GASD School Board Meeting - 4.20.26

001All right, good evening everybody. We're going to get things started. Uh, welcome to all of our guests, students, and families in the audience. Looking forward to hearing all about all the school presentations coming up. The purpose of this meeting is to conduct the business of the Gettysburg Area School District. Board of directors meetings and committee meetings are open to the public but are not public meetings. All school district residents who wish to make public comment should sign in prior to the start of the meeting and request to speak during citizens participation. School district residents wishing to speak to the board shall do so only during the citizen participation section of the meeting. Public comment is welcome and all issues will be referred to the appropriate board committee or administrator. Comments will be summarized in the

002official board minutes which will be available by contacting the business office. Please take a moment to silence your cell phones and other electronic devices. And everyone is present in the board except for uh Tim Sigman who's excused this evening. Please rise for a moment uh for the pledge of allegiance. That's what we're doing. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Uh, starting with our notices and communications. Are there any board members who have comments or questions on 31 cash activity summary, 3.2, capital projects fund report, 3.3 year end projections report, 3.4 food service report. Dave, go ahead. >> Uh, on the uh year-end projection, did you get my

003email, Belinda, today? Um yes. Which one are you referring to? The revenue projection for March or >> March if if that if that number is already in? >> Um well we haven't received everything in but to date we've like for March numbers we have received um $3 million and we've expensed 7.5 million for March. >> Okay. from expense but but okay so 7.5 so with the three million coming in and um we had projected of only 7.4 four coming in for the remainder of the months from March, April, May, and June. Do you think with that amount coming in, it might be a projection that you're going to exceed that? We we are anticipated to exceed revenue of about per currently $870,000, but our expenses are currently projected to be a negative of $1.1 million.

004>> Okay. >> For March. >> Mhm. >> Okay. But the revenue uh on the remaining months from March, April, May and June, do you generally keep the same cash flow stream coming through? >> Typically, yes. >> So then so then then basically the projection for months remaining would be more in the tune of 12 million instead of seven. >> Uh I would not say that. So um typically we have a quarter of percent or quarter of um revenue yet to be attained and it won't be $12 million. I can sure of that. >> Okay. >> 10. >> No, I mean we'll need to take a look at March projections on the the forecast five which we did for the board meeting this evening through February. Um but we are projected year end for local revenue

005to be 52.6 million and our budget is 52.5 million. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was saying if if you have 3 million in March and that's about 40% of the 7 million projection for the remaining four months, >> but it's timing of those deposits. It may not always be like it may have been received in February or um April or May the previous year. So >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Just wondering if we're going to find that we're over that. We are going to be slightly over, but we're not going to be over enough to address the deficit that we have due to special education. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions on 31 to 34? >> Okay. Seeing none, we're going to move on to our school presentations. You're kicking things off with

006James Getty's Elementary and Mr. Wells and team. Yes. I love that. I saw a cheer already. We're very excited. Welcome. >> Thank you. It's a pleasure being here tonight. Um I in the past I've presented on various things happening at James Getty's academics or otherwise. And tonight um I think it's uh it's my pleasure to bring with one of one of our staff members. I think we have a tremendous staff at James Gettys down to every single teacher and staff member there tonight. It's a pleasure to have Mrs. Flickinger, our fourth grade um teacher, one of our fourth grade teachers. and she's brought some special guests to really share with you um in more detail some of the things we've talked about in the past. But I want you to hear from the students themselves

007and Mrs. Flickinger. So Mrs. Flickinger, >> hello everybody. Welcome and thank you for having us. So we have a lot of spring initiatives that we've done. So we welcome some of our students to share about those especially many of our initiatives are student driven of course. So they would like to speak about that. First, I have Sarah Pner stepping up. So, she has a little speech to read. Well, don't tell. >> Hello everyone. My name is Sarah. Ready? >> Hello everyone. My my name is Sarah. I wanted to to tell you about the one school one book event we had at James Getty's Elementary. For eight weeks, everyone in our school read the same book. It is called Dog Town. We read it at home with our families and at school with our teachers and

008classroom buddies. It was so much fun to talk about the same story. We did so many cool things we while we read. Each week, we answered trivia questions about the book to see what we remembered. On Fridays, a student from each classroom who got the trivia question correct got to go to the library to enjoy hot chocolate and to read. For each reader cafe, they were there were special guests. People from our school and community came to read and talk with us. Some of them even brought their dogs to visit. Because the book was about shelter animals, we wanted to help. We brought in toys and food for the SPCA. It felt good to help the to help the pets in our community. Our reading project was a big celebration. We learned that reading brings

009people together. We had a lot of fun with this book. I'll say who you are my heart. >> You just want to lift it like that to where you need it. >> My name is Ellie. At the beginning of the of the year, fourth grade completely tore out the overgrown garden with the help of the grounds crew and parents. We we planted flower bulbs to bloom in the spring, which did. And now we just finished planting strawberries, spinach, lettuce, broccoli, and caulifl cauliflower, carrots, and snap peas and raised beds made for us by ACTI students that will be harvested starting by the end of the school year year or early summer by our garden club parents, students, high school environmental club members. We also planted pumpkins that will be ready for us next fall. Each

010month in science in science, all fourth grade students write garden updates. One writing is added to our school newsletter. My writing was chosen for March. For March, the March garden update. Hello families. This month we are back in the garden. We have been watching the daffodils come up cleaning out the weeds and planting. Mrs. Black from the master gardeners came over to our school and did winter sewing. At the end of February, we had to have jugs so we would pick out a plant and plant it in the jugs. We put them outside to get rain and sun. A lot of people wanted to plant blanket flowers. I wanted to pick them because they had a lot of colors and they were really pretty. Later on, we will take them out and plant them in

011the ground. Our school decided to put a rain gauge outside to collect all the rain and when we bring it in, we measure it. Last week, we planted some carrots and some snap peas in the raised beds. Some of my classmates classmates took the lettuce and spinach from our winter sewing milk jugs and transplanted them into the raids beds. The garden has gotten a lot of weeds, so we had to do a lot of weeding. This is what we've been doing in the garden. We can't wait to see what comes up next. Sincerely, yours, Ellie. My name is Rowan and James Getty's Elementary just ended our fourth annual math madness competition. This initiative serves as a key fundraiser for a PTO and community building event that encourages students to master their math facts. The competition

012featured in it an exciting bracket style tournament with each classroom representing a college team. We are thrilled to share that our school not only met but exceeded our fundraising goal of $4,000, raising a total of $5,71321. As a result, as a reward, we traveled to Gettysburg College to enjoy a fun and spirited staff versus students basketball game. During our vid visit, we proudly announced the math tournament wizards. Congratulations to Miss Becker's kindergarten class. Our runner up was Miss Arn's third grade class. We also celebrated academic achievements, recognizing the classrooms with the highest growth in math fact score fact scores, Miss Mrs. Royy's kindergarten and Miss Peterman/M Cooper's fourth grade. Because we surpassed our fundraising goal, we added an extra dose of fun to our assembly. Two teachers were pied. A big thank you to Mr.

013Cool and Miss Becker for being such great sports presentation, but I'm just want I said how proud I am of these students and our staff. You did, boys and girls did a wonderful job. Thank you so much for sharing with the board tonight. Um we are so excited to have the board. I know you're coming out for a tour. some of you are next week and we really want to show you the building, the classrooms, the students and give you a tour and talk more about James Gettys as we're doing that. So, we welcome you out next week and we thank you for having us here tonight. >> Great. Thank you. >> Thank you. Yes, absolutely. Um, thank you, Mrs. Flickinger and the students, uh, Sarah, Ellie, and Rowan for sharing all of those things.

014I love that you're fundraising for the SPCA. That sounds awesome. and the school garden. I can't wait to see it. I think it's going to be beautiful, but also very useful with all those fruits and vegetables in there. Um, and man, math madness sounds like a lot of fun, especially going and playing basketball after doing all of that math at the college. Um, I'm glad that you were able to do those things and share them with us. Uh, Donna, Mrs. Harrison would like to share something. >> I just wanted to say to Sarah, Ellie, and um, Sarah, Sarah, Ellie, and Rowan, you guys have a lot of nerve to get up here in front of a whole room of adults and speak. and you did an excellent job. But I'm very proud of all the

015work you do at James Getty's. I'm especially excited about that courtyard. That's been a long time coming and thank you for taking care of that. Well done. >> Thank you. Um >> Mr. Mr. Wells, is it true that um uh kids get their smarts and good looks from their grandparents? Is that is a >> I've heard that's true. Thank you to our James Gettys Elementary team. Um, and we're going to move on to our middle school presentation. So, um, welcoming Mrs. Kaywood and whomever Mrs. Kwood has brought with her. Thank you. >> Okay. Hello. Good evening. I'm Christy Kwood. I'm the principal and I have with me um, >> Mr. Lob um, the assistant principal. >> Okay. and uh we just wanted to share a little bit about um how we celebrate and practice the

016warrior way at the middle school. Um you know, one of the first things is being here. 80% is just showing up. You know, that's how successful you can be. Um so some of the things we do, we give a positive attendance award each quarter uh at our quarterly awards assembly. And basically, if you have only zero to one unexcused absence, so maybe one day you woke up late to school, um that's okay. we'll give you one freebie. Um, but we partnered with Mr. G's Ice Cream and we give out certificates for all the kids who were able to do that for the quarter. Um, so that has been very positive this year as one of our initiatives. Uh, for our PBIS quarterly reward um, for each team, we do have an attendance goal then as

017well. So, you have to have positive attendance in order to participate in that quarterly reward. And we do have random just be here drawings where I'll just ask my secretaries pick three random kids, one from each grade, and then they get Mr. G's coupons for the day. So, it's been really nice to partner with them and um promote uh positive attendance at the middle school. And there we go. Um another part is being involved. A lot of times, you know, as parents, you see your kids and they're always on their computer and they're doing all this work on their computer. Um, but that's not the whole story when it comes to uh life at uh the middle school. There are so many hands-on activities that these kids are involved in. Um, so whether it's, you

018know, experiments in the classroom, they might be on a computer, but they're doing something really cool like designing a Lego guy and then printing him out on a 3D printer and really getting and that's sixth grade. So just doing some really cool activities um and hands-on things. We we do have we had a fall play. We had our spring musical a few weeks ago. So if you got to see any of those things, our kids are very much involved in so many different activities. Hi, good evening. Hope I speak half as well as those elementary students did. Um so our next characteristic of the warrior way is to be committed. Um being committed at GAMS means caring about your education. We celebrate our students accomplishments uh through quarterly awards assemblies where we give out certificates

019to students who have made the honor role and the distinguished honor role. Um we had the Gettysburg College men's basketball team come in and hold a program for eighth graders called in it to win it and it's focused on working hard and striving for your goals. Uh so the kids really enjoyed that. Um, we have afterchool tutoring program every Tuesday and Thursday for any student who wants to spend some extra time at the at the building, get some more work completed and we provide transportation for that. So, that's an awesome program. We have teachers there available and I go and check it out every once in a while and it's it's great. The kids are helping each other um you know, helping each other get through their work. So, uh that's a great program. Um,

