ESASD Regular Board Meeting (February 24)

001e e e I to the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands one nation God indivisible with liy and justice for all roll call okay George Andrews president Rebecca bear president an cello here Mike cello here Jason G pres Keith carut pres Debbie KCK pres way Broner here Richard scham present and I'm present like to welcome all of our guests that are here this evening and all those that are on online if you're here we'd ask that if uh you haven't please sign in outside just we have a record of who attended this evening an executive session was held this evening for the discussion of personnel litigation and negotiations and on Saturday February 22nd have a motion to adopt this agenda for February 24th 2025 as submitted with the

002Board of Education reserving the right to add to the agenda and take further action on any items recent executive session or immediate action on such items is considered to be in the best interest of the district second any questions all in favor opposed okay approval of minutes motion to approve the minutes of the January 27 2025 board meeting so move second questions all in favor I oppos I abstain okay one exstension okay we're going to uh go a little out of order on the next items we're going to start with our students so uh Alysa representing High School North will begin good evening School Board faculty and guests to reintroduce myself my name is Alissa Dena and I'm a senior at East jaburg North and I'm honored to be this year's student representative so we're

003just going to get right into it with some academics um so if you recall a senior named Tyle Melissa was named a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist and this month he has advanced to the final on this stage each year about 1.6 million students from over 25,000 um schools enter this prestigious program and he was chosen as one of 15,000 finalists and so he will find out in March if he has the best if he well I'm so sorry we wish him the best of luck as the mayor scholarship recipients are to be announced in March and on February 21st a group of North students attended the ESU woman in stem day they engag in Hands-On activities across various stem Fields ranging from biology chemistry physics math computer science and psychology the students also heard from

004professors and current stem students in the panel discussion about careers and opportunities in the fields at ESU and to celebrate Black History Month Mr massa's Multicultural perspectives and civil Civics classes are engaging in Black History Month activities they're exploring African-American leadership and cultural impacts while U utilizing the Smith Smith soans a place for all people poster display and if you can see those on the screen those are just one of the few posters displayed them on our school we have it's like hallways of just posters and they're really beautiful and these posters display and they celebrate national museum of art of African-American history and cultural in Washington DC additionally these students are learning about Carter J Woodson the historian who founded black history month and the importance of his work preserving African-American history and this

005I'm really excited about because I actually got to watch this class do this project Mr coro's World civilizations class worked on a Harlem Renaissance project and if you don't know what the Harlem Renaissance is basically throughout the 20s and the 30s there was a Revival of African-American m music dance fashion art literature and it was all in Harlem New York and so I have a little collage the students had put an incred effort in in portraits and summaries of influential figures during this time and two students Tatiana Perez and Leonora Williams even designed their own poster which will be at the center of this exhibit and honestly I just want to talk about this a little because I feel like our district is so blessed and like we're so diverse either if it's in religion

006or nationality and I just want to applaud our history teachers for going above and beyond to a teach the important topics because usually black history isn't usually taught in the history curricul um and so I just feel like all history should be taught and especially in school diverse as ours and I just want to give extra credit to Mr corso and Mr Massa for not only teaching black history but also giving students the opportunity to have these Hands-On experiences and this is just two examples of the many things our teachers are doing in our school I wish I had time to talk about them all but I only have so much time so yeah it's just amazing the teachers the students were really lovely they were really supportive and really nice and they really cared

007about this project which I was really happy about and to move on to the Arts North was proudly representative at the pmea district 10 choir festival at Twin Valley High School by Joseph Kennedy and Valentina gadiva both had the opportunity to audition for the PM pmea region five choir and we are thrilled to announce that Valentina scored high enough to move to move up so in March she'll perform at the Regionals and audition for The All State Choir and on February 19th the north Corral had an incredible opportunity to perform at the annual Moravian University High School choir adjudication the students showcased their talents in front of three adjudicators and even had a master class with one of the judges in addition to performing they watched and supported other high schools in the area and

008to talk about some Athletics so the winter this winter marked our first official season for our winter track team and our athletes put an incredible effort in setting personal records throughout the various events and additionally we had celebrated senior Nights from the girls basketball swim and wrestling and North does go to districts we have um a lot in February going on our Special Olympics won the regional Special Olympics basketball tournament um senior Andy beo bibo earned second place in the district um girls Wrestling Championships boys basketball fought in a hard first round in the district playoffs and the UniFi Bachi team is gearing up for the district's competition in east jaburg south we are also cheing for our swim team as qualified swimmers are competing in their upcoming District competition and we're going to end

009with some extracurriculars and on February 27th 10 members of our vum which is a student-led organization based on mental health awareness and suicide prevention will be attending the a Venom conference in allat toown and this event will bring together over 400 students from districts across Pennsylvania and they will be collaborating sharing experiences and sharing the impact of mental health advocacy for our students and our community and with that I will end my presentation thank you all for your attention I hope you like like learning about the amazing things happening in our school this month thank you thank you again for your pleas let's see South hi everyone good to see you again I'm back in person this month um that's great we are glad you're feeling better we it's all good hop on Zoom um

010but I'll start going over some of the great things at South um I want to lead with our future educator cohort I forgot I had the clicker I was waiting for it to move um which is a great program that we have going on um in this past month we had our students get Elementary field experiences at Smithfield NC which was great they got to um observe classrooms have handon experiences and personalize sessions with other students um and we continue to be so proud of this program um and it's really led by Miss Brotherton and Mr Cool at the high school level um and was pioneered by Mr cromis Miss Paul mounter so we're grateful for all of them and this past week we had quite a few students compete at Pennsylvania Deca States um

011so I want to congratulate the following students Rowan mallister um was elected as the district 7 representative so he's responsible for our district in the state um and he'll be part of the team 75 State team Ava biscop placed top four in the state for public speaking and we had Harrison IIA and Lyla Donovan with top test scores in the state Sydney Smith had a top roleplay one score and Jamir Grant had a top role play two score so congratulations to all of them um and this past Friday uh about 23 of our junior girls attended the United Nations Day of women and girls in science event which was hosted at ESU they had different Hands-On activities um including but not limited to topics in biology chemistry and physics um and there was a panel

012discussion with current ESU students and instructors kind of telling them how to be successful with science classes in high school um And discussing various Pathways um in science for their future and then then we have our Red Cross fundraiser they sold and delivered candy grams to celebrate Valentine's Day um and to raise money for their Club they will be having a blood drive on March 7th um which they're partnering with NHS for or National Honor Society and they wanted to note that one donation can save up to three lives so they're really pushing this community um give back in our school and next um the gift you got from me the very colorful one more colorful than the ones I normally give you our Cavalier lit um an art magazine this is great um Mr

013Dolph gave me some copies and Miss Kami now to bring to you all um so I can't take credit I didn't print them out for you um but this was a really great effort over 50 students in our school worked on it um from both Miss commun now's creative writing class and Mr Dolph's advertising communication and design class um there's great work in there it was New York City themed I believe this year um so please your leisure lead through see some of our talent um and next I want to recognize we had 18 of our nth grade study strategy students um who were recognized at a lunch in they passed all of their classes had little to no discipline and really great attendance so we really wanted to appreciate their efforts moving on we

014had a Science Olympiad EPC competition on Friday um I want to congratulate Jalissa coranza and Ella danan who plays second in the forensic event um and they will have um another NEPA Regional competition um coming soon um in Penn State wils bear in some other Athletics we had our cheer team Place fifth in the coed division at the PIAA state competition so that was very exciting our unified bachchi purple team is advancing to their playoffs tomorrow very exciting and our Cavalier rifle team placed 11th in the state of Pennsylvania specifically James fall and Brandon Bon also competed at the state individual rifle tournament were very successful and Taylor kofer walart uh qualified for the state competition in Winter indoor track and field so congratulations to all of those athletes and just a little guidance update

015um we're kind of starting that scheduling period at South so it's a very fun time uh our new senior scholarship newsletter has been updated and includes 62 scholarship opportunities and I'm actually going to call out my own error because I wrote this last night it was 62 last night but there's 70 now in the day so it continues to grow exponentially so that's really great it's a great resource um and our counselors are going to JTL tomorrow February 25th to begin scheduling for the eighth graders and we have our freshman Experience day at South on February 26 we bring the eighth graders they hear from a panel of freshmen go to an activity and Sport fair in the cafeteria and they get guided tours of the building so that's a really great event um and

016we're excited to see all of them and I have a lot of music events to finish up my presentation um for County porest 15 South choir students uh performed alongside North Stroudsburg and Notre Dame um in the Monro and Pike County Chorus they learn the music in advance with Mrs Miola and practice all day on January 31st under the direction of Allison Langan and presented a concert that evening which is really great our district band we also had six students qualify and attend so congratulations to Sydney ort Gian DEA Cruz sori galperin Teresa Hopkins Nolan rice and Maya McDonald and our district chorus we had one student Abby Silva who attended the Festival this year at Twin Lakes High School congratulations Abby and this was a really fun trip to hear about our band traveled

017to Disney um not too long ago they experienced a two and a half Workshop um it was a sound workshop with a Disney musician um they kind of learned about the careers you can take as a professional musician and they experience playing in a recording studio sessions they had the headphones The Click tracks the whole the whole nine yards there so that was really fun for them um and I just want to shout out some upcoming events in our music department we have a department concert on March 5th which is at 700 pm and Laura eses is a composer who's coming to guest conduct and we have three South students who will be participating in region band which has an upcoming concert so thank you all that's all I have this month hey thank you

018Anthony do we have a baa from mcti on and while we're waiting for that we just want to thank Mr zul because if Mr zal did not drive the U-Haul truck to Orlando the band would not have had oh and he braved the snow and the rain that's where you got the tan from thank you Mr Z okay we're just checking to see if our mcti person she's usually online is online with us hello hi you ready hi I'm sorry I can't have my camera on I just came out of work so sorry about that hear you fine so go ahead so my report's not gonna be too long so my name is Nayla Joseph I am a senior at mcti in the business and Hospitality program and here's my report so on Friday January

01931st FFA held mcti semiformal so this was kind of like a Valentine's Day um dance at mcti hosts this is their second year doing it tickets were sold in advance and over 150 students attended which was really great and overall a great success on Wednesday February 19th to the to Fe on yeah on Wednesday February 19th to Friday the 22nd mcti Deca students competed in the Pennsylvania Deca States and the following students placed and or received Awards I received state champion for prepared speech hey um Matthew mcaro he competed in retail merchandising and he's from North and he received the best chapter role play B Janiah Tate competed in marketing management team decision making and Savannah kep flaska account did accounting series she's also from North and they tied for top chapter exam scores and

020then finally February was Career and Technical Education Month and mcti has done several activities for the students and staff I know this week is going to be um our spirit week and we have a bunch of things planned for that and this concludes my report hey thank you so much appreciate it get some rest after work um thank you to all three of our students for always reminding us why we're here and we appreciate the reports every month thank you thank you okay we have some guests this evening for presentations so we're gonna start with um mcti and I believe Dennis Berger will be presenting for us we're changing up the agenda a little that way to get you gentlemen out of here as quickly as possible so we're letting well fig Dennis just had

021somebody from mcti speak so he gets to go Chris had to suffer through our presentation last week and uh so he can do it for you and you can leave he could he absolutely could he's at poking mountain with us next week there you go I promis Mr carker told me five minutes I don't think I'm gonna do five minutes but I will go as quickly as I possibly can um first and foremost I want to thank all of you guys so we have a lot of good news um our aition is going well which we'll talk about a little bit but everything that we've done in MC is because of you guys um because of your your colleagues at the other districts uh We've accomplished a lot in the last few years and one

022thing that I'm going to start at the beginning because I forgot to say this in last budget presentations everything we've done we're still debt free um so we still have no debt payments no bond service which is is excellent um so I will get started and I don't know if this is going to work with a uh PDF but that's fine not a big deal I don't need that um so first thing I want to get get into is the uh how we're funded so I know guys have heard me say this for those of you who've been on the board long enough but it is a little bit different than what uh some school board members are used to um so we're funded by what's known as a four-year rolling average at adms that

