve the mcti operating budget for the 2526 school year and the amount of 10,616 412 of the Easter rburg Gary School District share being

153$2,353 449 3 and 34 as previously distributed and presented to the board I um any questions about the 34 cents let's all chip that in so we can make it even no um any question all in favor opposed motion to authorize the field trips that are listed questions yes um under um the DECA one I'm assuming that should be National comptition not State because it's in Florida yes yes it is I apologize okay good any other questions on the field Tri okay seeing none all in favor I oppose a motion to approve the recommendations to modify expulsion requirement agreement based upon expulsion waiver of school board hearing release agreements with the case listed in substantially the same form as presented at this meeting contingent upon the receipt of any manifestation determination indicating that infractions were

154not manifestations of a disability where applies subject to final review by the school district's Administration and legal councel second any questions all in favor oppose motion to approve the amendment to the agreement with Mr Andrew Snider as presented the sole amendment is changing the commencement date from April 28th 2025 to March 17 2025 hey question maybe we should talk about all in favor welcome early nice to have you nice to have you um motion to approve the employment actions listed in accordance with the associated applicable policies procedure and contractual agreements subject to properti and receipt of all necessary documents and clearances some of second questions just a comment um I just want to congratulate all the retirees and also um just on a personal note um Lois Gruff is retiring and I had the pleasure

155of working with her as a teacher I'm working as her principal and uh it's a great loss I'm happy for her to enter the next part of her life but uh she was the type of teacher you went in her class you never wanted to leave uh the kids loved her she reached out to kids um she's had such a positive impact it's it's a big loss for our district but I certainly wish her well okay all in favor oppos he motion to Grant exoneration of 20,24 property taxes levied by the school district on tax parcel number 0998 93 and any penalties fees and interest incude thereon pursuant to the disabled veterans real estate tax exemption program questions I have a question well is it we're just approving this year are we then is this

156good for five years we good for five years what you're approving is by this program when you are a 100% disabled combat veteran you have to uh apply to the state and you get five years off right this particular individual wasn't aware that he needed to do every five years so he was a couple months late which means he got one year tax bill because he was a couple late you're saying we can for the next five years and we're we're not okay we're not sure yet no what what you are saying is State we are not going to charge him for that year even though he was a couple months he has it's not five years off one year on five years off five years off five years off yeah okay okay any other

157questions okay all in favor opposed motion to approve the 2025 senior rebate resolution following along the Commonwealth's guidelines in accordance with the recommendation from the finance committee questions all in favor motion toward items a through G in accordance with the recommendations from the finance committee and the property and Facilities committee and those items are listed there second questions all in favor I opposed motion to approve item a in accordance with the recommendations from the finance committee and the property and Facilities committee and you see that listed so moved second questions all in favor opposed motion to approve number 0444 58 V5 with Integra one in the amount of 9,982 39 pricing is per the ncpa contract 0169 second uh questions all in favor opposed motion to approve the payment of bills and an audit of

158treasurers report listed in this agenda for the 2425 fiscal year in accordance with Section 687 of the public school code recent directives from the Department of Education and interpretations made by the auditor general move second question all in favor I opposed motion to approve the payment are you sure on moving on there's no back there here we go if it's this one then no you I was like the line is incorrect it's listed incorrectly number one right yeah shall I continue if there's any discussion I prefer the old outline let's confusing okay our motion is to approve the payment of the following invoices for payment for the services rendered and they are listed there questions all in favor oppos motion to approve the request to establish the Student Activity funds as listed second questions um

159are these activities that are are already no no the next ones new ones these are the new ones but this is to establish Student Activity funds so I I'm assuming then the activity Club that's list that they're listed are already in progress in progress they're just asking for an activity fund that's correct Mrs contr these ones the two that you're voting on are to establish a new um student so I would I'm reading their application here um and so these were clubs that are just they're establishing their activity their activity fund so I'm imagine they a new club that was just established at their their respective school so their brand I don't know if they're okay so I wouldn't be able to say that because I don't I would have to go back to Steve

160did we approve new this form says 1920 on it it's an old form the reason why I say that is because we had made that we had that discussion about um you know new clubs and activities and how many and all that kind of stuff so that's why I was asking yeah no it's a good question I mean I haven't obviously been teaching for five years but I don't recognize those two so that's why I asked if they were new or not that's all I mean Junior sounds what who the advisor is oh student has to apply for me yeah okay signed off on it um okay any other questions all in favor opposed okay um motion to approve the request to the already established special activity fund for the JTL memory bulk second questions

161all in favor I opposed motion to approve the request to close the Student Activity fund for the High School North class of 2024 it always makes me sad when I see yeah second questions all in favor opposed motion to approve the contracts listed for the 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 and you see the list there second questions all in favor oos uh motion to approve the colonial iu20 operating budget for the 2526 school year in the amount of 4,331 $331,900 and no cense with the East rburg Area School District's amount being $39536 as previously distributed and presented to the board so move second questions all in

162favor I I um before chairman any announcements from any of the board members no then moot second all in favor iOS thank you everyone thank you to our public for hanging in there with us blame me for this one