020and we also had incentive days for students who had zero missing assignments during the first and third quarters. And our last aspect of the Warrior Way is be kind. Okay. During those quarterly awards assemblies, we also have Warrior Way awards winners and students of the term. These are chosen by their teachers and their own classmates uh with a focus on being kind to others and doing the right thing. Sixth and seventh grade students participated in Warriorway character lessons. These were focused on things like mindset, respect, empathy, and of course kindness. Uh, and our eighth graders got back to doing service learning projects this year, um, which connect those students with the community. And we have some special guests here to tell us some more about that. >> Yeah. I keep hi. Uh, thanks for having

021me. I'm Oliver Griev, an eighth grader at the Gettysburg Area Middle School. for service learning. I had the opportunity to walk to Lincoln from the middle school to read to the first graders. From the first time we met with them, we were paired with a partner who we stayed with for every gathering. Each time, the first graders selected a book for us to read together, and we were given different tasks such as worksheets to complete with them. I personally really enjoyed getting to know my partner and found it beneficial to do something other than traditional classwork during the school day. I remember working with third grade buddies when I was in kindergarten and looked forward to it every time. I believe that the first graders enjoyed it just as much as I did. My only

022complaint is that we didn't get to do it more often. Thank you. >> Hello, I'm Zach. I'm Jack. For our service learning project, we chose to help the sixth graders learn more about the warrior way and in the process learn how to be a leader in our school. This benefited us and the younger students. For the sixth graders, we taught them what it meant to be a warrior. Our lessons focused on concepts like integrity, showing respect, making good decisions, feeling empathy, and having a positive attitude. For us, teaching these younger students taught us how to lead the classroom, be responsible for ourselves and others, and how to communicate with others in our team. For each lesson, we had to be a role model for the younger students, and be a leader throughout the lesson. If

023we were focused and attentive, the students would, for the most part, follow our lead. Sometimes we would have to ask a student to pay attention. This helped us learn how to confront people who are doing the wrong thing, even though it can be difficult. We now have more confidence and can call out our friends or classmates when they aren't doing the right thing. The lesson plan will often consist of a slideshow, the activity for the day, and any papers we had to hang out, hang out, hand out. We had to make sure that we were constantly prepared and knew what we were doing. If we forgot something or made a mistake, we have to own up and admit we weren't prepared, thus showing responsibility. We also had to communicate with each other to make sure

024we knew what we were doing and who was teaching what part. We also had to answer any questions that the students had. And on the flip side of that, we had to get the students to answer questions we might ask. Overall, the whole experience is a great learning opportunity and taught us how to be responsible role models and live the warrior way. I hope these lessons will continue and help teach both the younger and the older students how to live the warrior way. Thanks for your time. So again, the the uh eighth grade service learning projects are something we've we've brought back this year after a long hiatus away. Um but there are other things that really connect us to the community as well. Um you know they were uh doing some things with um

025Meals on Wheels, uh Adams County Library, Strawberry Hill. Um the two America 250 uh was we have a group of students researching different soldiers um and writing some narratives that will be um on display in the National Cemetery this summer. Uh and lots of different ideas and different things we're doing. they painted a mural in our building um just about you know um being the nice kid at school. So we're really proud of them and this is something we are looking forward to continuing. So thank you. >> Great. Thank you so much to uh Mrs. Kwood and Mr. uh Loe and the students who came in. Um I'll say a couple things and I know other people want to. Uh, Oliver, I also had a third grade reading buddy when I was in school. And

026when you were talking about it before you mentioned that, it made me think of that. And I love that you had so much fun with that going back down to the elementary school as a middle schooler. Hopefully other uh other students next year will will continue that and like to do that just the same way. I'm sure your first grade uh first grade buddy was was loving that that connection, too. Um, Zach and Jack, it sounds like you're ready to be teachers, right? You just got training on the ground training and all the things you're saying, I'm sitting there nodding and going, "Yes, yes, good, good lessons." Right? Um, so that's wonderful. And, you know, in another couple years, if you uh if you want to want to enter that field in some way, uh,

027keep keep doing those things and providing uh that support to your peers. Thanks for sharing it, >> Al. Yep. >> Thank you, President Alice. Uh just a quick uh remark uh in addition to what was mentioned here. I just want to commend uh the middle school for the great job that you all do and I'm not sure of all the details with this, but the kids that are coming from three elementary schools into sixth grade as one. Uh I would just say what I've noticed from my grandson and a lot of his friends and so on, just how well they acclimate. And I know that doesn't happen by accident. So the counselors, the the pupil personnel people, the the leaders there, the teachers, uh you all do a great job in helping them make that

028transition and I just want to say thank you for your efforts. >> And I just want to say to the three gentlemen, congratulations. You also did a great job. Um but to the middle school, it's so exciting to see that that community project, that connection has come back. That is so important in our community. and the fact that you're taking advantage of an elementary building right across the street is awesome. So, thank you. >> Great. Thank you so much from the middle school team. Our last school presentation of the evening is the high school. So, Mr. Lusk is uh providing that update. >> Good evening everyone. >> Uh Mrs. Gman here with me as well. Uh I'm going to guide you through a set of slides um as soon as >> you >> Oh, I

029can click. You have to move it up another thing. >> Where are we at? >> Yep. >> We're on it. So, we considered as as much as we have happening at the high school, um some specific program updates, uh but it's hard to pick and choose which program to highlight. So last week um we cut an pulled plan B and said um we gave an all call to our to our staff and said report to us on the numbers by numbers what's happening mostly like right now. So a lot of what you're going to see is um a sampling. It's truly a sampling. It's not meant to be a comprehensive report because again it's difficult to share it all. So, this is truly a sampling and for those that get left out of that sampling,

030I'm sorry. Um, pay attention to social media, pay attention to newsletters, pay attention to the conversations that flow through the community about all the amazing things that happen at the high school. This is literally just a sampling by the numbers and intentionally I'm going to try to zoom through it because there are over 30 slides. Um, so we'll start here. Right now, this is current enrollment this month, first of the month. We're in April, uh, still, I'm pretty sure, 954 students, 57 cyber students. On top of those 954 in the building, we did lose 23 early graduates um, back in January. Um, that's where things stand right now. Um, if you didn't see it on social media, something worth celebrating, we had three National Merit Scholarship finalists. That is exceptional. Not every year do we

031have any. Um, so having three in one year is is just phenomenal. If you didn't see it, um, you know, there you have it. Um, at the very top of the top in terms of exceptional um, scholarship in in the country. Um, you should know that we have four students um, that will begin the process of potentially becoming a semi- finalist or maybe even a finalist next year. So, we have four students uh, at the beginning of that that process. um looking into uh next year. So, this is um this is something new. Um for the first time ever at at Gettysburg Area High School, we we had a mock trial team. Um the team was pretty successful um even in their first year. They had four trials and two wins, but a great experience

032for for those students um in a court-like atmosphere. Um so, that's exciting and again just the beginning of that teamwork. Um we have a speech and debate team that is not new. Uh we have 17 competitors from the school. Uh seven semi-finalists at the state level. We had two fourth place winners. And if you didn't know, we had a state champion debater, Claire Jurnney. Um I have to shout her out by name because being a state champion is is being a state champion. So uh that's incredible. Um update on speech and debate. Um, new last year, we call our National English Honor Society the LC Singhmaster Society, and one of their chapter focuses is peer writing assistance. And any student can um put in to schedule an appointment with our team of honor society students,

033and they have served 111 at this point. um current update, one-on-one appointments. They coach them through um as it says, scholarship essays, lab reports, ACTI applications, um your everyday research essays. Um they're there to help and and they've done that all year long and will continue until the finish line. They also um work with staff members for writing center um popup writing center workshops um doing much of the same and they've uh they've had 43 students attend those pop-up workshops. Um so good work there. Reading is not the the most favorite thing for uh any person, let alone high school learner. Uh and especially if you're not good at it. Um we we have reading classes at the high school that that are designed to provide interventions for those who need it and a celebration

034of that success. Um 160 books read independently by struggling readers in that intervention class this year. So 18 would be the average number of books read independently per student in reading strategies course this year. So, for a struggling reader to on average tackle 18 books on their own, um we're celebrating. We have a homework hub. We used to call it tutoring. Um it's not just tutoring. It it's for all types of things. There is tutoring that happens in the homework hub, but sometimes it's just time and space to do homework. We've had 179 students um participate in that over the course of the year. Um that happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We're fortunate to be in a place where we provide transportation home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's a solid investment by the district. Um

035we staff that with a a couple professionals, but also students like those from the LC Sing Master Society and and it's helpful for a lot of students. Um just thinking about resources and and what happens in a place like the high school library. Uh we have books, students still read books. Um there's also high usage in terms of some of the uh databases that we that we buy into. Again, thinking about resource allocation. So if you look at the number of searches for students in this is your your general high school database, EPCO. Um and it's deep. We partner with Howard Library to save thousands of dollars to offer that to our students. Um that's not new. What is new is JStore. um that's a college level um database and and we purchased that starting

036in January of this year mostly to support our um AP seminar students who do a whole lot of that and need the most credible resources that are peer- reviewviewed and such uh to go to. So that's been a a valued resource for that class specifically, but uh but all students in high school, 70 students um actively involved in math club. Uh 47 students in the National Math Honor Society. Thanks, Mr. God, for that update. Um this is exciting when it when it comes to student travel. This is this is relatively recent. Um the students in the American Exchange Project found out where they are going this summer. Um so 11 of our students are going to be traveling all over the country. There's a list of states that they will travel to and um and

037then we will have 12 students from around the country visiting our community, staying with families in our community and and that's it's an exchange. Um as you can see, it costs 0 for our students. Um, it's an incredible experience just to get them out and about and uh and traveling and and exchanging um in our great country. We have seven students traveling this summer through the first stamp organization. Uh that's an organization that used to um target sophomore females for worldwide travel. this year for the first year ever um they've decided you know what we we'd also like to encourage male students to travel as well and and we are going to fund that fully. So we have seven students uh from our high school this summer who will travel abroad to Europe um fully

038funded through the first stamp organization which is incredible. We also had students traveling um through our school um both the Spanish class and French class traveled um as it says March into April just using their their skills, their language skills in an authentic setting um learning all kinds of incredible things. So we had 23 students travel um on the Spain trip. They also ventured into Morocco, which I hear was an adventure that included camels. And um we had nine students on our French trip, you know, traveling from all places, you know, from from Paris to Normandy, again, practicing their French skills and you immersing themselves in French culture. Um just experiences that are incredibly valued for our students, especially as they come back to the building and and share JRTC. Um sometime we'll invite them