023has a very fancy way of saying enrollment um one thing I'm going to say and kudos to you guys and kudos to your Administration your counselors at your north and south high schools East sturg School Districts had the largest enrollment increase in the last five years of any school in the county um so that is great news as far as I'm concerned and I'm hoping that you guys agree with so if you look up there uh just uh for you guys for Easter isburg you're about 24.8 5% of our operating budget um so when we look at our budget the general operating budget that is the percentage that you guys are responsible for um so it's going up so you can see you have a little green arrow next to it because of your uh

024enrollment increase so that is a good thing I'm going to quickly talk about enrollment overall uh not specifically to East rburg just in general um mcti as you guys know I think I said this now for five years in a row as you can see our enrollment just keeps going up and increasing tremendously we are at capacity we're trying to find creative ways to get more and more kids in um but this snapshot in time which is October 1 uh we are just under 12200 students um so we are a pretty large career and tech center um to this is great news I will tell you we are in the middle of our enrollment right now good news for East sturg again both yourself and North had a had a great turnout um the challenging

025part that we're running into is last year we had over 500 kids on our weight list um at the start of start of this school year by the time we got ended our enrollment period which is the end of the first marketing period we ended up with about 340 students who were not placed um which I will tell you is is a difficult conversation with with parents and counselors and administrators who are fighting for their kids um we're seeing the same thing this year we're already up to a look today about 495 students on the wait list um so it is a challenge it is not an easy process um so the demand is there um if you actually should scroll down to the next slide and I always share this I think this gives

026you better perspective of how well enrollment is so if you look at all the 10 through 12th graders in uh Monro County that's the percentage who attends mcti so a little over 177% of all the 10th or 12th graders in mon Monro County attend us just to give you a little perspective State average is between 10 and 12% um so we are far above State average and we just continue to grow so as you guys know mon County as a whole en dipped a little bit in the last decade um but more and more kids are coming to to our school uh I'm going to talk a little bit about how we're trying to fix that uh we are opening up a couple new programs uh and trying to squeeze as many kids in as

027we can but it's still a challenge and if you go to the next down one more slide this just gives you a perspective of the school district so you can see your guys and and purple um I do want to put a little Aster next to it it looks lower than the other schools but you guys don't offer Diversified occupations here um through us so that that number you have to keep in mind that's built into the other schools so your enrollment is is as strong as ever um which is again an awesome thing so what are we doing about enrollment I'll talk about this now uh rather than for the capital projects uh one of the reasons for an increase that you'll see is we're going to be adding a second automotive technology program

028so automotive technology is one of the programs that we historically see 40 kids on a weight list um also when we look at program we have to make sure that there's jobs out there and there's plenty of jobs out there for automotive mechanics so next year uh we're hoping to hire a second autot Tech Teacher so we can bring our enrollment up to 75 students most of our programs are around 50 ideally it would be 100 we still have enough space and the next program that I'm excited to talk about and won't start next year it'll start the following our current multi-purpose room and this is for Mrs KOLO will be excited um is a first responder program uh so students will leave mcti with em certification firefighting and also they're going to be introduced

029to uh law enforcement which we have criminal justice but our criminal justice program is so popular just will help with some overflow but EMT is a needed uh certification out there firefighting I know this area is volunteer unfortunately I will probably tell you paid firefighters are coming eventually because getting volunteer firefighters has becomeing challenging so that will start um not next school year the following school year next year we'll be renovating our current multi-purpose room um is where that program will go so Mr schol it's hopefully you're excited that you're on the right track all right good all right budget approved good um now to the to the operating budget so not the exciting part so our increase is about 3.92% this is overall this isn't specific to East sturg um it's about $400,000 on

030to the dollar uh and there's really two reasons for it and I'll never forget I've been to many board meetings and I've never seen such an exciting board meeting as last year when I was here when you guys were approving your teacher contract I thought they were here for me they weren't no they were really here for oh thank so I will tell you for us if you guys don't know this this is important that you do um our teachers are paid on a weighted average of the four sending District so whenever a district increases teacher pay that increases our teachers pay and I will tell you for me um that is a good thing because finding career and Tech teachers is about as hard as you can get because you're pulling them out of

031a trade where they're doing very well and coming in with no education and trying to figure out to teach and generally taking a pay cut so that increase helps us recruit teachers so with that said um that was a good thing for us however uh when presented the budget last year um our budget was technically already completed so which was it worked out but what happened was you'll see the increase in our teacher salary because of uh the contract um did increase our budget so it's really two years and one just because of the timing of it um so that was a big portion of our uh expenditure we also have to be very conservative there is another District who is currently negotiating right now we have to be very conservative with their contract because

032once our contract is approved it it's done I don't want to have have to come back to you guys and say hey we need we need more money um so Joel when he puts it together he has to be very conservative with that so that that's pretty much why uh the percent the increases there also the addition the 177,000 foot addition that will be done in June uh is going to take some staffing uh custodial maintenance Staffing and as I alluded to we'll be hiring a second autot Tech Teacher so that's really where the increases come from savings uh we have a couple retirements uh that we're anticipating we had some Shuff around in their special ed services but ultimately um that's the reason for their cost increase so where are you guys fall now

033I'm goingon to get into really good news I hope and I hope I explain this as best I can um ultimately easterberg is going to get money back and uh what I mean by that is this is your current share of the operating budget um so you'll see it's it's 3.84% increase um an 84,000 almost $85,000 increase for EAS HB however I'm going to talk a little bit about capital or not Capital um vocational subsidy and I'll try to explain as best I can speaking of capital you'll see that green Air the green boxes there is no money they're asking for Capital we you guys and all the districts have supported us tremendously and our Capital reserves as healthy as ever been which I'll show you in a second but what I'm trying to talk

034want to what I'll show you guys is vocational subsidy if you go to the next slide so the state um a couple weeks ago when Governor shapir presented his budget and he talks about career in tech ed most of that money goes to something called vocational subsidy and how it works is we receive money from Harrisburg it comes directly to mcti we are a little unique in the sense that we take that money and we disperse it back to the school districts we're not the only school who does that but most tend to keep it um and build it into their budget the good news is vocational subsidy in the last five years or so has gone up tremendously so the state has put more and more money into in tech ed what that means

035for you guys is more money is coming back so this like Subs you guys get and everything else this is a a revenue line um that I know Peter proba puts into your budget uh that we get and we'll send send back to you so what you're going to see if you take that expense that I I showed you for each stles to 84,000 realistically with the vocational subsidy increasing um your expense is actually going down by about $334,000 so we're growing student wise we're sending you guys are sending more kids we're expanding and the net cost for you has gone down $334,000 to take that step further you can see a graph on the next next slide is overall in the last five years the operating budget at mcpi if you take vocational subsidy

036into it's actually gone down about $200,000 from Monro County um now that is a win and that's something that every school district should be proud of if you're going to ask why aren't we budgeting that well as you guys know we'll Taste of Victory from Harrisburg but prior to that it was it was pretty much flat so Joel and I we can't build a budget not knowing what that increase is going to be every year so we just take it as a win all right so uh continue to grow and hopefully keep getting that money back to us and I'm going to conclude with capital um again our in September we're going to have our grand opening for the new addition which all of you will be invited to uh 177,000 square feet it is

037to be complete in June it is on schedule um they're actually there today to finish up the roof glasses in um and we'll start doing the interior work so that has gone very well um and at the same time ourm students are now converting our old Adult Ed office into the new business and Hospitality program and the business and Hospitality program will be turned into autot Tech and the nice thing is our kids are doing it um so we can I'll send I'll show our JC members pictures of that they'll actually see it so they can see what our kids have done in help us out to convert these needs and uh something that is very important and Mr bro sitting right there is a big part of it the way he's been investing our

038money um our capital reserve for those of you who've been around for since I've been director um we had nothing in capital we had no funding mechanism we had no money for Capital outside of asking the school district so now we are as healthy as ever um after the addition is completed so after addition is completed and paid for I already touched on how we are are debt free but we will also have remainder about $2.8 million in our capital reserve which for a school for our size we can start looking at some other things we we are going to be hooking up to public sewer we have a currently have a a private sewer treatment plant which is liability um last meeting we talked our JC talked about our electrical switch gear that needs

039to be upgraded and I'm not going to take too much time talking about it but yes the JS we be hearing about another addition possibly um to start looking at different enrollments and the demands that we're seeing so overall we are in about as good a shape as we can uh Capital wise and just overall thanks to you guys and your your your school district Personnel for for helping us out and hopefully continue to grow in mcti so I'd be happy to answer any questions that anybody has sorry Keith that wasn't five minutes but I tried my best any questions from any board members thank you thank you J we appreciate we are so blessed to have such a great program for our kids so thank you so much and thank you for presenting to

040us tonight appreciate you thank you gentlemen than you Joel thank you oh thank you and from one great program to another uh we'd like to welcome Dr Chris from 20 to do our next presentation good evening how's everyone tonight they're fiery Dr wol they arey good that's good all right so I'm not sure you can scroll and follow along with me and I think you have the handouts right in front of you too so you can follow along with me there um so just that that first slide just talks about our mission which is uh to have positive relationships be responsive and results do you have the handouts yes and you have a booklet too you have a booklet I that's fine I'll just you want one oh he's got they were they were all

041in staff I'll take I thank you I brought extra copies give me a cop there were four Doc in special education while is prepared sorry thank you I'm sorry you're very welcome not a problem all right so as I said it's about relationships responsiveness we were responsive right there we had a handout for you and positive results um on the next side just talks a little bit about how big we are as an intermed unit um and you know you see there 20 $290 million in budgets and the number of students that we serve on an annual basis and Based on data that I received from other executive directors this past year um we provide more services to students and other any other IU in the Commonwealth so um that's pretty pretty good news at

042least for what we do here in this region um as far as the operating budget um this is just one of 50 four budgets and it only comprises a 1.5% of the revenue that comes into the IU but it supports the base operations of the IU so supports the executive director's office the Human Resources office um curriculum professional learning and then educational technology it is prepared in collaboration with our superintendent and our I20 board and it's the only uh budget that requires your approval as a school district all of the other supports and services and costs that that you incure um those are through separate contracts through services that you request on behalf of the I20 on the next slide you'll see um that increase of the general operating budget is a 4.1% increase um

043which takes that to about $ 4,431 th000 um but the good news is there's no increase back to the school districts this year we were able to hold this budget a 0% increase coming back from the districts um you can see there cost drivers um very similar to to any school district any school enti salaries medical benefits um some pie increase and a little bit of increase in Social Security you might ask well how do you balance a budget uh with a 0% in in Revenue coming in um we getting some Revenue based on some premium share as well as interest rates have been really good so John Wall um our CFO back at the IU has done a nice job with Investments um that's bringing in some extra Revenue that we can use to

044offset this budget and then we continue to receive increase in funds from the state uh through what's called Statewide system of support and those are all the initiatives that the Department of Education ask us to run on their behalf um and we continue to get asked to run more and more initiatives from the Department so that's good news as well you can see there the history of the general operating budget um really has been over to seven years has been under 1% um you can see there back in 23 24 we did have a 2.5% increase that was right around when we renegotiated new contracts um therefore we need a little bit extra Revenue to come in and balance that out on the next two slides is just really looking at the summary of Revenue

045and the summary of expenditures and it's really kind of broken down just by by a little bit more detailed figures there um but you could see that the the revenue coming in of the 173,000 um covers the increase in those expenditures of 173,000 and then on that last slide at least for the general operating budget um you could see there the support of withholding Revenue that comes in and then receipts of other IU sources and then East sturg actual contribution of $39,000 um which represents a 0% increase so what you paid for last year um you'd be contributing the same amount this year if you approved this budget um next steps for us is to get our school district's approval me to go out to our other school districts and do this presentation um then

046this comes back to our IU board for final approval and then goes to the state for their approval that is the a quick flyth through of the general operating budget any questions on the general operating budget anything think from any board M yeah okay if I can have five minutes then I like to brag about our other programs that's okay all right this is the best part um so just just sharing on that first slide a little bit about early intervention our Early Intervention Program is ages three through five our goal is to prepare students uh to be kindergarten ready um a lot of times our students that are coming to us with early intervention are students with the most uh severe needs um therefore they are still going to be coming back to you

047um probably special education but hopefully with less challenges and needs um if we're doing our job right you can see there that we're we're expected to have 718 students transition um across the region into school age from our EI program so that's a lot of kids that is going to be coming from EI into school age next year we are really focused on literacy and instructional coaching um that's one thing that we've been really focusing on the last two years we want to make sure we're we're building up those early milestones for for pre-reading skills again reading is so important for our children so we're really focusing on how we can do better instruction to to prepare our students for reading on the next slide you'll see um as far as what we're doing in

048special education and we're really focusing on um getting our students ready for um transitioning into the future as well as preparing for that teacher shortage so in this slide it talks a little bit about what Dr bch has been doing um with EAS alburg University Northampton Community College through GR and initiatives to help with the the shortage of special education teachers so um programs such as the program that we have for our par Educators that are able to to move into a Special Education certification very quickly and accelerate them through that um this past year even with the growth of our Ru programs we really didn't have to interview outside too much uh majority of our special ed teachers were power Educators that work for us at the IU got their certification and now are

049special teachers so that's fantastic as well as we have a a program for developing future Educators that we partner with the high schools um those students come down to the IU they get to experience different types of special education jobs such as a teacher adapted fed teacher social worker um speech therapist occupational therapists just to get that that interest into the field of Education um there's no cost to that that's 100% Grant funded even the transportation that comes comes down brings the kids down no cost um and then some of those students are even working for us in the summer uh in our extended school year program so they're getting a hands-on experience and getting paid for that um to get that pathway right into an educational program when they go to college so that's

050a really exciting program on the next slide to talk about transition into the future so our students with low incidence disabilities we really want to have these students prepared for competitive employment so we have our programs such as our program at calar Resort St Luke's um wi Creek Casino we have now our own Cafe at iu20 that's a full service Cafe um and it is a legit business operation we get inspected every year by the Department of Health um and what have you um but the kids are running the the the machines they're running the register and we've seen growth in their language acquisition we've seen growth in their ability to compute to utilize the machines um many of those students can probably go out and work at any uh Starbucks Wawa you name it

051um they can do it um based on that that opportunity so we continue to build those type of programs uh at the IU to to get our students ready for post school as far as resolved Behavioral Health um we were uh the first in in the state of Pennsylvania to provide school-based partial hospitalization our program's been around for many years and we hit all all three tiers whether that's building your staff capacity through training and professional development supplementing where you have gaps in your Staffing maybe it might be trcy interventions licensed social workers to come in and supplement your program and then at tier three when the students are really really struggling and need that help we have all the programs like our colonal Academy therapeutic emotional support school-based partial hospitalization on the next slide

052you'll see a colonial Academy continuing again to really focus on experimental um learning through jobs um our Building Trades and culinary arts program um have been doing an exceptional job and you can see there some of the Building Trades the community projects that they're doing um they're actually giving back to the community while also getting hands-on experience and for those students that's that's so key because many of those students have maybe done something that has uh been upsetting to the community so now that they can not only learn but give back and feel like they're restoring something um builds those that self-esteem and and when they transition back to the schools uh they're ready to make a positive impact our professional learning Department again focusing on literacy one of the things that we did is

053partner with uh PBS and leh have Valley Public Media I'm on the board there so um I was able to to build a lot stronger relationships there and what we identified is that there are child care centers daycares all throughout the region hundreds of them and our concern is what are they teaching those those children what skills do those daycare providers those Early Childhood workers have and what can we do as an IU to be a hub to help build their skills so what we started this year is offering the opportunity for all of those Early Child Care Centers to come to our IU for one place to give them professional coaching training opportunities through PBS that then they can take back to um their daycare centers to to prepare the kids even even more

054than they ever did before and we're going to keep that moving um throughout various engagements throughout every school year our first event was very successful so uh we know we're going to build upon that moving forward um some things that some people don't know is that we offer a driver's education program um at iu20 um so um last year we serviced or 23 before we serviced 308 students um and provide them drivers education this year uh currently we're at 175 and knowing that the weather's going to get nicer soon 100% it will be um those there's going to be more and more enrollments so we'll probably exceed the number that we did last year um as far as technology um we continue to try to work on supporting your technology departments um with all the

055cyber security um there are just it's just unbelievable all the Bad actors out there trying to shut down and get it your information um so our Tech director Dr Kalinowski as well as working with your Tech director um is always working to try to enhance services and we're also able to uh rework our um internet provider and services so we actually are able to uh reduce the cost um with an annual Savings of close to $9,000 as well as doubling uh the bandwidth so that was good news with a little bit of work and a little bit of negotiation we're able to to work through that and get better internet at a lower cost and then last but not least um again some people just don't know that we actually have a full service print

056shop at iu20 um so um we've compared our costs to other print shops across the area and by far we are we are beating uh our competitors um but many school districts don't know that they can utilize our IU for print printing services all types of printing services um so if you have any interest in that please let us know um actually showed you something there my daughter was out of deca this past week um through Northampton Area School District and she said Dad she said I have my my posters I need to present she said can you pay for at Staples I said no I said but if you run the business through the IU I'll pay for it um out of my pocket through the IU because it's going to be cheaper um

057and she was able to to have all those done so again if you have students too that are looking don't have them go to Staples have them reach out to us we can help them and get the pricing down for them 100% yes lots of questions then all right how do we contact printing office like if we say to our business matter hey instead of us going out to bid or whatever can we just go through you guys to do that yeah yeah so um I mean you can simply email me and I'll connect you with our print shop with c um and make those connections avilable to our students as well sure yeah yeah so we can we can get information out there um you know to the principles and what have you printed

058signs and everything yeah yeah so question number two um the driver ed programs we have a very good one I'm not at all but how does like a family from straussburg get involved um so on our website we have uh the contact there for the driver's ed so they would just schedule an appointment with the IU and then uh make that that call and then they would get you scheduled and work out the details for that okay great how much time you need in advance for students if they wanted to or Sports if they needed to get banners printed or stuff printed like what's the turnaround time for them um I would say probably a a week between a week and two weeks okay um we can get that done pretty quickly so I think

059the hardest part would just be getting it back to you right so but we do have you know often we have from our warehouse delivering supplies up to the schools up here that it's just easy enough to have it come up and and go to the school and even if somebody could bring it to the North office I can run over and get it yeah somebody can go over to the office yeah yeah we could send stuff up to the north office too and make a connection there teams can have their Bann say expensive any other questions from okay uh thank you appreciate and uh I serve on the IU board and I can just tell you if you've never if you don't know a lot about Ru the level of professionalism from you and

060all of your staff and more importantly the level of kindness toward the most needy kids is is really inspirational um and I would I would ask everyone here if you haven't go on the iu20 website just search Colonial iu20 and you can see all the amazing things that are going on and all done excellent so thank you forwe you're all if ever you want to come out and see a great event come out to our graduation um it's one of the it's one of the best nights that we have and to see the kids and and the kids put on the show because they they get their not some get their diploma but they at least get a certificate of completion from the IU and we turn the mic over to the kids and um

061and they they they take over the show the whole night so and they get excited so you're always welcome to come we we appreciate all your hard work thank you well thank you thank you for all your support thank you thank you thank you okay we're going to move to our superintendent report now first they have made budget presentations very difficult for Mr bard of downward trajectories and zero increases nobody is setting him up for Success tonight um so during our policy committee meeting last month and during our board meeting there were some discussions about some items so I figured I would take this time to kind of bring to the board more information about three different topics and then it would be our opportunity to talk it through so the first topic is cooperative

062agreement with Notre Dame for athletics the second would be Middle School cheer that was a concern and then the third would be the policy 707 which is the use of facilities so let's start with background about cooperative agreements with PIAA we have learned a lot in the last month so it is between two schools not a district so the Cooperative agreement would not be between Notre Dame and East stoutsburg School District it would be between Notre Dame and one of the schools and it must have contiguous borders so it would only be South because Notre Dame only borders with South everybody with me for there each individual sport would need its own agreement so it's not an agreement for all Athletics it would be each individual sport would need that agreement it's not one sweeping

063postseason so there is a cycle every several years for classification for whether we're 5A 3A it's for every individual Sport North and South if we do this out of our cycle of classification we are not eligible for postseason play so our cycle starts in 2627 so if we decide to do this for the 25 26 school year and that sport makes postseason we are ineligible for postseason classifications and this is a big one and I'm learning this every sport has a different classification level so um smaller sports like tennis maybe only have three um football has six as we go through that classification cycle in 2026 27 it would now include the entire enrollment for Notre Dame and it would move we believe our football team from 5A to 6A would make us playing schools

064like park it might not move us in every sport because again the system is different but we are almost completely confident that it would change it for football considerations for the board again I just it's only South that we're talking about it is not not North O open to all Notre Dame students not taxpayers of East childsberg Area School District so we cannot be exclusive the agreement is with the school and all students who enroll in the school classification cycle I would highly recommend that we have to wait to 27 unless you want to be the people saying to our athletes if they don't make postseason thank you and again well it's not like Athletics is a Hot Topic it could significantly impact our classification for several Sports we truly believe that South football would

065move to 6A because of the combined enrollments and we would be adding more athletes not more Sports and it would have to be a sport that they don't have at Notre Dame or could they be at Notre Dame and say you know what I'm going to play basketball itself instead of the agreement is by Sports okay got transportation we would only do to and from games so they would have to get here themselves that provides kind of a hiccup sometimes because there are times when we change the timing of what time our Sports leave for various reasons so if we make that change that's a heavy lift on this family of the Notre Dame student who's coming to that athletic event these are the sports that Notre Dame does not offer they do not offer

066fault cheerleading field hockey football or volleyball volleyball would be a big one they do not offer winter competitive cheer rifle swim unified votchi winter tracker wrestling and they do not offer spring unified track and field interes questions for the board to consider would we charge families for student Athletics these Notre Dame students a Cooperative agreement the reason PIAA has Cooperative agreements is for very small school districts for them to have competitive teams and for them to be able to field a team so if you figure to field a quality football team you need what 53 players to have depth some schools SCH with only graduating classes of 15 20 30 kids can't feel the team so Cooperative Agreements are intended to be mutually beneficial to both schools my question to you and it can be

067rhetorical is is would this Cooperative agreement be mutually beneficial to both schools and then the biggest question I have is how do you support are athletes and sports that are cut from the roster for a notre student to take the team especially understanding that the Notre Dame student might be from hacketstown New Jersey okay that's feel free to discuss and then we'll go to m Che well um since I had brought you choose I would probably say Obviously um it seemed like a s simple procedure but obviously in your and thank you for all the hard work on that I would think that it's really that we had we had asked about originally was the fact that it was only for East sturg Area School District students because and they're paying taxes but if we're

068talk I mean to me alone just that one thing not to mention all the other implications of sports and preseason which we would never want to hurt our own students obviously but just from the perspective that these are you know not our students you know not our residents residents who you know paying taxes I I think personally I think it's if we were only our residents I would be support by the fact that like you said like for our own tax yes it is sports by sport so there may be some sports here that would not it would not be a detriment to add additional there may be in talking to Notre Dame's athletic director and they're not here to speak for themselves but Notre Dame's athletic director is actually a little concerned about their

069own athletic programs so for instance female volleyball is the most popular trending sport in the country and he would think that if we allowed it his his team his his field hockey team or girls soccer team might be decimated because of students coming to our programming well this is information important for us yes yeah right it's thank you for all the research we had asked the questions of like what does obviously you know P you know what their rules are and OB very clear yeah and you can see their rules are made more for what you said for a small school to be able to feel it makes more like their rules make more sense for that situation than our situation to come together to field a team and even if it did cover all