039to to provide a specific specific update to you. um they they continue to do incredible work. It's not a pipeline to the military military. It's it's a leadership class, a team building class um really aimed at at bettering our citizenship. Um they for the first time again by the numbers hosted a Raider challenge event um where five teams came to our school back in October. They're going to host another one in May. Um they have a brand new obstacle course that they've been working on collaboratively with building trades and some other students. um that's out back. It's also important to note that they uh involved themselves in service around the community. Um 200 combined hours at the Gettysburg National Military Park um just recently. Roose Harvest um a great community um resource making sure that

040students who uh need need to be fed are fed and and then we have groups that are contributing to that effort um helping Mr. Way Brandt um get food out to those who need it most. So JRTC, golf, girls soccer, boys soccer, football, student council, key club, FFA, and wrestling all contributed to the Ruth Harvest effort this year, which is awesome. We had two students make all state uh in terms of music ensembles. Uh Maria Royer is is a state level alto too and Logan Schwarz state level on the French horn. Incredible. in the uh career and technical education realm. Um FBLA has been busy. They were just at uh states in Hershey. They had 43 students participate in that and uh one student qualified for nationals. Um those students in FBLA uh or in

041the business realm are are working on all types of things. Uh Microsoft Office certifications. We have 20 students um this year that earned Microsoft Office um credentials and 12 students are working on their bookkeeping skills through QuickBooks. So, picking up industry certifications and doing their thing in in the business world. Uh in agriculture, we had 27 students compete at uh different area level events. Um, three of those students went on to regionals in public speaking events and 21 students, as I said, went to uh leadership conferences this year. Um, they're picking up OSHA searcherts as as it says they're working on um dairy leaders of tomorrow certifications and and more. Um, I think we have four students who will be taking end of year exams for seniors um this week and next week in agriculture.

042um in the area of engineering and communications, our our TSA group just went to states um which we'll get to in a second. That starts at the regional level. 28 students went competed at the regional level. We had several first place finishes biotechnology, forensic science, music production, and materials processing. And then at the state level, we had a first place finish in robotics. So, um, Noah Pucket and Ryan Rutesil should be commended. And, and I had to ask a teachers, wait, they finished first at states, but they didn't at regionals. Correct. They lost to the defending champions at regionals, but at states, they won. So, two more state champions. Um, Noah and Ryan, congrats to them. Um we had 11 students different students um earn top 10 finishes at the state level. So that's commendable

043again in uh in engineering communications. They're working on OSHA searchs snap-on multimedia certifications. We have 12 students taking the knockdown next in engineering and nine in uh communications. So great work there. We're getting there. Um they're out and about in the community. 11 of them um in communications participated in broadcast now. I believe Mrs. Gman went along to that. She said it was an amazing experience and uh six attended the PA broadcasters banquet uh with a hall of fame um assortment of inductees and again getting out into the real world um in areas that uh fit their passions and strengths. FCCLA uh we had 22 members this year. Um this explains a little bit of the history of that club which is relatively new and um three members attended a star event um recently at

044a state leadership conference and uh earned a silver medal in a spot on the PA national team um for this year which is which is awesome. Um FCCLA as well. just a quick snippet on on the athletic front just because they finished up their seasons not too long ago and and it's worth sharing that yes, we're still doing sports. So, uh as we wrapped up the winter season and now we're in the thick of spring, um looking back a little bit, 34 student athletes um doing their thing in the pool, 15 swimmers qualified for mid pens, eight swimmers qualified for the district 3 championship, and three will swim at the college level, which is uh which is outstanding. On the wrestling front, I mean, it's it's worth noting that we just won our third district

045three team title in in a row, fifth since 20120. We sent eight boys to states and three girls to states. That's a number that we've never seen before. Uh we have several medalists at the bottom, five to be exact, u from that crew. So, uh it's just more of the same awesomeness in in regard to that. Rounding it out here, uh signing day. So, we do have 22 at this point seniors who uh plan to continue competing athletically at the collegiate level and signing day is on May 27th in the morning. If you care to join at Warrior Stadium, we look forward to that. Counseling Center, um it's just busy, busy, busy. AB AB ASVAB testing um PSAT testing. We um had a full day um just last week or the week before 101 students

046took the SATs. Looking way back, we took our entire sophomore class to Gettysburg College for a career fair. Just this past Friday, our entire junior class participated in an incredible event through Junior Achievement. We had 35 volunteers from the community come in and and help our staff and the JA team put together a full day of um how to how to interview well um how to create a a personal budget um everything that matters in real life financially for these students. Uh it was an incredible day, well organized. Kids responded really well. I'll send you some more on that um school board because it's it's something that you need to see more of. It was it was a great day, but it took a whole lot of work from our team. Um 193 students took

047college and high school courses this year. Also worth noting 4,000 visits to the counseling center this year. Worth noting, we had 60 over 60 new students. It takes a team of warrior ambassadors and staff members to make sure that they fit in well. Um 109 students applied to college through the common app. 101 additional requests for transcripts for our seniors from colleges. So, they're working on the next step. We have folks coming coming in to do career talks and we're thankful that community members want to come in and speak to our students. Eight local businesses came in um and spoke to our hack class, hack introduction to business course. Um we have three local health professionals speaking about their careers in the health fields and we've had six guest speakers of of different types um

048a broad spectum spectrum of uh representatives from the local community uh talking to talking to students about work. Um so we continue to expand our offerings there. Looking ahead at May, we do advanced placement courses um to the tune of 194 students enrolled in AP courses. 108 students taking multiple AP exams totaling in 377 exams to be taken in in May. So that's that's coming soon. 17 different courses that we offer at the high school um equals a lot of exams. We have freshmen involved in that. 20 of them to be exact. Um so it's it's fresh freshman through seniors and that looks like this comparatively. Um 194 students, 377 exams. In the past 5 years, we've never had that many exams offered in the school. So um a strong program that that continues to

049be uh you know even stronger with each passing year. It seems we have 20 students coming up at the end of the month that are going to take a test for the PA seal of biiteracy. So they need to uh prove their proficiency through reading, writing, listening and speaking on on a test and they also need to pass the Keystone exam in literature with a with a score of proficient to prove that they are biiterate. And we have 20 students who are going to test their skills at the end of the month in German, French, but mostly Spanish. And we're about to get to the end of the year Keystone exams. We have 435 exams to uh facilitate on May 19 and 20 um in those areas. takes a whole lot of effort and teamwork

050to make sure that that gets done and and done well because it's important for those end of course exams and and those students taking those tests and for us as a school. We got there that is truly just a sample. Um it's it's a busy world. Um, but it's important to kind of take it all in sometimes and recognize that it's a lot. Um, I had the numbers of how many staff members it takes. Um, I didn't present them because that's just 33 slides in instead of 32, but I can tell you it takes an incredible team to do just that because again, that's just a recent update and it's really just a sample. So, thanks for bearing with me. Um, lots of numbers there. That was the point. if you have any questions on

051that some other time probably. But thanks for listening. >> Thank you uh Mr. Lusk and Mrs. Gman. Yeah, I I think it's really neat to see all those things. I feel like it was a whole a whole year in really rapid review. Um which just demonstrates all of the all of the great things happening there. A big congratulations to any students who are involved in those things and all the people who are impacted by it. And to your team point, um, what a wonderful group of teachers and administrators kind of leading the charge there, right? It's it's great to have all those opportunities for our students. I can't pick one thing to comment on. I was having these moments of going, yeah, I have some things I'm going to >> and some of that's all

052year long. Some of those things center visits, you know, most of it's like the last month or two. >> I was going to say busy couple of months over there at the high school for sure. Thank you for your work with that team. Okay. Uh at this point we are going to be moving on to important but maybe slightly less uh exciting things. Thank you to the families and students who came uh to present tonight and hear all about the wonderful things happening in our schools. Unless you would like to stay for the budget presentation, you're more than welcome to uh head out for your evening. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to our uh 3.8, the budget update. Uh Melinda, take it away. Yeah, good evening. Um, so we're going to go

053through a quick timeline update for the budget. So, uh, obviously you'll see this evening we are on for adoption is the approval of the proposed final. Um, this action requires a minimum of 30 days to be on display. I'd like to state this is not the final budget. This is a process to meet act one timeline. So, just wanted to reiterate that. And then of course followed by that we'll have our May 4th public hearing a board meeting and then May 18th the budget review before we actually have some final um things to address with the final budget approval. So as presented at the last meeting why the budget changed in of itself. This is a reiteration uh the previous meeting of exactly uh two social workers to uh remove the family navigators. the what

054is the main driving force of this budget is a special education um comprehensive plan and the needs and the changes of special education simply because of more services that the district is providing rather than the LU uh in areas of autistic support life skills learning support they're all required all part of the plan and our goal this year in the budget is to have an additional special education supervisor we currently have one our goal is to have one elementary and one secondary So that's why that is a part of the plan. And then of course our technology department a classified position has been requested during the during the process uh simply because to help overall uh the infrastructure with the PIMS um help desk and building supports. Again the budgeting addresses the contractual increases through

055the approved contract which includes the salary benefits of piecers service contracts transportation increases hardware software and some cameras. And this budget also represents third year of the ACTI's plan um for uh their um um loan documentations and so forth to move forward um with their proposed plans. And then of course the budget is the cost of inflation in of itself. So last meeting I shared with you where we currently stand and tonight I'm indicating that we did have some additional expenses changed to the budget. As I mentioned before, it's a continual change to the budget up to the very final. Um, so what changed? Well, we received our first quote back from our property casualty and vehicle insurance package. Again, we're facing a a continuous increase. working with the broker to try to get that

056package down and to have other ratings. Uh simply because we've experienced quite a demand in our insurance uh simply because um a few years ago we had a uh roof replacement captured at the high school when the storm came through blew off the roof. It was quite a claim that we had through insurance, but in that time the insurance provider indicated they didn't no longer want to service the district. So we had to go with another provider and we experienced more than 50% claims increase in just one year. So um over the three four year period now we've continually seen increases. So again um I have already received the rate potential increase but I'm also working with the broker to try to get that down. Another area that we were just informed is the substitute

057teacher service. This uh address this program which is a contracted service addresses our substitute service for all the teachers in the district. And we were notified obviously in looking at the budget that we weren't quite hitting the mark on what the budget had compared to what we were expensing. Um as well as the superintendents got together and increased the rate from 125 to 135. So not only is the demand increased but the rate is increasing for next year. So we had to open up and add additional cost to the budget. One of the items in as additional change not a lot but um a change is expected with PSBA board docs. I'm not sure whether any of the members are aware or know that PSBA's backbone to uh board docs is no longer being supported.

058So um we are we are investigating another opportunity which is called agenda manager and um more opportunities with the company um availability at a less of a cost but the first year implementation usually is what you need to address. Um so it's expected that we'll be using um changing from board docs which is diligent to agenda manager. More to come on that of obviously when we do do make the transition it'll be some board training, staff training um and just how to conduct the meetings moving forward with this new platform. Um the proposed adoption again for this evening, your vote is on display. Uh I have documents and so forth that'll be on public display. It is assuming a max index of 4.2%. Why is that 4.2%? because it's far better to show a proposed

059budget at the maximum index knowing that you can't go any further. Um knowing that you can always come down from that point but you setting it low and going high usually has more constonnation over over it to period to begin with. So your budget this evening taking action is assuming that it's a 4.2% index. Now I will state again that is not the final budget. So it's not like we're going to set 4.2% 2% index in mills as we move forward. Um but there's the additional expense change. It was approximately what you see there. It was about $330 some,000 change increase in expenditures. Next slide. So with that um you'll see that uh this summary has changed from the previous um postings of of the budget. Uh why I like to mention you know our

060beginning fund balance um is 4.73. I'm going to jump to the bottom quickly is to say by policy we require a 6% unassigned fund balance anywhere from minimum of six to 8%. Many years ago we were running at 8% within the last five years we've been running at 6% and we have been spending down the fund balance. So, as you can see the 1% um column here, the unreconciled gap without adding any other proposed uh commitments or unassigned funds or assigned funds um we have a gap of $2.1 million between revenue and expenditures. 3.5% is $1.1 million and 4.2% is just under a million. So um as our budget is being prepared, we propose to you a use of piecers um which is a calculation of the piecers rate that's increased. Um so we're proposing

061a $272,590 of the commitment of piecers and I'll explain that on the next slide. Um but again then obviously the assigned use of capital projects money. Um we're proposing at this point 948,000 to bring down the gap um of what we're really truly looking for is 1.2 million if 1% I'm not quite sure we could get that particular point. We need to address a tax increase. Just to what degree is the question. So at 3.5% we're looking at 22,239 still yet to find. And at 4.2% 2%. While it indicates a positive $31,61, I'd like to state that the 4.7 mills beginning fund balance is not if it's projected to the end of the year, it is not at 6%. So therefore, the 301 600 $601 is actually needing to be added to the fund balance

062because fund balance 6% is of expenditures. So as expenditures change, 6% is what's required to remain an unassigned found fund balance. So if we were at 4.7, we need to get $5 million. So the 301,000 is the plug to get to the unassigned fund balance polic as per policy. Next slide. So as I mentioned before, we had a review of the balance sheet. So um in the previous slide, I mentioned that we want to use some of the piecers committed funds. you'll see it circled there. Currently at the end of the June, we had just a little over $3 million. The goal is to use a fraction of that um simply to address the increase in Pacers rate um for next year. Likewise, uh some of the assigned funds in the capital improvements that capital

063reserve assignment is sitting at 1.2 2 million and the previous slide we indicated we probably use or proposed to use 948,000 of that to help um offset the budget. Next slide. So here's the revenue summary. Most of you um that have served on the board is this is very familiar. Um this is typically you'll see this format on our website. Um this represents the summary view of local, state, and federal sources. There's the 2024 actual, the 2526 budget which included a 1% which is strictly to acti and then the proposals there are 1% 3.5% and 4.2%. Um so you can see um across there as as well as the piecers committed and the unassigned funds excuse me the assigned funds of capital projects. Next slide. Here's our expenditures. So, what I'd like to point out

064to here in the 2425 school year, u we actually had a decrease in our unassigned fund balance of $229,28. Instead of adding to the fund balance, we had a decrease. Our current snapshot for the budget when we started planning for 2526 said that we would use $1.6 million of fund on a sun fund balance. And we actually have that number listed in the balance sheet if you'll recall a few slides before. So what we did when we prepared the budget is we said this is our demand to use unassigned fund balance and we set those funds assigned for a specific purpose. in your documents this evening on the board on the financial report. I'd like to point out that um the uh one report that's listed in there that looks similar to this if you

065recall we said that we' be using 1.6 million of unassigned fund balance. The projection is unfavorable for the end of the year and as it stands currently it shows that we would use 1.4 million. So we are sort of on target to utilize all those funds. I don't anticipate um receiving less um and those two areas are or especially the four 300 series and the 500 series directly relates to special education and other outside services. So um I like to mention that simply because it this the whole budget predicates on we're not going to be able to use on a sunf fun balance moving forward. And then of course the 2627 budget you'll see the salaries and benefits uh there listed you'll have um our purchase of professional services typically that's all um LU services

066outside services 400 is property services um other purchases service charter schools transportation supplies include classroom supplies and any technology related as well as uh consumable text and text books um property and equipment is listed there. Um, our other objects and other financing sources are our debt, principal, interest, our ACTI funding as well as some contingency for budgetary reserve. Um, so our total expenses are projected next year um with those changes noted a little earlier of $83.4 million. Next slide. This is just a visual of the revenue in a summary format that I've talked about a little bit before. Um, as you can see, they're relatively consistent except for the federal revenue, of course. Um, but, uh, we are still planning on and hoping that we receive the federal funds. Uh, that would obviously be a

067big change to the budget if and it comes out that we would not be receiving federal funds. But again, this is the summary of the revenue. And the next slide shows a little bit more detail. Again, all of this while it was in the board docs information, this will be presented on the website later um this evening. So, the public can will be able to see all of this information as well. Here is the revenue detail showing the current real estate as proposed there. Um and um all the earned income, the most major categories of local revenue. And there's the state categories. The major categories of state revenue as you can see is basic ed, special education, transportation, pacers um share and social security share. And then everything else that falls into state revenue would

068fall into the line below. And then of course there's the the federal revenue. That's all title one, two, three, and four. There's no other title funds associated with it. So our total revenues are $82.5 million. Next slide. Uh this is just the snapshot of expenditures in a graph format along with the next slide of a little bit more detail. These these four slides in a row were shared previously. They just been updated with the change of the information is all that is. So uh you can see the majority of majority of our increases lie in uh purchase services as well as salary and benefits which we're service industry for education. So largest number of our budget is salaries and benefits and of course then there's our debt service as well. Um all of our debt

069is on wraparound schedules. So, you know, our schedules, mort schedules that are prepared, uh, we know exactly what is coming due for the loans that we have. Um, and nothing is anticipated to drop off anytime soon. Uh, while we are anticipating increases for ACTI, um, once that materializes, we'll be able to update our schedules accordingly. Um, next slide. One of the questions before I believe one of the other meetings is what does the actual tax millillage impact to our average homestead average parcel excuse me. I'm preparing these numbers this evening with the help of Mr. Forom. But I also like to share that the average the market assessed value average home is $280,319. These numbers that are presented here are very similar to previous year. the homestead farmstead numbers are not in this number. So

070this is an estimate understanding that this is the proposed new tax um associated with the average parcel. If it's 3.5% increase it's 112,000 excuse me not 112,000 $112. Um and for a 4.2% increase it would be um $135. Now that would be a year that's not a month. So, of course, if you divide that by 12, they'll show the actual increase per month basis um to assume either a 3.5 or 4.2%. Once our homestead farmstead numbers are available, uh the likeliness that our second meeting in May, we'll have those numbers updated that we can share what the the true net value of increase is in any of those options. Next slide. One of the questions that came up previously, I believe, by Mr. sites was how much how much dollars were necessarily left on the

071table um from not raising taxes in the past. I believe if I'm not correct in that Mr. Sites you can you can correct me if you like. Um so the next three slides are going to represent what the actual district did versus what occurred like so for instance the act one index since 2223 is the red block. So you can see act one is 4 48 I think 62 48 and 6 42 act one index is set by the state it's certified every year factors that go into that this is the state saying that districts you are permitted to go to the index not above you can go below but you are permitted to raise taxes to the index every year now Are boards prepared and wanting to do that every year? No, we haven't.

072As well, we've been pretty good about um getting a tax increase necessary to adjust and to balance the budget. This is showing where Gazdy fell in into the tax increase world. So, in for example, in 2223, we had a 4% act one, we had 1.38% increase. The following year, we had a 0% tax increase. the third year 2425 really is a 0% increase in terms of of actual um cost of inflation because we associated our 1% increase specifically to ACTI. Likewise for the 20 um 5 26 year for 1% tax increase went to ACI. So the general operations and increases in the the needs of the district was 0% when you when you're addressing it that way. Um and like while the 26 27 graph there shows 4.2% our proposed final is 4.2% but that

073is again not final. This is just a a repres representation of that. Um and down below you can see a little bit more detail as to what years uh there was no tax increase. So it goes past uh previously before 22 23 year. Next slide. Uh one of the questions came up on one of the things when I came to the district doc Dr. Parin was you if we just address 1% taxes per year um we would be in a in a pretty good position. So this slide represents what the sup previous superintendent because obviously we have a new superintendent since then and we haven't set those parameters just yet in place. Uh but um the previous superintendent said if we just do act one. So this slide represents if we did um what it

074would look like for just uh 1% increase for those years assuming that the years for ACTI we would do 2% simply because 1% would have been for operations and 1% would have been for ACTI since 1819 just the difference between act one and that 1% was $6.2 million left off the table. So again you know you can easily you know provide numbers but the the one that is really foretelling is the very next slide. So if we compare just since 2223 I'm not going back in the past years I'm only preparing since 2223. If the act one index compared to uh cumulative compared to what we have left on the table is $22.1 million. Now there is no possible way that we can ever recoup those dollars. Those dollars are way gone. We deal with

075act one index. We cannot increase taxes above act one. The only possible way is and a district has been successful in the state is when they were going through um a renovation project that they needed additional mills on top of what they could actually do for act one. Um that causes voter voter excuse me voter referendum. You have to go to the voters to increase a tax increase over um the index and that is not something warmly received. you you have to have a set community endorsement to have that type of of action to be performed. Um so and this and this is not a result of the previous board what they did or didn't do. This is going back to like you know this has been a pretty good history here. We've been very

076um cognizant of the taxpayers and uh what the taxpayers are uh are capable of. We've we've listened and heard over the years um about increasing taxes, but this is just a representation. You were the district was permitted by the school board to raise to the index. And so when we actually calculated the numbers out, what did that index look for us? If if I'm not saying this is going back and if a would a could a would have type of situation. If going back and we could have estimated that we would have had $22 million that could have funded our next project at James Getty and Gettys and Lincoln. We wouldn't have had to borrow money if we would have been raising to what the state says that we could have done. So that is

077that type of situation um that you know things you think about after the fact but it's just here's you know where we are where we are at and just to provide you the numbers as to what occurred. Next slide. So where do we go from here? So we prepared a budget for you um you know changes to the budget and so we have some options and it basically evolves around the capital improvement projects plan. Historically, we presented a budget that has $1 million set aside for capital projects, which is the five-year capital plan. Um, our history has been we take the five-year average of that capital projects plan and that's what we put in the general fund budget is what our history. Now, that has been historically an area to impose cuts over the time