070we didn't cover all our students you cover the students that W the Notre D so the north students wouldn't be people who from North could not go well it would actually create a loophole where some of our North families could enroll in not name play South at play South if they chose it would only affect South team it would only affect even if I lived up north they would play corre y so I I would probably say from what I'm hearing that we're not interested in pursuing this as a poliy I'm not okay well I'm not even going to move this to a board action item for March okay thank you for but no it it what seemed like could be a very simple procedure obviously has a lot more to it than we originally

071so that's why we ask questions absolutely so thank you but thank you moving on to middle school cheer um currently it's a club at both intermediate schools it's a little different one's a fan club at Leman one is a cheer Club at JTL um there were questions about uniforms so JTL was given the Old South Varsity uniforms they are they want new ones so they just weren't happy with what they got so that's why they were um fundraising for it Leman has never made the request nor do they want it because again one's like a fan club and one is more of a cheer um current enrollment JTL has 34 students and it's been around for about five years Leman has 25 students and it's been around for about four years considerations for the board

072clubs versus Sports meeting frequency so right now they meet a few times a week and then they go to the games if it becomes a sport they would be expected to meet at the regular Cadence that Sports means competitive versus spirit so are we saying we're going to move to competitive cheer or just Spirit cheer those are two different sports two different seasons would we do fall winter or both the cost so the uniforms the base level the lowest level of a cheer uniform is $100 a student the coach would be at least $22,900 per School per season and entrance into competitions if we choose for competitive cheer and then the cost of Transportation if we decide to send them to away games and meets questions questions for the board I'm not sure I have

073heard from anyone that this was a request when I asked for information neither person at Leman or JTL had said oh gosh we're really excited for this to become a sport um are we trying to solve a problem that does not exist can we work to develop a a metric to determine what makes a fully funded sport so I worked in a school district previously that quickly said yes to one sport they said yep come on we're GNA fully fund you and then 12 more Sports lined up and then it was like hold on a second we don't have the budget to do that so if we want to explore adding Sports to our programs just like we talked about schedule can we create a system for what makes a sport a sport what's the

074level of Interest what is it going to look like what the cost is and make sure that we have a system that we're not just discreetly or indiscreetly saying yes or no so where are we okay is this discussion time please uh for the for everyone's reference I'm the one that brought this up uh the reason why I did bring it up is we were asked to approve a fundraising account for JTL cheer and I said' why should they have to raise money if they're a sport and I found they waren a sport I think some of your numbers I don't if I don't know because that's not what I was told uh by some of the parents and and some people involved in it those are straight from the advisers from the adviser yes

075I I spoke to both advisers those are the I was told they did not get any uniform they were not allowed to use any uniforms because they were not a sport uh they were given the former South uniforms okay off to all I know is our South cheerleading program our South cheer team is doing amazing they are and and and the feeder program for that is obviously JTL and I just brought up the fact that you know I thought they were a cheer team but they're not you know there's just so many and and some of your numbers you know you say $22,900 for a coach but what are we paying the advisor of the that we're paying like probably like 12 or300 for the the% sure it's about right it's about 1,200 in most

076cases so it really would only be about 1,700 um and I'm just looking at the implications of of the um the next step the feeder program into the high school um which is the reason well which is the reason the club was started the club was started to serve as a feeder now that that's that was the explanation that I received correct was that there was nothing between esya and South High School it seems like they well esy has their own now too no no but what I was saying is that was the reason it was started we also have to consider it could still be a feeder program it's just not a team at the corre middle school level it's not a it's not the program so it's not a fully funded sport having

077an in mural that feeds sport here but you're saying neither neither lemman nor jdl are actually Sports in in the around the way we do sports right now they're both clubs right now they're both clubs correct and are and do they part and are they allowed to participate in say a basketball game in cheer yeah yes home games right way yes all right they do at Leman I know that um the the fan club comes to all the um girls and home games for basketball that's literally what they do yeah that's I'm getting mixed reaction I I was getting mixed vibes from people that talk to me and I I will you know I wish you I would have known you looking into it more because I would have loved to I mean yeah I'm

078fine with it what you your presentation was was was excellent thank you um I just I'm getting mixed reactions from who I talk to so I'm it would seem that the pressure on parent to have to conform to what we require for a sport would be much more and now it's more of a fun thing now it is a theater type of thing I mean that's how I perceive what you said sure with all that in mind um and the secondary question I think that came up and is something I think we should explore is putting together you know some sort of parameters you you know procedures requirements for what a sport looks like things that we should have moving forward whether this goes into it or not is something that can you know we

079can look at it another day once we you know you get more information you know they get more they come to us you know to to ask us directly um those kinds of things but I don't think it's you know we talked about we have to do stuff with schedule be uh you know making that clear the amount of clubs we have all those kinds of things so um I think this is a step in the right direction you know in terms of us you know creating something like that for the future because there's always new sports I mean you know volleyball came about CI you know what I mean we've obviously you know added things you know within the last few years so um I think making some parameters is a smart idea I

080think it's really important that we we set up a system that way the next time this is posed to us we know kind of how to answer yes or no and everybody knows the rules of the game right so Sports metaphor I also think if and I think I you just said that if there's a an interest I would like to see either parents or the actual you know students come to us and kind of present their views in defense of those people I I would have if I knew we were gonna be talking about I know you gonna bring it to us I didn't know you were bring is this structured maybe if we knew about it I could have I could have talked to the people that talked to me and say hey

081be at tonight's board meeting if you want to bring up I didn't know this she's gonna be talked about apologize I thought sent it they could still do that I thought I know I knew we were G to talk about but I didn't know it was going to be like this explicit and this uh organized I say we're going to talk about things it's I'll know better for next time Dr but I I think yeah I think to hear from the actual people would be better we saying there's rules for sports whether it be middle school or High School level there's rules and we have to make sure that we're correct structured are are we ready to move on to another topic are move on Matrix would be a great thing okay we that all

082right classifications for now this one hopefully goes as quickly and easily as the other two classifications I'm being very optimistic policy 7007 use of facilities so just to remind everybody class one is East rer Area School District school sponsored organization students club sports extracurricular class two is is Area School District school related organization which is our alumni our boosters our ptas and our PTO class three is local nonprofit organizations that have National charters in Monroe or Pike County esya community recreation rotary YMCA b class for is all other organizations that are either for-profit or not for-profit okay the fee structure class one the facility fee is waved the Personnel fee is waved class two the facility fee is waved the Personnel fee is waved if it's midweek on Saturday it's two events per year waved

083then labor rates would be included of eight hours total so if it's two events and and it would be two 4H hour events no more than eight hours Sunday would be Sunday labor rates all other organiz so I'm sorry that should say class two and three oh it does okay good so class four is facility rental fees and Personnel based on the work schedule so class two and three facility they pay nothing Personnel if it's midweek they pay nothing if it's Saturdays they get eight hours free if it's Sundays they pay the Sunday labor rate currently these are the class two and three that has used our facilities bushill Outreach esya and I think it's really really important to note that esy we treat every sport differently so if esya cheer wants to use it

084it's different than esy football which is different than esy basketball which is different than esy wrestling I don't want to say whether we have to or not but we're trying to use flexibility Within These parameters to be kind to our feeder Sports um Peak Special Olympics um the the stallions that should be another line YMCA Varsity Spirit by uses it too up at North don't don't they so I pulled the use of facility for this year and this is who has used it this year okay in the 23 24 school year thank you Mr bar we had $1,000 worth of personnel fees and in 2425 we have so far $88,000 worth of personnel fees only Saturday and Sunday just a reminder questions for the board to consider does this policy need to be changed if

085we change it will our Personnel cost increase so if we change it and allow latitude will our facilities be used more often I don't know the answer to that question and then the last question for the board is what does history tell us about policy 707 may I ask a question regards to the policy I'm sorry I have a question in regards to the policy when they do use of facilities and let's say it's at the north campus and it's the winter and say softball wants to do intermurals inside they're bumped out of Leman JY because a use of facilities was already filed earlier in the year for one of these organizations to use it and they have to look elsewhere within the district to do their softball practices is that the case I thought

086it was the opposite it is not I said I thought sounds like you're not asking me a question but I'm asking like what is it like but I'm saying this is what's happening policy I'm trying to understand the policy it should be that our our class one comes first yeah we to make sure worked with the policy as a principle our sports activities always had per preference overide well I will tell you at North it is not happening but but I also don't know the circumstances nor do I that's why I'm asking question so we like look to it we had softball practice planned for Saturday morning and a downpour started and the event was already planned and they couldn't just move in no no no I mean it's interal time it's the winter and

087they practice in the gyms in the winter time okay normally but they can't get gym time student athletes up at North because there's um class two or class threes that are that have already done use of facilities for them it's pretty solid I don't for example I know soccer since my husband coaches soccer he had to look for gym time for intermural soccer in the winter and he's he is currently today at ricaa using the gym okay and he is Fridays at midle at Smithfield which is completely not even North territory but all the student athletes are driving down to Smithfield on Friday nights for their um intermural practice because it's being used by one of the class two or threes okay all right so I will look that okay the only thing I would

088say in terms of the policy and um I mean from everything that I've experienced you know having been in the school district for so long obviously I was at South where we followed it that way it's it was I think it's a strong policy the only thing I would say about the cost increase if our um Personnel salaries you know what I mean um have gone up and when not kind of you know covering those costs by what we're asking for uh you know in the policy that would be the only thing at least in my mind that I would be thinking of changing um in terms of the policy so that at least these other classes that are coming in you know are paying the fair share to at least cover what you know

089we're paying out um to our Personnel I mean that would to me that that's something I think we have to be cognizant of yeah and it's the rate of the employee so it's the average so so where we lose money is if a very veteran custodian correct works it okay so we we have our rates based on the average of the position that'sa okay question the $8,000 $11,000 figures that were referenced as as costs that is cost that we paid that is what we charged that's what we charged that's what our cost was in Personnel fees that we charged those outside organizations and did any of those organizations have a problem with that one okay that I was just asking okay the most recent one correct we're talking about the most for the point of

090reference we're talking about that recent wrestling tournament I think two of them I would like to voice my concern about this policy this policy do not have to be changed that I was involved in this 2004 2005 2006 2007 you know I was involved in those up in yeah up in 2000 yeah we talk about this and it's a solid policy the last time it was referenced and changed was in 2020 to and I'm sure it was just a a clarification of salaries it's a solid policy which you don't even reference a lot of it there are some things in there that you didn't reference that if if the organization is doing something it's only it only refers to something that's done inside our building more than anything they do it outside at at our

091Fields there are literally no costs involved our fields are open for people to use it's it's just basically when we have a custodial charge that we have to cover and and I've had Parents reach out to me being the policy chair I've had people and and they said well that's not fair and I said who's going to pay for the staffing someone has and no matter what the taxpayers going to pay for the it's going to pay they're going to pay either way and and is if we're only talking a few events they get their two events on a Saturday and I don't I don't think it was I don't think it's that big I mean I support esya don't get me wrong I don't think anyone at this table does not support esya uh

092it's just a matter of a few events that you know I think the other event that came up was that other wrestling tournament that was back that wasn't even submitted in time for us to even approve it and I think that's what started the whole question and process so I don't think this this policy is firm and solid I don't think it needs to be changed and I think we just have to say I'm sorry we will help you any way we can but someone has to pay and that's it if they know ahead of time they can build that into whatever other cost fundraising or or charge an admission fee ad a couple dollar admission fee to pay for the cust they know in advance if someone Springs it on someone and they don't

093know ahead of time that's a whole different story but it's very clear and it's very well spell down yes the only comment I want to make is how do how did the school district determine for instance with the wrestling tournament why was it necessary to have two custodians why not one I mean how how did we determine ended up paying for two custodians and one security officer is that fair to say so why two and not one it's based on the length of the event that is scheduled and as well as the anticipated participation so one person doing the work the director of environment the supervisor of Environmental Services did not feel that one person was enough that felt that it needed to be two that it was too much work for one human being