078period. like we dropped the plan. We determine what is truly needed a kind of a you know in speaking to Mrs. Prattz like is this a need or a want. So we we examine this capital improvement plan every every year it gets examined even though you prove a five-year plan every year it's looked at. So the capital improvement plan while we have a budget of 1 million the plan itself calls for $660,822 for 2627. So we have approximately $400,000. We can change the budget if we want to stick with everything in the plan for 2627 school year. So that's an option. We also have to defer future projects. You know, reducing the following items um which would reduce the demand to four just underneath $500,000. Those four areas are listed there. It would be the

079LED signs at admin, the LED signs at the high school, the uh Trazo flooring, and then the stadium grill and hood as at the stadium's concessions. Those were items that were brought up through our uh facility planning meetings um as well as our first meetings of the month that since our new structure, but those are areas that um we could probably defer. Not saying that they're not important, but we could probably defer them uh another year and and change it to the second, third, or fourth year. Um, but the point here is really is we can still work around with this capital improvement plan. One, maybe not use all of the capital projects money of, you know, what we had set aside of 1.2 million because once that money is used, it is gone. There's

080no replenishing that money. It's used to address these areas. So while we prepared slides for the budget of using 948 222, this is an area again that can be addressed, can be changed, can be reduced um to try to minimize that tax increase as we come to the final options to a two. The next slide is um not yet options 202. We talked a little bit about our policy has been 6 to 8% fund balance um retained and unassignment. Um there's obviously the board's opportunity if they ever want to change policy to reduce something other than 6%. I'm not re necessarily recommending that. I'm saying this is an option for the board to consider. I'm not recommending that simply because when you start taking to the point that you have no unassigned fund amounts to

081use when it comes time for borrowing and there will be a time that we borrow standards and poor Moody's will look at your available assets will look at your financial stability and say well this is the rate that you may or may apply for and you may end up getting downgraded in your rating simply because you proactively went after that unassigned fund balance. So it comes with ramifications once you start changing or not having a fund balance policy in place. So while it's an option for the board, it would need to go through its necessary processes of reviewing policy, having discussions, having it available, it is an option. Um not necessarily saying this is one that I want to recommend simply because it changes the f future fiscal responsibility andor uh the makeup of the

082district. You know, again, there are tax options. You know, our proposed final, which is on for dis for later to adoption, is 4.2. We don't need to go to 4.2 if we're addressing capital projects um andor changing some of the um um assigned funds. Um but we still need need to have 1% designated ACTI. You know, if you remember a few slides before, I indicated that's not going to cover our normal cost of doing business if we just go with 1%. If you were to ask me, I'd make the recommendation no lower than 3 and a half%. Because I think we can come down off 4.2, but I don't think we should go lower than 3 and a half%. That is my that would be my recommendation. Obviously, our superintendent, our assistant superintendent could weigh

083in, but um at least we're looking at there was a few years that we had no tax increase that we probably should building up, especially as we did contract negotiations because now we don't have those necessary funds for the actual um increases to occur. And the runaway train in the room is special education. We are providing more services. We are sending more kids out. We are um evaluating more. Our special education enrollment has increased exponentially and our demand for services has increased as well. So there is no movement really around special education because we have to provide that level of service. There is there's no opportunity to change the budget in terms of special education. And even if we do not have enough in the budget for that, it's going to come at a cost

084later on where it's going to roll into use of fund balance. And of course, then you won't have the fund balance to move forward. So where we go from there, we're going to need some more final decisions on the budget. What does the board want to see? What is the board comfortable with in terms of capital projects? Um do you want to look at fund balance? So we will we will need to hear from you as what the level of comfortability is because as we head towards the propos as the final um our next meeting which is the public hearing and then we have one more meeting which is open discussion really those these things will need to be ironed out between those two meetings because we're set for final adoption on June 1st and

085like to have those decisions talked and discussed and what you're comfortable with before we move into that meeting because that's when we're setting the millillage, the resolutions, all that closes out the budget and we would like to have final documents prepared for that evening's activity and action to occur. So, two really meanings moving forward. It's a lot of information to share. Um, but it was hopeful that at least to give you the options, at least you know where. Now, you may not like those options. You may want to say, "Well, what about this? What about that? Uh, the purpose of the budget is not to address classroom changes, period. To keep classroom operations as intact as possible. So, if there are other areas of the budget that you would like to see changed, please let

086me know. Um, I will provide those numbers. I'm not saying it's going to be received, you know, warmly or nicely. Um, you may say go back to the administration, cut a certain percent. Your overall budget changes, the percent allocation that the board has the wherewithal to change is less than 3%. So 3% of an $83 million budget is not a lot of funds to address. it would cause a lot of deferment of items and then of course it would be what that deferment looks like for the moving forward. Um but if there's anything that I can provide you to help um for your future discussions and decisions, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm open for questions. Thanks Blinda. Um lots of information. Can you reiterate again for me just so that this can help us

087moving into our next meeting bringing um our ideas to the table to discuss that before the 18th full budget review. Um you just ended with saying that of the topics of things that you would like our input on right and our discussion on that one is how we are what we are comfortable with regarding the use of capital reserves uh funds and then you said something else as well but I'm processing a lot of what you said and I forget the second one >> use of the capital funds >> options >> what the capital plan will look like for next year if there's going to be a reduction there in terms of what is to be done for next year's planning phase. If you want to and again, if you want to keep the $1

088million, then the decision needs to be made to use the $1.2 million to help offset the budget um andor a tax increase to address it. >> Okay. Um I I can I know >> and again, thank you. Mr. Dickerson pointed out something. There's no fund balance available to help offset the deficit, >> right? Because of the 6%. >> Correct. >> Yeah. Thank you. Um to the rest of the board, I know we'll we'll have some questions here tonight, but what I will do between after tonight before the next May meeting is just send those things she just said uh so that you can kind of think about it and process questions for it. um that way we can have a more robust conversation on the fourth and then documents can be better prepared for the

08918th um at least in terms of that item. I have one quick question and then I'll I'll open to others. Um earlier on in one of the first slides I think you had said there were some changes from the last presentation to now that resulted if I'm correct in an increase in 330,000 in the budget and I remember the slide of what those things were. So thank you for pointing those out. I guess my question is when you then showed the next slide in terms of balancing that budget with the 1% and the 3.5 and the 4.5 showing the unreconciled gap. Um was there an I think there was an increase in something was the increase coming in in the assigned funds used from the capital project that looks like a bigger number than before.

090>> Yes, it was. So we did not have we did not utilize the assigned funds from capital projects before. So while our budget was increasing $330 some thousand um we we took a look at using some of those funds to help offset the capital project. >> So that would be what it could look like in terms of closing some of that gap if we were comfortable using a larger amount of the capital plan reser uh funds. >> Correct. >> Okay. Thank you. Mhm. >> Questions for Belinda? >> Yeah, you can start with one and then we'll kind of pass it around. >> So, first of all, you're doing the differential between the act one and the actual tax increase to come up with the numbers that were left on the table, so to speak. >>

091Correct. So did you do it with the actual what actual annual increase we actually had on each budget for those years since 2018 which was less than the index and that between what we actually increase taxes to find an actual number that we left on the table because the act is a perception of a number. But if you computed actually what the increase was annually of your budget >> then you could have an actual number for everybody to understand what was left on the table. >> So since 2223 that 22 million was just since that time period. Now I would have to go back act one index >> b that's based on act one >> right. Well that that is our that is our maximum. So we couldn't go before that. >> Yeah but you

092actually had a number of what the budget actually increased which was probably less than act one. that information is going to be a little bit harder to dictate down because act one came into place in 1617 and that was our max, >> right? >> So, um to go back in time to say here was the additional revenue from >> real estate tax increases um growth in property that's going to be a little bit harder to do and to get down exactly as to each and every year that that occurred to find that gap between the act one index. So, I'm using the act one index as my top floor, right? Like I I wouldn't our district would not be able to maximize any other option of a tax increase other than the act one index

093and then the growth itself is its natural growth. Like >> we I couldn't have compared the growth to act one index, >> right? But basically everything is dictated on expenses. That's not a natural growth. That's just what it is. So, so my question is what did our expenses actually go up every year prior to the year previous to figure out what actually percentage it went up versus what we actually increased our taxes. That's just the gap that I'm looking for. Number two, capital improvements. So, we have a 5-year capital improvement uh plan. So basically, if this was run technically as a business from profit and loss, you would curtail all capital improvements that were totally non-essential and just freeze them right now. Secondly, what I anticipate probably is needed is a 5-year plan of taxation,

094not a one-year plan. And I think that's part of the problem is if you don't do a five-year plan and anticipate what it's going to take to get you to the next five years, all you're going to do is rob Peter to pay Paul forever. And that's what we're doing. We're robbing from Pasers, which is retirement money. Correct. >> Pasers is retirement. >> So, is that a defined benefit package? How do how do you take it out of a peasers if it's a defined benefit package? >> So, a few years ago, and just explain. So a few years ago we had um additional assigned money in fund balance. Uh piecers came out and said we're going from 15% to 30% over a period of years. So the board at that time took an amount of

095money and committed those funds with the plan to draw down those funds as the piecers rate climbs to 30%. >> So that's exactly what we do with that fund. >> What is that? If you keep borrowing from that, you're not borrowing from it, you're taking it. Is that eventually going to evaporate? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, there's that problem. >> As far as your unassigned balance, it's really not an unassigned balance because if it's unassigned, you can use it. So, since it's it's basically it's a liquidity ratio that you need for bond rating. It is, but it's also used for the summer months of making payment on our bills, >> but you replenish it to that level once once revenue starts coming in after July 1st. >> Yeah. But it is it's basically a ratio

096that you need to keep for uh bond rating for standards and poor and whoever. >> Dave, I'm going to just just to make sure that we have time for other questions as well. I'm going to ask you to wrap up the first slash handful of first questions and then we'll come back. So, so here's my analogy and and what I am going to charge with the board is is that we need more than just come here May 4th at that meeting to understand what you're going to do. So, we need administrative sessions prior to that and probably not one hour but probably two hours because you're looking at you're continuing just to move it over, move it over, move it over and unless you do a extended period study of figuring out where you're going

097to need to be in five years, you're just going to keep borrowing it from everything and eventually you're going to have nothing. So, that's number one. Number two, I would freeze all capital projects. They're totally non-essential for a year to figure out where you are with those. My my favorite pet peeve is the team room. That is a waste of money that could be used for something else educationally. Secondly is the administrative building that wants to be built here. You may be able to modify that and save half of that cost that could go to something else for for reserve for whatever. You got to freeze your capital projects. you're not going to be able to pay for them because all you're doing is robbing from them and it's never coming back until you figure

098out a five-year plan to figure out where you're headed. Coming up in the next I'll let Belinda speak to part of that and then we can get some other people's questions because I know that they are here. Um the capital project um five-year plan is something that is coming back up on our next meeting uh per some requests um from the board. So, we can definitely begin to talk about that part of it. In terms of a five-year tax plan, um I'm not >> strategic plan for budgetary. >> Sure. Um we can look into what that might look like. I'm not sure that that would look exactly the way that you would like to see uh just based off of the way that our budget office has to or business office rather has to manage