094and we are never bringing in Personnel without being strategic and intentional one we don't want to make these people work on Sundays and two we don't want to overcharge so I think sometimes the individual that that we had spoken to was feeling that we were like intentionally driving up the cost why why would there's no benefit of that it was truly because the event is typically a large event and it spans I think several it was more than just a six-h hour event scheduled so then you have the hour prep and the hour breakdown at least and we felt that it is necessary for two people and the policy says that the supervisor of custodians and grounds will make that determination of personnel needed for the event um and and I know that that esya

095had asked that they could do the cleaning and that they could clean up but then it becomes where divver a diversion of work and it becomes a grievance from our support staff Union and we will lose that grievance every single day of the week because it is truly a diversion of work that somebody else is doing their work that is contracted to we would have to get the unions okay basically you're be comfortable sitting down the and making that ass agre has ever been filed for the record um no but it if it was we would we wouldn't be able to support it we would lose it because we've never done it I'm assuming right it's also a matter of like keys and access to a knowing where things are I mean I know from

096South there's 500 closets with 500 keys and how do you find the soap and this and the other things you would need insurance and liability and things like that too yeah so would we like this to become a board action item or for policy committee to go back and review this again next month or are we comfortable staying with where we are with this policy I can't speak on behalf of the policy committee or the rest of the board but I think we should just leave it at this I'm comfortable Comfort anyone I'm good thank you everybody so that was thank you for another detailed report Mr car cut I tried thank you wish use a facility we've moved on I was just gonna say like what like outdoor facilities like the tracks ands and

097stuff that they're open to the public are they they it's different outdoor events are it's a different class just open to the public to use the track for example no it's not just open to the public right why why is it not taxpayer go run right if I want to we started to have this we had this conversation that's a whole hold on I I'm not 100% sure if our track and our tennis courts are open 24 hours a day not not I mean supposed to be open is there a policy on that never been like they've never never been I've know seems like that might go on that list that was very short and now it's going to be a little longer right one more meeting Debbie another meeting another meeting all right all

098right I I would add if they're open 24 hours the other consider who's going to be sure that they're not being abused ripped apart and everything else they're expensive so I I think it sounds nice that they should be open 247 so you can run at 3 in the morning but I wasn't saying 24 I but I'm just saying like keeping them open then someone has to monitor them because if life were perfect no one would hurt them but that concludes my presentation thank you everybody for good discussion okay all right now we go to our committee report no no he's GNA be last making Peter go last okay uh Monro Career Technical Jon all right on February 3D 2025 MC's J met to discuss the following items no you're right okay all right finances

099curriculum instruction Student Activities Personnel items and the progress of the conference Center um basically a couple paragraphs I can omit because uh Dr ver and uh M Jones mentioned everything about the budget and budget presentation so I'll just move on committee approved uh payment of invoices and investment information we also approved change orders as you heard for the installation of a goose neck through the roof of the new addition as opposed through the wall an additional underpinning to the addition uh we approved the colonial IU for r uh internet and Doos monthly cost improvements uh and uh General agreement with pentella data for broadband internet uh the committee approved two field trips both in March one in Kenneth Square for the green careers exploration day and Longwood Gardens and the other to the Lancaster Pennsylvania

100for the HOSA State leadership conference at the Windham Resort and Conference Center we also approved a field trip in June to France and Italy for the EF tour sustainability farming and business and hospitality industry my understanding when um during our J uh they've been uh fundraising all year these students in these programs all year in order to have this trip um we all did volunteer to be Chef Bron following Personnel items were discussed and approved appointments for regular and substitutes for the 24 2 year with a change in Aller Aller excuse me rates for the uh office of secretaries uh we just hired an ace instructor for small engine repair um and we signed the CVA with the I apologize for all the accoring the CBA with the mcti espa which will be effective uh

101July 1st 2025 through June 20th uh excuse me June 30th 2028 uh and lastly the J and the director were presented with a 15 passenger van from the Monroe Career and Technical Foundation our next meeting will be held uh at 7M on March 3D thank you Jason Colonial iu20 update is me and you'll really all will like my report because of a day change we don't meet till Wednesday so I have n house report next month and now we're up to property and Facilities Wayne okay um property and Facilities on Wednesday February 5th items requiring action we made a motion to recommend a proposal from Smithfield fire alarm for $1,296 in 90 cents from Keystone Fire and Security that has a three to four month leave time we made a motion to recommend the um

102fourth installment for the graduation chairs for North high school for $895 and 30 from the event stable this would be represent the last purchase for the graduation chairs we made a motion to recommend the payment of CHA invoices um we made a motion to recommend uh payment for rutl Excavating $427 21 that's for the storm water stage two project and we made a motion to recommend the uh approving the change order for rutl Excavating for the increase of $ 22,42 73 and I believe that was for the work of uh digging up additional concrete for that one Inlet by the um degress of the Lan intermediate parking lot um we received a indoor air quality assessment for the entire district from robra Magno and we had a discussion on the North bus garage and we

103are currently considering a modular building for the uh bus driver Lounge we are looking into different designs and uh size and that's um ongoing and our next property facilities meeting is will be held on March 5th at 530 here okay thank you Wayne education programs and resources committee and the epr committee met on Thursday February 6th at 5:30 Mrs Lori presented the be Alliance update highlighting the various holidays and celebrations for the month of February this list along with all the support materials and articles were emailed to the staff the coffee chat this month is actually tomorrow the topic is being the first the only or one of the few the burden and manifestation of multi-dimensional challenges Dr V Alie gave us an update on our dual credit enrollment program she reviewed the three models

104and discussed how we would like to lean into using the esasd high school delivery model which is using our teachers and or co- teing model of NCC professors with our teachers to deliver the course material in the short time between the two meetings that we had kind of all this uh information came up um NCC contacted us about a grant they received hopefully sometime this spring we will be able to off we'll hear that we will be able to offer college courses for two Pathways next year with no cost to the district so that would be fabulous the first pathway is of course the education pathway that we have been utilizing um which has been wonderful and the second pathway will now be a light Health um and that's something you know we've kind of

105been talking about this pathway will introduce our students to many of the health related careers beyond the traditional doctor and nurse kind of programs we are very excited to see a continuation of the dual enrollment credit program for our students and especially fingers crossed with uh no cost to our district uh for the next two years uh Amy P mounter presented an updated proposal on the personal finance course which will allow our students to meet the career to work in Future Ready standards this course will be added to our program of studies uh we thank Amy for her continued work on this endeavor just a reminder to all of us uh board members the program of studies will be coming up later and if you notice um on there the courses that were eliminated so

106that we could add um the personal finance course now as freshman and then uh the second part uh in junior year so just kind of keep that in mind um and this again was with no cost to the district those was one of things we talked about at least for now in terms of Staffing Etc um Dr pado presented the change in our program of studies which you also received a copy of um that was part of all the documents we received we did have a comprehensive discussion about the program of studies the epr committee has recommended the approval of the program of studies for this evening therefore scheduling can uh continue as it should uh Dr pado and the science department chairpersons Lor sasil missuse and DJ Scott presented a first look at the

107rewrite of our high school science curriculum um the epr will be discussing that again at the next meeting and to see where we will go with it I want to personally thank the department shares and all the science teachers for their hard work and dedication to our students and the science program Dr Bradley presented the state of the elementary schools report this is the last of the three reports if you remember dat picado did the high school report um two months ago and then last month it was the middle school so this was the last one of our for elementary schools the report was extremely comprehensive covering attendance Behavior classroom performance and pssa results in ela Math and Science the last piece of information was on transy and how this may may not affect the

108student performance I thought just just one it's only a snippet of information but but it was interesting um the data showed that we had 476 students enrolled in fifth grade last year but only 180 of those students were enrolled in our district for all 6 years so you know when we when we talk about scores and we talk about comparing you know Apples to Apples that's not always the case uh particularly when we get into the high school obviously and we really look at uh keystones data and just as you know as we know the amount of students we have coming the amount of students we have in the beginning of the year and the end of the year tend to be about the same but who they are are is very different um and

109so that you know creates a challenge obviously um for our Educators our professional staff uh and they do a great job and our scores you know are on the rise uh particularly since covid you know so um we're really very proud of all of our teachers and everything they do for our students uh and again as I thank Dr pado I would also like to thank Dr Bradley for her comprehensive report uh and then lastly Dr Bradley did give a shout out to her reading department for their professionalism diligence and dedication and moving from Dibbles testing which those of us who've been around forever um you know was you know the K12 uh and it was very uh task oriented and you know taking your time and so forth but anyway moving to a cadians

110through an all digital approach so uh that's you know a big change uh in addition to the program of studies the epr committee has moved forward uh the recommendation to purchas super kids reading program in the amount of 93,173 this is a trans kind of a transition program that is needed because the uh provider actually changed uh materials kind of Midway through our six years um but it is funded through the 2425 ccul and instruction budget um the last thing I do want to just mention to everyone because this will be up later as well we had the last of the math courses um curriculum to uh be approved this evening and it's the college prep CP statistics um the one that was attached for the agenda this is for the public as well was

111incorrect one that was our first read so everyone um the board members all received a second copy thank you Dr she put out some extras for those of you in the public and those of you who may be online um it will be changed tomorrow for the um the updated one so it'll be there for everyone to to note so I just wanted to let you know that and then lastly our next meeting is Thursday March 6 at 5:30 both here and on zoom and as I say every time and I will say it again um this is the no offense to all my other all the other committees here but this is the most important committee because it is the work of our students and what we are here for uh education so I

112invite all of to be present and attend thank you thank you and for your service and humility we appreciate and now that unimportant committee Rebecca the fin they save me a last money right so we met February 10th and my update is very short because we had Wayne cover our properties and Facilities recommendation and Ann covered our super kids reading but we did discuss the 10year Lura which you'll see on the agenda and thank you I see our Middle Smithfield folks over there for doing a great presentation to us and helping us understand how Lura really helps our district district and we also have Cisco Network switches upgrade at both high schools totaling 247 931 from Inger one and that is all I have and we have leading up to we had the initial presentation

113from Peter which you'll hear next we get the second most important committee on the board next meeting body know is March 10th here in Via zoom and now a man who needs no introduction Keith uh I've waited all night for this thank you gives me so much time to prepare my report and I still didn't prepare it uh policy met of course tonight and uh it's there's you got to get here early because seats are filling up quickly um we present as I'm not going to go over the the the uh policies that we're approving on tonight's agenda since you already looked at those but one things we talked about tonight was we talked about I can't see it WR my eye I'm sorry no I I got it I'm good I just have to

114get to that page uh we're asking uh for we're moving on for uh board of review and public review policy 603 budget preparation policy 701 facilities planning policy 703 sanitary management policy 704 uh maintenance policy 708 leading equipment and lending equipment and books policy 710 use of facilities by staff U my favorite policy policy 716 integrated Pest Management what it's really exciting policy you should read it really good times talking today it's a really it's a really interesting policy you should read it's all about pesticides and it's really good um those are and and for just for the rec to recall all the 700 policies are reviewing old policies that we haven't looked at in many many years and we're very happy and uh to announce that we are on like the like 15 to

11520 policies that we have not reviewed yet uh so the policy committee will meeting be meeting a lot less you will have to hear less from me until unless we have other exciting policies to address um but our next policy meeting uh will be on St Patrick's Day uh March 17th um thank you for your time and your support in these policies okay thank you Keith we appreciate your work okay uh we have now from our um Bart will present on the budget we waited an hour and a half to allow our investments to grow another hour and a half so we can I think that so we have 90 minutes more worth of Interest we are we are in good shape to to start this so I am ready to present I'm gonna go

116to the podium so I can make eye contact with all you people I will go there so you guys can see my beautiful face you just don't want to look at the tax no one is somebody's get Christmas card the uh for the whole board today is the first uh iteration of the 2526 uh budget I presented this the first uh iteration to the finance committee on at the fin at the uh the finance committee two weeks ago so I want to start by I know why okay why is this working so in any event I want to start by going over the market values and assessments for 25 26 um to the most important thing to note here is the decline in values for Monro County we're seeing a decline of $12 million or