099things throughout that process. Um, I'm I'm going to be honest and say I don't I don't know how that works, but I think we can talk about it and find out uh if that's even possible. Um, a conversation about it is important whether or not we have a a formal plan for it. Um, it's it's always a part of our duty every year to talk about that. That's part of this process right now. Uh, do you want to address one more thing and then we can get some other questions? >> Yeah. as to the 5-year taxation plan. We can propose a five-year plan, a projected 5-year plan, but adoption will never be able to be materialized simply because it's not it is not mandated and not availability through the Department of Education. So, they require

100an annual approval. But a proposed 5-year plan, >> a guideline, >> yes, easily can be done. Again, knowing that some things will change, contracts come up, contracts need renewed, but a five-year guide to guide you is still going to be a a process. It can be done. Um it it is a more lengthier process, so it's not something that can be done from meeting to meeting, but it can be available with the software that we have and we use. And as for the team room in the admin building, I just want to remind like we have while I understand what you're saying about deferring it, we have capital bond funds that need to be used and that is what is addressing those two areas. Whether or not we decide to take further action on the

101team room, um they are out for bid right now. So when those bids come back and if they're not favorable, of course, then there's obviously a different decision that needs to be made. Anyways, it needs to be a decision made on the team room. And as for the admin building, likewise, future decisions will need to be made on that. But we do have bond money remaining that we need and we plan to spend those projects down. I cannot sit on those funds and not I'll just put it I cannot defer those and sit on those funds. Um that is not one of the things that the IRS likes you to do is borrow money and sit on it earning interest. Um so because that's where arbitrage comes into play. Arbitrage is a good thing because

102we're earning like our bond our ratings are so low one and a half% on the one and three and a quarter% on the other. um and the market where it's at right now, I would never refinance them. I would never put them back out to market because it would be a not a great situation. But the fact that we are earning interest on one of them, um our goal is we borrowed the funds to do the projects. The projects may have changed along the way, but we have not expensed everything. And that um meter keeps running on all those dollars and what arbitrage calculation is. So, if you're going to ask me, I would say let's get these projects done and spend those funds down. And neither one of those have anything to do with

103the general fund. >> Yeah, Belinda, we're going to we're going to move. Thank you. Um, we have heard you explain this at least five times in the last like two months. So, I'm going to move on from those two items and circle back to the presentation from this evening. The capital project fund and plan uh five-year plan is something that we will be talking about next meeting. Um it is on it well it is on the soontobe made agenda and uh as for the rest of this presentation um like I said I will email those things that we are going to have a robust discussion about um you're going to need to come prepared with your thoughts and ideas about it um in terms of what you would feel comfortable with. So more questions are

104always always a good thing. Dave is good about asking questions. Uh, is there anyone else that would like to ask a question about tonight's presentation? >> Go ahead. >> Yeah. Hi, thank you. I would um Dave to your point about freezing capital improvements and Belinda to your point which yes, thank you. you have explained to us arbitrage, but I would be curious to know maybe and in the next meeting when we're talking about the capital improvement fund, which will cost us less forfeiting the existing bonds or going to arbitrage versus the actual costs we'll incur with those two projects. If you could give that to us, that I think could be really useful. So, as we look at uh the presentation, I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. There's been a essentially a

105zero tax increase for GASD operations in the last four in in the last four of six years. Is that right? So we look at the past six years, four of those years has essentially had a 0% increase for the school district operations. >> That's correct. >> Would you say we're in a structural deficit? I will say that the purpose of spending down the unassigned fund balance has now met its time. Um structural deficit when we need to add funds to the 6% unassigned fund balance then I would say yes. >> I have a couple of other questions but I'll let some other people ask first. >> Yeah. Thanks Kathleen. Uh Belinda first of all thank you for a very comprehensive uh presentation tonight. Very helpful. Uh, and I and I know good good business managers

106plan for the worst, hope for the best. When it comes to the federal and state uh funding, are are you assuming uh level funding or you are you uh assuming a little bit of an increase at all? >> Assuming level funding, current year funding. >> Gotcha. >> Yeah. >> Which I which I think it is a pretty good move. Uh I I know I've said this a hundred times before, I'll say it again. And uh those four years where we didn't do anything uh we're now uh paying uh Piper. We're going to you pay it now or pay it later. Small incremental increases. Just the contra the contractual obligations alone and our mandates. Uh we're living in a fantasy world if we think that's just going to magically appear and and go away without us

107um approving small incremental increases along the way. I I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir on that. I agree with uh a I I really like Mr. Sites's questions and I agree with a lot of what he's saying. The thing I will take difference with a little bit is operating like a business because we educate everybody regardless of their needs uh in special education. And some of our students in Adams County, not just Gettysburg, AC well across the whole nation, uh are that they have a high degree of need and they and they need one-on-one uh assistance and things like that. And I think that separates us uh from operating like a business. We're we're going to educate everybody. We're we're mandated to educate everybody. Belinda, also uh for our future meeting, uh I'd

108be interested how much of this increase from last year to this year is due to uh salaries and benefits. I'm guessing that's the major part of of what we're dealing with. I could I could be wrong about that. >> So to answer your question on salaries, it's 3.95% increase and benefits is a 6% increase in premiums. >> Gotcha. That's all I have for now except for uh with with the 3.5 that you are recommending. Does that get us anywhere close to our policy of 6% of a fund balance? >> Um yes, there is use of assigned funds >> and we're only looking for about $22,000. So, we could easily use more assigned funds um and reduce some of the capital projects amount to get us to 3 and a2%. >> Thank you, Donna. Donna, go

109ahead. I do have a quick question. So, the 300s is our purchase services, correct? Is that mostly IU? >> Mostly IU services as well as other outplace services that the IU is not providing for us. >> So, that's okay. So they've decreased but the cost is increasing. >> Correct. So this cost of services of IU has changed where we are boring more of the cost using outside placement services or providing our own classroom for services and needs. >> So the increase isn't to the IU. It's >> not to the IU. >> There will remain services that we need to still do with EIU simply because of the numbers. Um some some of the areas the DIU will help do for example will be occupational therapy or speech um music therapy things of such specific nature

110um that we are not providing on our currently on our list but we are increasing outside placement like um new story and you know river rock and new story inhouse as well as without placement. So, um, a lot of our services have increased simply because the need of special education has increased. >> Ryan, do you have a question? >> I have a question. Yep. That might almost be a question for Dave because what I'm wondering about is new revenue within a 5-year projection. If if there is any reading of the tea leaves we have within the real estate market and with I mean you see developments all over that potentially be bringing in money that will make up for some of this shortfall. Um our expenditures are going up significantly yeartoear and we're not keeping

111up with that but we are doing better than the tax increases would suggest because of increased numbers of homes and increased value of those homes. So, do we ever get those numbers? Are there any projections that we get from the real estate market about what we can anticipate for revenue next year if we keep the same millillage or the year after that or a 5-year plan? >> Sure. We receive annual updates from the county assessment office as to and or some of the areas that are have permits in place. Um, we receive one number and while we're planning all along what that looks like, those update those numbers get updated regularly. So we have to look at what was our previous number, what number has changed and what do we feel is a true comfort

112level of what actually is going to transpire. So you know the the county may say well 100% of these homes are coming in at whatever location. The reality of that hitting July 1st is and billable July f first is not 100%. So we may look at it and say well maybe 75% could be billable. that's what we account for in the budget. Um, so it is it is a a scenario that we look for outside service the county to help us with. Um, simply because we're not in tune to receiving that information directly from the municipalities. And if I could just follow through because it's on the same vein, our expenditures have been going up though much more rapidly and this is for a variety of reasons, not just special education, including commitments to piecers

113or >> salaries or changes in insurance. Do we have any way to project what we're going to be looking at in a like a for instance a five-year plan for where beyond just drawing a line on a graph? Yeah, outside of special ed, I could say probably it's a range of anywhere from three and a quarter to three and a half percent of of um other other cost. That's an average. That's an average. So, we can look back across the history, find out what the average is absent special ed, and project that for five years. So, the projection of expenditures is not a problem. It's the projection of the revenue that could potentially be the um while it's a projection, it's still an open-ended area simply because we're not quite sure when these new parcels

114will come a place. I mean, I will I will state this for the record. I I know representatives from Amberbrook came and was concerned about the tax increases. Well, honestly, you know, thank goodness Amble Brookke came into play simply because that has been helpf funding the increases without us raising taxes to the general population. So the growth that is experiencing from these um developments has really truly been our wonderful opportunity to not address tax increases over the years simply because we've had natural growth in terms of real estate coming into Gettysburg. >> Kathleen, go ahead. >> Yeah, thanks uh Al. That was a very good question about new positions that are being suggested. I'd like to follow up on that with a couple of questions for clarity. We're looking at a possible um addition of

115five positions though. Two of them, the social workers are really replacing the existing family navigators. And I recall in an earlier meeting being told that our expense of two social workers on staff will be less than our expense for two family navigators who are contracted. >> That's correct. >> Is that correct? Okay. If we look at two supervisors of special education, are two required? Can we can we can we have one at this point and then look to having two in a future budget? Um, it's a very good question to ask, but I would have to defer to the comprehensive plan simply because the plan was built and approved by the department on just the two. Uh, it may have been a longer range plan, >> but because the services are changing um from IU

116to us, it's now advanced itself a year pretty much. >> Correct. the the sorry the comprehensive plan when we was board approved the end goal at the end of the three years which would have been the 2728 school year would have been uh that we have brought back the majority of if not all of the special ed classes that the IU is running and added an additional supervisor to help facilitate that because it's a lot more just for one person with all these classes we brought back we actually had it spaced out where you know we had an original plan of which classes we were bringing back each of those three years. But because the IU has kind of forced our hand with some classes over others, we had to change all of that and

117bring more back quicker. Um, which is necessitating a second uh supervisor at this point. >> We currently have one supervisor. >> We currently have one for the whole district and then we're going to add an an additional one that will help us to have one that will focus on elementary and one that will focus on secondary. So again, something I would suggest maybe can we take a look at that? Is this something we can look to do in the future? It's a question I' I'd like you to address. And then when we look at the technology department classified position, how is that work currently being done? >> There's currently four individuals in the technology department. From my understanding about 5 years ago, there were eight positions in the technology department to where a lot of

118those services were divid divvied up and reduced um due to the either retirements or folks transitioning to another role. So, the position wasn't necessarily placed. We've come to a time and a place where the technology department is a and I'm not saying struggling hard but they are trying to keep up and maintain the level as well as um there's constant new um modernization that needs to occur to address cyber issues we're having. So um the needs have changed in terms of the cyber world that this additional person would help with mostly with the help desk. um whereas the others maybe not be able to address at a particular point in time. This has been on their radar for a couple of years. We've put them off for a couple of years and so this is