117a little under $13 million from Monroe County and an increase of 415,000 for pike these numbers are preliminary and could go up or down the uh the counties certify these numbers in May so I'll get the certification numbers in May and these numbers do not include the reductions or possible reductions at the explore your properties which the reduction will be actually be a $44 million a $44 million reduction and the shauni property which the reduction is pending as we have just um at remember at the last board meeting the board adopted a uh a specialist to appraise the property and we're going through assessment appeals at this time so there was some questions at the last month's meeting about the last year's budget and the deficit that was approved so what I have on the

118screen here is these are the board minutes I took from June the June 17th board meeting and this is the um the minutes that were dictated that I spoke of at that board meeting and this is the deficit that I presented the $17.4 million deficit that I spoke to you about before the board voted on the budget um if you look I did speak of the $17.4 million deficit um the reason we got to there was a there it was an increase of the variance was increased from the previous uh month there was an increase of nine special education teachers due to an increased enrollment there was four their positions that were added and right below that is the budget adoption where the board voted the board board voted 8 to1 Mr roner was the

119sole dissenting vote um I wanted to present that because there was some questions at the last board meeting about um if they if uh about the the deficit and whatnot the board deficit from last month last year's uh was 8 8.5 million so I want to go over the 2526 Revenue summary and this is going on for this year the local Revenue we're looking at is 107 million the state revenue is a little under a little over 77 million the federal revenue will be a little under five million at 4.9 million the uh other revenue is $50,000 which will be a sale of assets totaling the total revenue is 1889 million or what about little well you'd make it19 million 26962 or an increase of 1.5% what makes up the local revenue is a mix

120of the primary source is local taxes which make up approximately 80 8 million of the the base of the 107 but also in that is local earned income taxes uh real estate transfer taxes uh local earned income taxes and uh earnings Investments so what we're seeing in this in this particular piece and what we saw last year was a decline a steep decline in real estate uh collection or um the real estate assessments that lead to the the number going down so what the district has saw is normally collect 91 and historically $ 91 to 90 million in in real estate Revenue this year in the previous years now you're down to 88 million and this year you received $88.2 million it it's not because of collection rates The Collection rates have stayed steady on

121an average of 90% so the 90% collection rate is an average between the two counties between Pike and Monroe County their average ratees been 90% but the problem is is is the is the lack of Assessments or the assessment appeals that have plagued the county so that is the reason why the state came in and gave us the $5.5 million of the tax Equity payment which is what um is booing the state The increased state revenue so the state revenue what makes up the state revenue is the basic head subsidy the special education State subsidy the reimbursements from uh the retirement state reimbursements from the Social Security reimbursement Transportation subsidy and a few other um minor things that come into that into that equation as well the reason that goes up is because like I

122said the tax Equity payment is in there and the governor's budget does include that this year however the state's Governor's budget does not include a very very good increase of the basic Ed subsidy for uh East sturg it's only about $300,000 the governor's budget also for this year does not include a very good special education increase either it only has about maybe $100,000 or $150,000 for special education subsidy increase in here so that's not a very good uh increase in here uh the federal dollars you see a substantial decrease in here this St the substantial decrease stems from the complete phasing out of any eser dollars so that $5 million was completely was just taking out all the eser dollars and the 4.9 million is the the basic uh federal dollars that we get from

123all of our title money title one two three and four um we also seeing a decline in the title money uh that we get it's a slow decline by about one or two one and a half% every year it's been a decline before the election in the fall we don't know what's going to happen in the in the future but that's kind of what we've been planning for and that gets our our total revenue piece now before I go on to the expenditure side does anybody have any questions here about the revenue piece of things yes yes so the 77 million from the state does that include the U 9 million that Governor Shapiro said we were receiving when when when was the uh there was a month in here where we had state representative

124County Commissioner and a representative from the US Senate's office Rosemary's where they were months asking us to reduce the milit rate when when were we supposed to receive that is that part of the 77 yes that's part of the $77 million that was the tax Equity payment I referred to which is 5.5 5.5 5 million yes so so we're not getting another four we're not getting another 5.5 on top of that no that the other money that the governor Shapiro had the governor Shapiro's budget in 2425 um The increased funding came from the basic Ed subsidy special ed subsidy and also a uh Revenue to reimburse us for um charter school funding on top of the special ed funding which was a which was another um I believe was another $1 million on top of

125the special ed funding for the 2425 school year um that charter school funding does not exist in 2526 however there is legislation on the table that perhaps could um Ren or not renovate but renovate is a bad word but um uh what I'm trying to find the right word standardized yeah stand that's a better word the cost of per pupil tuition is to our cyber charger so it would set one base level so there was no more variance between school districts so it be it's not here yet we don't know it's not here yet and it's just a proposal and it's been a proposal for for many years um so hopefully it gets across the finish line and that could save us um somewhere around three three and a half million doll in costs and

126that would reduce our expense side of things but on the revenue side of things but honestly we didn't include that because I have I'm cautiously optimistic that that will come over the Finish Line because cyber Charters have a lot of Revenue and they really like that revenue and they're able to use that Revenue to purchase lobbyists and help their system so I'm not sure if that kind of standardization of tuition rate will actually come to fruition yeah but but the nine the nine people you said that we had hired did we hire or did we not hire them you hired the you hire the nine of special education yes but do we that that's something we talk about that we not sure we I don't understand question I'm sorry are we going to keep those

127nine we are we have no plans of decreasing our Workforce that's what I was asking correct um to Wayne's question um I guess because I'm a little confused when we were told that we were from the state that we were getting n million and now you're referencing 5.5 million are those two separate figures or are the 5.5 part of the 9 million the 5.5 is part of the 9 million so you did get the whole the whole $9 million it was just broken up into two different or actually three different buckets wellock Grant right and the tax equity and all of that is reflected in the 77 right in this in the in this in in this money it is it is reflected it was my understanding that some of that money we got last

128year we couldn't use until this budget correct so correct so that is that is the caveat that has to be mentioned though with all is that the ready tolearn block grant money which is the ready tolearn block grant tax Equity payment the $5.5 million cannot be used for the for the 2425 year it can only be used in the 2526 year so the money is actually coming into our bank account uh by the end of this month but it cannot be used until the fiscal year begins so we will recognize that revenue on our books but we can't actually physically spend it so that is something that the state did not tell us um at the time until regulations came out in September so we didn't technically we would be taking that money off of

129the 24 million right now supposed no every so everything that is the the everything that I have on this $77 million revenue is included in the funding that we're go we're getting those are the deficit is the deficit I'm going to get to has everything built in to into that now there are and I will get to this we're jumping ahead in the presentation yeah we're jumping ahead in the presentation but there are no there are there are things that I'm looking at from a revenue side of things from historical perspective type of things that we may be able to enhance Revenue a little bit in effort to shrink down the um the the deficit so there are things that in in past budgets where the deficit increased as we get closer to June that

130should never happen in a budget that's not going to happen this year because I believe we have everything put together well so that we're going to strength the deficit as we get closer to June to the June adoption and that includes looking at Revenue enhancement including what I mean by Revenue enhancement is um not tax increases necessarily but also looking at historical projections and not being as conservative on the on the side of things where like in last year's audit we had we came over $3 million in in in Revenue um maybe looking at putting that into the budget a little bit so the revenue deficits a little bit smaller this time um and looking because we have to be a little more um we have to get that a little bit more strained out

131or a little more tightened up a little bit on the revenue side thank you so that's when I say Revenue has it's not always tax increases it's also looking at what the historical Trends are um in the revenue piece and that's what we're that's what I'm looking at now for the March presentation as well when we're going forward with that the 5.5 million you say is that going to be in revenue for this year or for next year it's going to be recognized as this year but we can't spend it until next year so it's going to be so the money's going to come in this year yes it's very confusing it doesn't make it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense to a lot of people either it's also gonna throw our numbers off

132here it it's it's not going to be going to show up as a revenue for this year even though that we can't particularly spend it we anticipate the same amount yes so we're gonna right and we're going to get the same exact amount next year too so it's kind of like a you just said it was a onee thing no no it's not it wasn't a one-year thing the the charter school reimbursement was a one-year thing in two separate ones yeah the ready to Lear the the 5.5 tax Equity yeah the $5.5 million is actually in the budget for next year we're going to get it next year and the state did say to us that we expect to have it every single year moving forward thank you yes I tell so let's look at

133the general fund Revenue as a as a pie chart here 50 57% of it comes the pi is generated by the local sources which is what the the board can control 41% is comes from the state 3% come from the re from the federal so basically the the board can control 50% of of what the the board or what you guys can control and and that's really it really should be flipped around where 57% come from the state 41% come from the local but this is the reality of what you guys are generating and what you guys what what the reality of of the school district funding is when you look at the 2526 budget summary the 189 is the is the the revenue 213 is the expenditure with the projected deficit of 24,4 59679

134the general fund balance um is 50, 400,000 or 5050 million or 50 million4 yeah 50, 400,000 be assigned to the to balance the 2425 budget of 17 million 413 however we are trending in a way that we believe we're going to end up between a $6 and $8 million deficit for 2425 so that will extend the fund balance a long a period a longer period of time the deficit for 25 I just interrupt you just make sure they heard you said so last year we had a 17 we put a $7 million deficit correct however you're saying that your projection would be that $ 17 billion deficit would actually be only a between six and 8 million what we're trending for right now that's what we're trending to right now okay because that's pretty major

135difference so that's that's giving us 10 more million in our so and that's and that's a mix of the revenue that we brought in from the plan con money that we found from the M from the from getting re uh increased plan C money back the $1 and A5 million dollar we got back from a an error in a transportation report and also an increased Transportation subsidy as well we're mixing in with that as well that makes feel much more comfortable than we're out of these 17s that we're down to and that's and that will extend the life of the fund balance abolutely that's that's and the other thing to know is that the previous year we had an $8 million deficit we planned an $8 million deficit where we only wound up with the

13630 it was a 48,000 yeah it was a $48,000 yeah it was a it was basically a balanced budget last year yes so it's through the fiscal constraint of of my office of through you guys and doing that type of thing that we don't spend every dollar that we budget um but at the same time these numbers are getting bigger and bigger and the realistic thing is is that you know uh before was $8 million deficit that was a $48,000 and result deficit uh a $17 million deficit might be a $6 and8 million deficit so it's important that the board starts taking action before the $50 million is is gone now the ending fund balance I have projected here is 8.5 million and also it's also important to note board also has $15 million in

137a capital reserve so so the total fund balance that the district has Al together is $23 million because the the capital but the capital reserve is restricted for capital projects across the district but it is important that to note that there are restrictions for the $15 million now before I go on um I would like to ask and stop here before we get too deep into the the moving the forward if the board has members have any questions before we go on from that from that perspective just to go follow up what I said before yes so the end ending General fund balance of $8 million if and we don't have crystal balls but if that 11 million that we didn't spend gets thrown back in there for this year we actually are close to

13820 million in our correct in our plus the 155 right again 20 20 million sounds a lot nicer than eight so right I'm just preparing the board and the public I'm not disagre absolutely absolutely yes you're absolutely correct I want to make myself feel better the public to hear and the public to hear that too yes so looking back on the previous slides the deficit you're estimating of 24 million for this year correct does not include if I heard you correctly the golf course if we how that ever reassesses as well as the exploria loss of taxes as well or is that budgeted into that 24 million explor the explor the I've already actually accounted for the explor and the reduced Revenue um in in the taxes not the golf course yet because I don't

139know where it's going to land but I've already I've already I'm conservatively planning for the reduced assessment values in the uh the decline in um tax collection in that property most of the declines are commercial properties obviously not homeowners correct correct so how we're making up for that so you guys are aware and so the public is aware um we've heard from um we heard from uh Dr wul about how Joel Walsh Dr Walsh at the at the IU makes up for how the uh IU didn't have to increase their budget because of Investments the district does their own investing if you guys look in your budget in your board books you will see big statements from Pisa uh and pled we invest uh a lot of our fund balance money there and our interest

140rates there in the in the four in the four and a half percent range that's where all of our money from the state gets goes into there first doesn't come into the ESS Bank all the money goes in there first that money is that is invested we earn investment earnings on that when I got here I made sure that we were earning the most amount of money that we could possibly earn on those on those Investments and we bring in around two million to two and a half million to$ three and a half million dollars in extra earnings that is how we replace some of the money that we are losing in um in in real estate assessments so when we see that um we rely on that money we rely on that investment earnings

141to help flow some of these these losses in that respect right but knowing the state of the way that is with interest rates and being that I'm in that industry um past treasury rates aren't going to predict future treasury rates correct and research is showing that those type of rates are not on the up anymore they're on the level out towards going down I know bank CD rates have gone down at least 1% treasury rates have stayed stable but they're most likely going to follow that decline as the FED decides to lower interest rates those usually follow down as well with treasury so what do you foresee with that so what we do then is we will look at our we will look at our debt portfolio and see if we can lower our debt

142service payments by refinancing or recalling some of our bonds and extending our payments out further to see if we can recall and and lower some of our debt payments because our debt payments are at the high end of the scale so that um if the yield curve becomes reversed um and the interest and the borrowing becomes cheaper we may be able to save money on the expense Side Of The Ledger we have to be able to play both sides of the the game so if you lose money on the investment earnings we have to go back to the uh we have to go back to cut our debt service payments right now it doesn't make sense for us because our interest rates are lower than what the borrowing rate is right now but on our

143current debt for uh debt portfolio but I look at this stuff on a daily basis too so um I'm well prepared to weather whatever storm that is um so I think that is primarily what we're what we're looking for in that in that respect so whatever happens on that we might be able to save shave another million or two off of our debt portfolio even if we just extended a year or two if we needed to in that perspective so that might save us if we lose investment earnings thank you thank you so the next slide is looking at the details of our expenditures um the salaries are $90 million the benefits $64 million or a 4.81% increase the benefits are a 7% increase um the notes for the benefits I want to point out

144just the health insurance costs are projected to go up 11% um we've had a few bad years of claims uh the professional and Technical Services are $10 million that's the uh IU services for special education the purchase Property Services are $2 million or a 2.42% increase the other purchases services are $15 million or a 1.77% increase that's where you'll see the Charter School tuition and the liability insurance also out of District place ments that's what ODP stands for in uh in this particular uh area also supplies uh go to $9 million or 1.1% increase that includes electricity water school supplies that's not all school supplies by the way it's mostly electricity water the utilities all those kind of things in there that's a lot of pencils yeah it's a lot of pencils you know it's

145a lot of P it's a lot of pencils a lot of the water also the I heard I know he heard me because he shook his head I he heard also the property the property went up to a 2.5 million or a 1.49% increase and the other object in debt service is a $19.7 million or a 3.6% increase that includes the new Debt Service issued for school buses and the leases that need to be accounted for in the according to gasby so that's where like leases for school or for computers and different things of that nature these categories are going to be tweaked and gone through uh my team and I are going through all 10,000 L plus line items to ensure that all these are true and tried and and booked accordingly so some

146of these may go up the bottom line will not change um this but these may change as we go through them um the general fund expenditures by function this is visualized by a pie chart the instruction uh is 123 million uh so or actually 124 because it's close enough to 124 the support services 66 million the operation of uh structional Services 3.8 million and the other financing uses are1 19 million so if you want to look at this by salary and benefits um 72% for salary and benefits the other purchases services are 133% that's a lot of the the staff that we buy from the IU we plan we purchase about $9 million of services from the IU um for our special education uh students and the other expend are 10% and the supplies are

147are 4% so let me get to the budget timeline um before I take another round of your questions um in March what we'll do is Dr vital and I will present another budget another budget options to the board this will when I say options it's going to include forecasting so it's going to show you what options you guys have moving forward and how the fund balance will look out in the next three to five years um and what it looks like if uh Revenue enhancements are undertaken by the board um we're also going to continue to fine-tune our options when I mentioned I mentioned to you guys a little bit earlier um when trillo was asking questions about uh uh fine-tuning and tweaking our Revenue enhancement because I'm getting some projections in about our earned

148income taxes and things of that nature that may increase our Revenue a little bit to trip away at the at the deficit a little bit I can't promise anything but I'm just I'm just looking at ways to increase our Revenue organically um we'll do that and provide some some options to the board through some forecasting that you guys haven't seen before in April we're going to continue to find refine and show the forecast models based on the feedback from the stakeholders um from the board and the public and the administration um in May we'll present the prelim final budget for board consideration and passage and in June we'll have the final budget vote and the pass and and for passage if you guys have any questions please reach you reach out to me to my

149uh extension there or email me at any time um I I'm always open for questions and if you guys want to set up a meeting or anybody in the public um once I set up a meeting please reach out to me and I'm available uh I can come out stay in for evening me meetings anytime anytime you guys want to go over anything you guys have or want to present feedback or or comments or a new way forward I'm definitely open for that and if you guys have any questions or comments please let me know before we unleash with questions I just want to thank Peter I have tasked Peter with coming up with the worst case scenario so I have asked him to be as conservative as we should be and to give us

150what the worst case is this is the worst case do we believe we're going to have a 24 $24.4 million deficit no but School Finance is so complicated we want to be conservative we'd rather be on the right side of it but we also don't want to incite fear in the board or in our taxpayers so we wanted to bring to you just the initial numbers so you know kind of where we're at now what we're going to hear from you tonight hopefully is not good enough go back bring us something better and I are well prepared to do that and to look at as he said every line item I sat with the business office for a considerable amount of time today and said okay let me understand all of the hundreds and thousands

151Series right so let me understand kind of where we're putting our expenditures and what the revenues are so we are going to come back with a better model but we wanted to get something in front of you to know we are looking at deficit we're not looking at a surplus how how big the deficit is it probably will never be realized of 24.4 million um but Peter did a really good job putting together putting together the most conservative budget you never want to be aggressive in your spending because that is not good in June so before you do firing squad for Pete thank you Pete I appreciate that's fine I'm I'm prepared for it it's all good well actually I I was going to join you in thanking you cuz you you have a School

152Finance like you said is probably one of the few places where you're asked to do really big budgets for our district and no one else tells you how much you're going to be able to play with you have you're at the mercy of the state you're at the mercy of politicians you're at the mercy of Courts and everything else so I think you did a tremendous job in managing all those pieces and putting them together and yes as Dr Vali said we're none of us are happy with this and and we we shouldn't be we now have to task our elves at saying all right now let's see what we could do to make this better but I would also say we still have a very healthy fund balance which we have to be mindful

153of but we still have that um to fall back on so you know I don't think any of us are leaving here en dire streets um but yes there's work to be done and and we look forward to doing that work with you um to come out with a better outcome but I thank you I mean I you know I understand things and I thank you for that it's important remember that 70% of our budget is salaries and wages and things like that so in you know when we look at trying to condense costs that's really one of the only places that can happen so we have to really be very mindful on how we approach this we uh Pete can I ask a question uh when you talk about the IU um the expenses

154for the extra services for IU are you taking consideration the transportation costs that we incur to send some of these students to other buildings and properties throughout the counties no are they all in Ser inhouse I was just giving the number of you know uh mental health workers social workers things of that nature I wasn't accounting I was including Transportation costs no but transportation costs are built in bu all right because because one of the things we have to start looking at as a district I think is is looking to get some of our programs back into our district and and look at options and I know you've talked I've I know you're a proponent of that and I'm excited to hear that and uh and again I repeat this I've repeated this every year

155when it comes to budgeting um on the board in the past is the state uh will not do their budget until every school district gives them their budget so it's like what can we give them and I I say this crazy every year how can they expect us to plan for income when we don't know it's going to be and and I I just you know call your Senator call your your state representative call the governor's office all the you know the people online uh and let them know that this you know that we have to come up with a budget far ahead and then and then another thing when they give us $5 million but you can have it but you can't use it till next year yeah and I I mean and that

156I mean part of it I mean I hope you understand my frustration was I didn't know you couldn't spend it until you know when they came out with the rules and regulations was like September so was well after the budget was passed you know what I mean and you can't what are you going to do with it when it's already put in in front of you I mean it is what it is at that particular point but um also it's important to rally and v on one page when it comes to um when you speak to your senators and legislators it's very very important that they push the charter school reform thing across the finish line so if you guys can call with one voice if they call and speak to you um and they

157they will because they want you to lower uh the millage rate because of the $5 a half million dollars push back on them and say it's better it would be much better if you guys came to a consensus and pushed across the charter school reform that would save us a lot more money than the the five and a half million dollar and also don't take the5 and half million dollars Away by the way um but continue to uh push across the the uh the the charter school reform because that would save the district millions of dollars um that we can use now our p 363 we pay $20,000 in a regular edit and $51,000 for a special ed student um when they when they are going to a a uh an out of placement uh

158uh cyber cyber school or charter school so it's important that they they reform that right away for us and other districts pay less than that correct other districts do pay less it's based on our our budget and our our expenses or per pupil expenditure outside of Debt Service correct yes it's a per outside of debt service and outside and they also give a little bit of an allotment away from our our ready to learn block grant that is instructionally based not the PEX correct right which is why one standard rate helps correct right it helps one standard rate across the board that they're helps us it does not help other districts it's okay so across the state though you can have dist School boards some school boards are going to be competing against this this

159has been going on for 30 years you know there districts that get tens of thousands of dollars more for their students than we do we're both educating the same way and it all depends on what part of the state you're in and and who your representative is it's politics so and really our what we pay for Cyber Charter Schools to people to go to Cyber Charter could almost us wipe out our and look at our budget for our without having to pay that money we would even have we wouldn't have one our administrative team is going to do an active campaign get them back in our this summer to get them back um to to start with it our cyber chart our own internal charter school doesn't service K to2 it starts at third grade

160well if you go to a Cyber Charter School K to2 you're not going to change that program in third grade so we want to open it up to K to2 students is it the best model that we agree not for our Primary students but at least there ours and we can capture them and we can offer them our highest level of service so we want to broaden the scope of the program so that they're with us their entire time because when you're with a program for three years and you love it you're not going to change in third grade so we want to see if we broaden it if that helps and also we're going to actively campaign and speak to them and try to understand why they chose that and how we can earn

161their trust back or how we can earn them back as our students start our 3 tomorrow I mean I just I'm wasn't that aware that we were um missing that Gap I mean like it just seems like that needs to be done as soon as possible right yeah I we maybe next week are there any other are there any other questions I do I just have a question she has a few months rich more questions for Peter a question just July ju curiosity um the vast majority of our budget is salary and benefits um is Pacers calculated into that yes okay roughly I know you don't have the number in front of you roughly what do we spend a year just on our Pacer's contribution it's 34% of our our salary goes out but we

162get reimbursed for roughly 60% of that so if you could follow that that's part of the state reimbursement as well so 34% is what this the paser uh employer cost is um and then we get reimbursed about 60% of it based on our a ratio yeah you say less than 15,000 15 15% listen No it's it's it's it's quite a bit of our it's quite a bit of a so yeah so if you look at a so if you wanted to do a quick calculation if somebody gives a salary and says hey I want to pay pay P 60,000 just times that by 34 and that's what you get on that because it's just one of those other things that are you know it's something that we right can't yeah and they expect it to

163go in the next five years up to around 40% say they keep pushing that up right it's a small it's not as big as it was in the in the mid 2000s but it's still inkling going up to around 40 they expected to go to 40% by the end of the of this decade and most private businesses are six seven Max yeah yeah the whole difference right okay great any other questions for Peter purchase Property Services on page next um the purchase Property Services would be anything that we buy um basically how what it what it states it's the it's the 400 uh uh object code so would be things like utilities like garbage hauling that's not all garbage hauling believe we're not paying $2 million a haul garbage um but it's like it's things