119one of the reasons it's come up this year because we contemplated. >> Yeah. So I hear that. So So I'm hearing you say we used to have eight Yes. >> employees in that department. We're now at four. >> Yes. >> And with new technological demands, we're looking at adding a position. >> Yes. because it is about $1.4 million for these five positions that we're looking to add. So, I think it's worth asking the questions. Thank you. >> Other questions? Okay. Um moving into our May 4th meeting that is our public hearing meeting part of the budget review and a big discussion day for us. Um coming in with kind of any talking about what we would feel comfortable doing in all of these topics in terms of where the focus of uh getting money would

120come from I guess is the vague way of saying that. I can send more of those details that we just discussed. Now, if you're a person like me that likes to see a visual there to kind of think through and um come with come with your thoughts and questions to that May 4th meeting um and we can we can bring more of those board um kind of consensus ideas to Belinda to kind of uh rework and have ready for the May 18th discussion. That way we have two when I'm looking at that then I see we have a meeting to discuss many of those uh decisions that we're making as a team um and how it would impact it looking at it that meeting right before we actually get to approve it. Uh gives us

121a couple of couple of different meetings to make adjustments uh that fit what we want to see happen. >> Does that sound like a plan, Belinda? >> I am hearing that you're asking for more from us. So we'll plan to bring that next meeting. And if there's more information you need from me to help make those decisions, feel free to reach out. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh we are moving on to citizens participation. Dr. Moore. >> Thank you. Good evening everyone and thank you for your patience. We do have one person who has asked to address the board and that would be Kenneth Calibrizzy. Kenneth, I'm guessing your ears perked up when you heard Amblebrook up here by uh by Belinda, huh? >> Yes. I think she knew I was back here. And uh as

122as a person that's paying taxes who will never benefit, I know how many children I have. None of them are going to the Gettysburg Area School District. So, uh I'm one of those ones that's paying in. Um so, I appreciate the fact number one, Belinda's done a great job. She's been a warrior. I think she's provided great information. I've certainly gained a lot of information. Uh, and it's clear that the budget's got to go up. So, we're past the hold the line. Figure some way not to have the the budget go up. So, that's good news. I would suggest that the low end of your spectrum is 2.8%. Why do I say that? Lots of people on fixed income. What was the social security cost of living increase for this year? 2.8%. So, it's not

123an arbitrary number. It's like, okay, realizing that a lot of our our citizens are on fixed income and that number is growing just as a strategy to say what we're going to try to do is minimize the tax increase to that which is uh the same as social security. And I think that also plays into your okay, where were we 5 years ago? Where are we today? Let's rather than provide people with with numbers that they metrics they don't understand, just say this is the social security increases over the last 5 years. What is that? And then how is our budget gone up? And clearly it's going to be way below it. People can understand social security. People on fixed incomes that you can probably sell. Um, the other thing is I think you all

124should talk about the mills because that's what I pay. You know, if the budget goes up X, it it's how it impacts me. So, it's how the mills go up each year. So, what's actually happening because of Amblebrook, okay, it's your tax base is going up. So there's actually people that are seeing a negative increase in their taxes because the more expensive houses are coming in which reflects today's prices and people that bought a house in 2010 whose assessment is not going up. Guess what? Their taxes are going down minimally but they're going down not increasing. So I would suggest that um I think a framework not only with the capital investments but with the operational investments if you said this is what we can do with a 2.8% increase in the mills which translates

125to some higher number I don't know what that would be in the budget another you know maybe it's 3%. Okay, if we did that, what don't we do? Okay, and then jump it up to your 3.5. You already done those calculations. These are the things we could do. And then, you know, if we went to 4.2, we can either do everything. And part of this would be, you know, taking some of the reserve money for the reserves. If you said, okay, an unexpected cost was special education. We'll dip into the reserves to the extent that this requirement has been placed on us. So, we'll dig in to that extent, but otherwise, we're going to live with live with our income. Now, as far as running like a business, okay, let's do it this way. Run

126it like your home budget. Okay? Uh how much, you know, what kind of car am I going to buy? What kind of house am I going to buy? What am I going to eat? Okay? Just do it like a home budget. I got so many dollars, you know, nobody's going to give me money to spend. So, um, the last thing I would say is you might want to dry run your presentation to, uh, to the, uh, to the population and say, how can I, how can I express this? And maybe it's not even somebody from the board, but somebody else independently that says, I'm an independent person. I'm coming in here. I'm presenting what I think are the the major uh aspects of the budget. Um I think uh I've gone come to these meetings

127for the last six months. The part I really enjoyed is the kids talking and the teachers talking. Okay. And I really miss that. It's like what happened here? So it was wonderful hearing tonight. Um if I were to make a presentation, you know, I would start with, you know, what the what the proposed budget is, but it would explain what you're getting for your money. You know, anything is too expensive. car's too expensive, house too expensive, what value am I getting? And actually, I just replay Mr. Lusk's uh presentation and say this is what you're getting for your dollar and and that's that's outstanding. So, if you kind of lead in by this is the value you're getting and then this is what have been the social security increases. This is how we've you can

128say it how we've held the line. Okay? So if we went up every year by social security, we'd be up here. We're down here, you know. Now, unfortunately, we've kind of dug a hole and it's going to take us 5 years or maybe 10 years to dig out from that hole. And at some point, if we go up, you know, by a certain amount every year, we're going to actually start contributing to the reserves. But, you know, it's going to be a couple of lean years. And I think if you have a a framework that says we're going to spend on the most essential stuff, we're going to defer stuff that's not as essential, whether or not it's it's operational or capital, you know, and and tell people we're going to go through an austerity

129process because of this and it's going to take us some time to to fix it. That that you you basically, you know, pretend you're on the other side listening to it. You know, what do you think is a convincing argument to make uh to people to pan it? I truly I think if you see the value, you know, people are going to be less critical if they see, you know, the outstanding quality of what comes out of uh Gettysburg Area School District. Thank you for your time, >> Kenneth. Thank you and thank you for your insight. >> Okay, we are moving on to routine approvals. I'm looking for a motion to um to vote on 51 the agenda. 52 financial report 53 human resources recommendations. >> Can we pull out 5.2? >> Sure. Hearing separating

1305.2. Um let me do them all separately. Um can I get a motion for 5.1 the agenda? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Any discussion? hearing none. Dave, >> yes. >> Justine, >> yes. >> Donna, >> yes. >> Al, >> yes. >> Ryan, >> yes. >> Kathleen, >> yes. >> Mike, >> yes. >> And I vote yes. Can I get a motion for 5.2, the financial report? >> That's the one I want to pull out. >> Yep, it is pulled out. Can I get a motion for the financial report? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any discussion or questions? >> Yes. Go ahead, Dave. >> Belinda, I sent you a list of the questions which I think you were copied also, Alan and Alice and Jeffrey. >> Just trying to get some clarification

131of exactly what the money is spent for and to whom and for the reasons. >> All the items on the list are directly related to special education tuition and services. So these are our students that are going to locations to receive their education and services that are not provided in district. Um except for Levi Kreml environmental which is a chemical inventory for the district underneath the right to know law. And then Dolphin Electric is the PCCD cameras security cameras that is a part of the PTE security safety grant. >> Okay. So >> go ahead. >> All the other items, Catholic Charity, CCIU, Huffman Homes, Phoenix Counseling, Special Education, Upper Adams Tuition, Yellow Breach's tuition, Chester County tuition, effective school solutions um was clinical services, and then New Story are all tuition related servicing our students

132at those facilities. >> Also, Upper Adams. >> Yes, we have a student at Upper Adams that we pay tuition for. >> Okay. Okay. Are these reoccurring every month? Pretty much >> these could change regularly. They It just depends upon the enrollment of our students. Like, so upper Adams could change tomorrow. Um it just depends. Classroom counts could change. Um it could be an all year event. Um what whatever services are needed is they try to find location to service them. >> Okay. And we can't in the future do any of this in-house. That's for the administration at at a more scale of economy. >> I to say that in the future we absolutely can't. I I would say I would that's not a question that we can answer now. But we don't >> there services

133that we don't provide currently >> or have space in our classrooms currently. >> But there are students and they need to be educated. So we have to find places for them to go. That doesn't mean as Blennice said that classroom counts change regularly. If we have students that come out of those places and we have someone at Adams County, we can bring them back to have them here. Uh but at the moment, we don't have the space. >> Okay. Very good. Thank you. >> I I had a question. Go ahead, >> Justine. I saw the email and Belinda, I had a question from um page 10, the rev track fees. Is that the 4.48% trans? Is that that or what does that number represent? The $3,34 That's the fee that we used to pay that

134we need to pay Revract for collection of fees. Whether it be food service, whether it be um prom tickets or the drama event, that is a fee that we pay for to have that collection availability. Okay. And then there was one on um it said road salt for the 2526 season, but then in the description it was an engineering fee. for a storm water permit that was on page one. Without having Mr. Reynolds here, I think the storm water permit was probably associated with I'm trying to think which project that is for. Um, I just didn't under because it said the for I guess the category or whatever it was titled was road salt for 25 26 season 36 tons and then the description engineer fee for close engineer fee to close storm water permit.

135Didn't understand that. So, we had to close the storm water permit at Cumberland Township from the old middle school. Um, we have a escrow account with Cumberland Township that until our old project was closed down and everything was satisfied with the demands made by the township in particular, there were funds held in escrow. And once that process was closed out, we asked for release of those funds. It's $104,000. Now it may say road salt simply because we may have purchased roads salt some from that organization but >> so the 104,000 is part of the or the hund what did you say >> we have $104,000 in an account that is held in a pretty much a trust account by the township. They will not release it until all the permits have been satisfied and deemed

136acceptable. So during the old closeout of the middle school, storm water management of the I think it was the curbs over there were in question as to who was going to maintain them moving forward. Um so through the whole plan design and architecturals and designers um it was a long process and now since we've closed out the previous permits and moved forward from the from that project which is the older project at the middle school. This storm water management issue was still um in the mix and with the closeout uh we are now able to proactively have the township vote on the release of those funds. So we needed the um uh the architecture involved in this process to process this out through. >> So it's just a typo in the >> it description. >>

137The description sometimes the descriptions are an automatic from what was be previously paid. So it's not necessarily overwritten in in per se. Um the description may be in the generalization of that vendor. Um not necessarily a description for each and every event is entered in each and every time. >> Thanks Justine. Any other questions on 5.2? Okay, hearing none. Uh take it to a vote. Justine, >> yes. >> Donna, >> yes. Al, >> yes. >> Ryan, >> yes. >> Kathleen, >> yes. >> Mike, >> yes. >> Dave, and I vote yes. Moving on to 5.3, human resources recommendations. Looking for a motion. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you. Um, any comments or questions? All right, hearing none. Take it to a vote. Donna, yes. Al, >> abstain. >> Ryan, >> yes. >> Kathleen,

138>> yes. >> Mike, >> yes. >> Dave, >> Justine, >> yes. >> And I vote yes. All right, we're moving on to items for board action. I'm looking to take uh let's go 61 to 65. Um these are all of the policies and um ACTI general fund operating budget that we discussed at the last board meeting uh the first one in April. Looking for 61 to 65. >> So move >> second. >> Any further discussion or questions on those? >> A couple of questions. Thank you. I'm just curious um 6.2 adult education. Just curious, does ACTI provide a similar opportunity? >> Uh, I do not believe so. Um, Sean, the ACTI director is here. If you have questions about ACTI, he can answer them. >> Surprise. You didn't expect this. Uh, Sean 6.2 is adult

139education and it's about the district providing adult education. And I'm curious to notice ACT provides something similar >> at this point. At this point, we do not provide any adult education classes. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Any other questions or comments on 61 to 65? >> Yep. Go ahead, Kathy. Sean, come on back. >> All right. This is probably more of what you would have expected. So on the budget, I'm just curious, uh, computer networking and diesel technology or sometimes called diesel mechanics. >> I just want to confirm that those total expenses are down because of retiring teachers in those two sectors. >> That's correct. Uh, the computer networking teacher retired on December 31st of 2025. So we have a new teacher on board. Uh, young gentleman. Um so less experience, less salary.