164in the 400 object so would be things that we contract out our services for that we have to purchase we don't do own snow removing different things of that nature would be all those different things in that op code I can give you the list of them I property not like Services because you think property I think oh no it's like extermination service like it's it's it's inte integrated test management I know I had on the tip of my tongue I was that's why I took my glasses off and everything I had the tip of my tongue it's you know Pest Service it's it's the things in the 400 objects series if you had a chart of account where we buying this set yeah saids P management is very expensive Rebecca anything else for Peter

165that's because I'm the biggest than you much so much appreciate it thank you thank you guys and we are going to um move on to public participation thank you for hanging in there with normally we don't have this many uh reports however this time of year planning for next year we begin having a lot of reports so thank everybody for hanging in there with us tonight um reminder for any public participation is limited to comments on this agenda by residents and taxpayers of the school district and is limited to 3 minutes and your timer is up there just so you can keep track of your time uh so at this point anyone uh pet I do have someone who did sign up in advance Peter thank you when you come up just please identify yourself

166as you arriv there from one Peter to the next Peter Jackson uh Township uh M Middle Smithfield Township taxpayer um uh good evening Madam superintendent uh board directors made please the board I'm here this evening to address uh category 12 new business Personnel f308 termination of uh employee number 9254 I uh had an opportunity to send an email earlier to you all I'm not sure if you had an opportunity review the email it's Pennsylvania Department of Education guidance on recent Commonwealth Court rulings concerning constitutionality and how uh terminations are occurring based on um individuals that have to file form pde 604 for arrest conviction or arraignment so I just want to go over a few facts on this particular 9254 employee um the the initial charge uh and I'm speaking to the three-page report from

167the Pennsylvania Department of Education the initial charge came in uh febru uh January 1st 2021 uh the uh a formal charge I'm sorry the initial uh alleged incident date was January 1st 2021 uh formal charges were filed in March of 23 trial was completed June of 2024 uh had an opportunity in August of 2024 to meet with uh our human resources department uh Kathy warx Williams a building representative from the union Miriam goo of the Union president uh 9254 all met and spoke about the value that 9254 brought to the table and how employment would be continued in spite of uh the conviction in in June of 2024 now what uh I guess puzzles me is uh what has changed since August to today where employment continued for 9254 um the only thing I can

168see is the rehabilitation portion which in in those those forms if you look from pde it in fact is a positive that there's been Rehabilitation rendered for uh the crimes committed this is ongoing litigation there is appeals in in process I asked the board simply to um if it would allow due process to uh take its course before it takes final action on termination on 9254 and and I'm here for cross-examination I can answer any question as much as I can to the extent that it doesn't compromise future thank you Peter uh as you probably aware we cannot comment on Personnel issues or of course or anything like that in public that's would be against our policies but we did hear what you had to say I appreciate I'm welcome to meet at any time

169discuss any of thought of those matters okay thank you pet appreciate any other public participation uh Anthony anyone online no okay all right seeing none then we will go back sorry yes they fallen asleep everyone online's falling asleep okay let's continue then with our agenda we are on number eight unfinished business uh we I believe your report covered some of our unfinished business anyone else have any unfinished business Mo on a motion to adopt or repeal the board policies as listed to move second any questions all in favor I opposed uh in new business programs motion to approve the statistics curriculum in accordance with the recommendation of the education programs and resources committee and a reminder we have the updated one and anyone from the public the updated one is either outside or online tomorrow

170second um questions I thought was awesome I read the whole thing well done it's it's really enlightening to to see curriculum being discussed at the board level finally yes are you saying curriculum is the most important thing in a school district tell but policy says see the tone culum it is very exciting and uh Dr mado's here to see any curriculum being talked about and you know just thank you uh to everyone involved especially our Math teachers and Dr pado and her committees uh for that and it is an awesome course if if you have a chance to look at it what we're teaching and offering in statistics even um at the CP level which is not necessar our highest level but still gives it uh a really intense Force for our students so that

171that's a great thing I'm sorry I'm gabbing here uh all in favor oppos okay our motion to approve the program of studies for the 25 26 school year in accordance with the recommendation of the education programs and resource committee second any questions I'm just glad we're reviewing it and actually kind of putting our arms around and hearing about it at epr because it's really enlightening to actually hear about programs that we're offering it's also enlighting to see all the programs we have I mean we have massive programs compared to one when I was in school that yes I had larger buildings over time too George I a lot more rooms in the building on what we offer our students is truly amazing and and such a variety you heard the mcti that aspect you know

172for statistics through calculus through you know all the through work trades creative writing creative writing film study I mean there were just so many things that our kids are they have great programs so I believe we did the uh first second talking any go down any career path they want yes any career path so we have more work to do on it we will be doing that work on it so I'm assuming we had the first and second all in favor post I must be Del that's why gabbing so motion to authorize the field trips as listed questions yeah does this include the great adventure trip that we discussed for it does not because they had not filled out the paperwork I just asked for permission to do to advertise for that and it will

173be on March's agenda thank you y and and I just want it's exciting to see the stem the stem students going to States because I had the opportunity to attend our our battle in the Berg at JTL last week and it's neat to see our stem students um Excel we talk about sport so much but I'm going to keep pushing the other programs and I love it's an amazing program excellent all in favor oppos okay uh pupils motion to approve the recommendation to modify expulsion requirement agreed upon expulsion waiver up School Board hearing release agreement for the case listed in substantially the same form as presented at this meeting second questions all in favor opposed okay move on now to Personnel motion to approv the agreement with Mr Andrew Snyder as presented as assistant superintendent

174for District programs of the East rburg Area School District so Mo questions he's here stand up introduce yourself wait wait wait wait uh welcome um Andrew and we are just so excited to have yet another member of our team added uh and we are moving forward and please understand how excited we are to have you and uh get this place continually going full speed ahead so welcome thank thank you all very much I to starting relatively shortly work okay thank you so for being here today [Laughter] appreciate okay moving on um a motion to send the statement of charges for employee 10499 which was approved on the January 27th 2025 board agenda questions all in favor opposed motion to approve the separation agreement for employee 10499 move second any questions all in favor opposed motion

175to approve the workers compensation settlement with employee ID 110003 second any questions all in favor n oppos motion to approve the agreement with psba as presented for a compensation analysis and market assessment concerning the district support staff move second questions all in favor opposed motion to approve the termination of employee 9254 having concluded that the charges are sufficient to support termination so move second second questions all in favor I opposed motion to approve the following memorandum of under standard standing with about mtss it's listed below I move take any questions all in favor I opposed motion to approve the employ actions listed in accordance with the associ associated applicable policies procedures and contractual agreements second questions do we do this every year yes we need to abstain for find somewhere we didn't get there yet

176not yet no we're still on the um application of payment for the acquired state by Conflict for we on 308 employ yes employment that's the MTS fors hold on where are we theenda okay way you are I know where you are these are all the hirings and resignations and things we're working right now I don't know what section 17 and 19 I think okay so uh we have that so noted the SE okay we're good we have that noted right then in that case all in favor I'm opposed and then the exstension on that one section um I just wanted to Mr President if you don't mind I just wanted to thank Diane Kelly uh my controller she's retiring as a as of the first week of July um She's Been instrumental uh for helping

177me adjust here in eastburg and she's retiring I wanted to thank her for many years of service here so thank you for those of had the opportunity to work with Diane over the years Dian is is terrible L to the district she is a wonderful worker so we will miss her I'll miss getting emails from her I did say this at our last meeting uh because of the work we were doing but um when she's here in person I will say it again I did to a thank you to Dr P for all her work uh on the secondary level so as director of rck retiring I'm like no she's staying I would I would set to talk I work personally as a principal with Dr pado and uh not only is she knowledgeable but

178is just a joy to work with um during Co I tell my favorite story during Co um Heather Amy who's was is the assistant principal South and myself we had some gowns on because we had no students so we actually uh with my other assistant uh who's now the pr principal of pleasa Valley High School we had a cookie bake off at a cookie contest for Christmas and the four of us spent the afternoon baking cookies and uh kind of testing each other's recipes so uh that's the kind of person uh Heather is and none of our parties will be as beautifully decorated as others so in addition to her curriculum knowledge she has that other expertise that uh really is will be missed and thank you so much for all our great times I

179appreciate that um motion to did we vote on that I'm sorry yeah we did we did did sorry um motion to direct the administration to submit form pte 2098 to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for Appropriations payable and L taxes under the provisions of section 604 of the public school code of 1949 uh questions comments okay the Pennsylvania School they all in favor iOS motion to approve the 10-year lurer extension with Middle Smithfield Township in accordance with the recommendation from the finance committee meeting wow did we get that one okay um any questions do we really have to do this no after they sat here thank you for being Pres do appreciate that thank you can I say something real quick I want to thank the hold on I want to thank the Middle Smithfield

180supervisors for doing this uh although it will show as we're giving up Revenue we're gaining long-term revenue and and what the taxpayers don't what everyone blames the school district for taxes it's a it's a joint venture between everybody and without good supervisors planning good uh business districts and support ing them we don't get tax dollars coming in from bigger box stores and things going up you know and I appreciate you all doing that although it is a loss of Revenue it's a gain in the long run and and I support it so and we do appreciate you being here this evening very much so thank you okay U now we're going to vote huh well I sitting next to me now I think us all in favor abstain no okay good thank you for coming

181out for last time thank you for opportunity to businesses and our community Now open up some good stores with that motion to W items a through C in accordance with the recommendations from the finance committee education programs and resources and the properties and Facilities committee A and C are listed there some move second questions all in favor n oppose okay um motion to approve items A and B in accordance with the recommendations from the finance committee and the property and Facilities committee A and B are listed there second questions I just have a comment just in case anyone's wondering because I wondered and I got my answer today uh it says High School North graduation chairs last year High School South graduation chairs W purchas so now North and South both have chairs every year

182we used to rent them and obviously in the long run it's better to have them than to keep renting also got very confusing transferring the rental chairs back and forth um but in case you don't see South that's why it's not there um all in favor I opposed motion to approve the payment of bills and unordered Treasures report listed in this agenda for the 2425 fiscal year we need to back out we're going to table something that from Finance it should be in there um okay isn't isn't that under new business with Finance that's the end this is for the payment not yet that be next so in accordance with Section 687 of the public school code recent directives of Department of Education interpretations made by General second any questions all in favor I opposed

183I okay motion to approve the payment of the following invoices and applications for payment for services rendered motion second okay Rebecca was this something yes we need to back out item 818 for sorry that's myor all favor oppos I motion to approve the request to renew the already established Student Activity funds listed second uh questions all in favor opposed motion to accept the Grant from the pocon mountains United Way for the East rburg are School District summer steamer program in the total amount of 1,700 via donations as follows listed below ppnl UGI and Weiss Market second questions all favs Debbie I'm abstaining okay along with Debbie yes okay we yeah two extenstions Debbie and Rich all in favor I oppos motion to approve the contracts listed for their specific Services rates and effective dates subject

184to the review and recommendations of the solicitor and approval of the administration regarding the items and conditions of any final contract out of them price and cost second questions um 818 is that what we're on all in favor Rebecca I'm on it Rebecca don't worry I'm on it motion to approve I five year beverage agreement with estimated revenue of 8,427 make sure get it in accordance with the recommendation of the finance committee so second and I'd like to make a motion to table this thank you more for some more for more uh more research I've there's some numbers that are I've questioned other board members have questioned and there's some legal uh legal terms that we have to look at further um to see if this is right for our district so I asked to

185be table oh I'm sorry I really shouldn't have done it until you it was so we have to make a motion make motion the table motion do table have a motion to table a second I second the motion second the motion the table we're voting on the motion to table all in favor opposed okay um new business Community there is none en rollan and uh we only need a motion to adjourn motion second thank you thank you to everyone for staying up with us tonight than some of our previous meetings a judgment forward