140Our salary is largely based on experience in the work in the uh career field. Um our diesel technology teacher, Mr. Penton, is retiring at the end of this school year. So next school year, we expect the same kind of situation as slightly lower salary for that position. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Sean, while I got you here, uh Tim's not here, our uh liaison that's on the JOC, >> right? the uh there's a uh a really uh good rumor going around that we may be close to a land acquisition or are you allowed to speak to that at all or is that uh or we can't we can't speak to that right now? >> Uh that's all been executive session discussion. Uh we'll say we are close to making a decision and you'll

141of course hear more about that as we >> Very exciting. Thank you. Yep. >> Thanks Sean. Any other questions on 61 to 65? Hearing none. Uh, we will vote. Al, >> yes. >> Ryan, >> yes. >> Kathleen, >> yes. Mike, >> yes. >> Dave, >> yes. >> Justine? >> Yes. >> Donna, >> yes. And I vote yes. 6.6, the approval of proposed proposed final budget 2627. Can I get a motion for it? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you. Um, and this is a reminder per Belinda's presentation this evening that this is to adopt a proposed final budget with a projected tax increase of 4.2% and permission to advertise. Um, this is not the final adoption. This just allows for us to prepare for all of those possible outcomes. Um, and does not mean

142that we are choosing to raise the tax increase to 4.2% at this time. Any other discussion or questions on that particular item? >> We about that. >> Correct. We have we have the motion is on the table. >> I thought we >> No, this is 6.6 >> 66. >> Well, forgive me. I thought the mo the first motion was for 6.1 to 6.5. So, forgive me. It included 6.6. No, this we did just move for that >> second motion. It's been moved and second. >> Thank you. >> Don't worry. We're on the end of hour two, so that is okay. Yes, we did we did make a motion and second it. I'm just reminding uh ourselves as well as the public of the details of that item. Any other comments or questions? I I just

143wonder is it confusing for people to vote yes on this when like I don't have the stomach for a 4.2 increase and right and we've had the conversation tonight and we know there's that what's really being recommended at this point by the administration is 3.5. Is it confusing? >> I think it is >> to put forward an approval for this motion at 4.2 2 when at least one person could not vote yes for a 4.2 in the end. >> So I I'll start by asking a question that we haven't necessarily talked about yet. We've seen all the charts of the varied proposed uh sorry projected tax it the the act one indexes from the last however many years all the way back to 2018. And in the process of budget approval and um all the

144months we used to figure this out. the timeline that is given to us by the state. Typically, we have a proposed final budget approval. Um, I guess my question is how does that stack up against the act one index in the past, right? Like when we're looking at those different years, the proposed final budget that we vote on on this night hasn't always been the t the the index, but sometimes I imagine it has. I guess I'm just wondering how often. We have historically tried to put the act one indux as the proposed final as the worst possible situation just to allow for whatever changes come between now and um just thinking back to last meeting to today we had 330,000 unaccounted for dollars right that change. So, I think I think it's a good

145thing if if we know kind of where we're currently planning to go and currently thinking and trying not to reach the index. But if we don't put it, my understanding is that if we don't put it as if we don't vote that through this evening, then that is limiting further what we're able to do with whatever changes may come our way in the next couple of months. >> This is clearly this is clearly a process just to have it on display for 30 days. And and I would just say I I agree with Mrs. Pratt. I I think it is a little bit confusing to the general public. It it's probably a little bit confusing to the Gettysburg Times who could uh sometimes uh could really uh um get a perception out there that, you

146know, we're going worst case scenario. I hope that doesn't happen, but I think Melinda did a great job of explaining that this is preliminary, that a lot can happen between now and the next month or so, and and that she's not even she's not recommending this herself. It's a procedural type of thing. So, I think we'll be okay. >> So, I feel the same as Kathleen as well. And I my question is, if the majority were to vote no, what are the limitations at that point? You need to have 30 days between the time that you vote approve proposed final to the final. So we would have to have a special meeting for you to to vote on approve approving a proposed final >> and the budget if the budget >> you would take action

147on the proposed final. So it's available for 30 days. So really, it's truly it's a timeline underneath act one index. You have to have it on display for 30 days. If our timeline is that we're adopting a budget by June 1st, I got to back that timeline up by 30 days to have an approval. So this evening, I cannot wait till May, first meeting in May or second meeting in May to have 30 days between that and June 1st. There's not enough time. So that's why it's on for this evening. So I know I have more than 30 days for the approval of the proposed final. >> You literally have to print it out and set it here. Correct. >> Yes, I actually it is on the table back here. It is. And then we'll

148make it available on the website as well as on the table in the um vestibule out here. >> So I'll circle back to what Al said because I like the way that you phrased that in the sense that it it may be confusing, but it is kind of a procedural hoop to go through. Um and and the way I see it as well is doing taking action on this tonight is is not making a decision. It is buying us time to make an informed decision. Right. Um we still have two more meeting three two more meetings in May to narrow out those details and decide what is in the best interest of the school district and community. So, um, >> with that being said, >> do you think we're going to have any admin to

149go over this >> during the next two meetings? Admin time to go over the budget? >> You mean like administrative sessions prior to the meeting? >> Yep. >> That's that's up to the board. >> We could talk about it, Dave. I think that that should be something that happens after the May 4th meeting if so. Right. because the May 4th meeting is our time that we get to sit and discuss this and I for one am still processing my own thoughts about what we're doing. I'll send that out in an email if we decide something otherwise we can we can do that. Um but >> we still have a solid >> it'd be great if the board could decide that >> and it would be it would have to be public as well. >> Correct.

150Yeah. Correct. uh we as it currently stands we still have in the way I'm looking at it at least somewhere between four to six more hours of talking about this. So um I feel comfortable going to the May 4th meeting and figuring it out from there if when I send out the things for people to think about that we've talked about tonight uh to just have it in writing if we feel otherwise then we can make that decision and communicate it. Okay. Um, I'm not going to make that decision right now at 9:08 with you guys. >> I'm asking about the board to make that decision. >> No, that's what I'm saying. I think that this is an important thing that people can process not at 9:08 at night. If we would like to have

151an administrative session before the next meeting, we'll go through the same process we did the last time where we can then communicate it to the public. We have enough time to do that, right? If we don't make the decision right now, >> we do. >> Okay. Then we'll plan to do that um with a little bit more of a fresh brain. I'm that's what I would like to do. So I think that's probably fine. Um go ahead Kathleen. >> So may I make a suggestion uh for that May 4th meeting? I think that's a meeting that we would typically bring forward a lot of new policies to have a conversation about. I was thinking the same. >> I would like to suggest we do not do that unless the policy is timesensitive. I think we

152need to devote as much time as possible May 4th and May 18th over this budget because again as we looked at the last six years a 4.2% ask is uh or or not even an ask but the possibility is a little unprecedented >> and I think that we need to really be like focused on this. >> There are the policy review that we're in the middle of right now. We can certainly uh put that on hold until the budget process is complete. That's easy to do. >> Good. Good suggestion. >> Any other comments or questions on 6.6? >> Okay, we will take a vote. Al, >> yes. >> Ryan, >> yes. >> Kathleen, >> yes. >> Mike, >> yes. >> Dave, >> yes. >> Justine, >> yes. >> Donna, >> yes. And I vote yes.

153Moving on to our program reports. Dr. Matzner, >> yes. In the interest of time because it is after 9, I just have a couple quick shout outs that I want to mention. Uh first to Giant and every customer who went to Giant and rounded up. Um we were able to receive a donation from Giant in an effort to support Childhood Hunger in the amount of $5,451.70. Uh so I want to again thank Giant and everyone who shops at Giant and round it up at the register to help us out. Uh, second shout out is for Jen Wigle. Jen is our district social worker and was recognized with the New Seed Innovator Award for her incredible work supporting student wellness at the Healthy Adams County 30th anniversary celebration on Friday. Uh, from connecting families to community

154resources to launching the peer mentor group called Hope Squad at the high school. Um, Jen has done a fantastic job and we're proud of her. Um, and the recognition that she so rightly deserves. So, congratulations to Jen Wiggle. >> Good evening. Uh, testing started at our three elementary schools today. Uh, first day of ELA for 3, four, and five. And middle school will begin on Wednesday. Both levels will continue with math and science next week. Good luck to all of our test takers and our staff. Shout out to our food service department. Last Wednesday, we had a warrior wellness night at the high school. A great opportunity to showcase our food services, our food service staff, their abilities, healthy food habits for families. Um, as well as our partnerships with Giant Giant Food and Kegel's

155Foods. Um, on a budgetary note, our federal funding adjustment was released last Wednesday, which initially showed a increase of $1,500. However, that was readjusted again, I guess, which is typical, I guess, for this typical funding, federal funding period here, and it showed a decrease for $66,000 in our title one funds. Um, title 2 through four remain the same. So, we will revisit our consolidated application this week and make some necessary adjustments. >> Thank you both for those updates. Uh, go ahead. >> I know that, but wait, I want to make sure I understood that. So there's a federal reduction of $66,000 that >> our title one funding was initi was allocated late this year um of approximately $836,000 and then we got a funding adjustment down to $770 just in title one. So just to

156follow up from that, we're going to have a budgetary change simply because the allocation will need to change on revenue down by six $76,000. >> Yes. Thank you. Federal government. Okay. Um great. I think it's time to move to adjourn and we will come back and do this again. Our next uh meeting is on Monday, May 4th in the boardroom. For those of you that hung around for all this, thank you for joining us. Motion, somebody needs to make the motion. Thank you.