001e e for you guys I would like to call this January 23rd 2025 regular board meeting to order can we all stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all Miss n the mission of the school district of haford Township is to educate and to inspire community of lifelong Learners who become well-rounded Global Citizens the pillars of our educational system are our school environment is safe and nurturing excellence in education is a shared responsibility in partnership with all district and community members whole Child Development is vital to our educational system supports and conditions exist whereby all students have opportunities to grow and Excel in the areas of academic Technical
002and career and social emotional learning our decision-making process is student centered and student voice is valued 2025 the 2020 to 2025 District goals are social and emotional Wellness to produce a community of empathetic and resilient Learners with skills to socially and emotionally flourish to prepare contemporary citizens modernize and expand learning experiences to prepare students as critical thinkers problem solvers innovators and designers within a complex Global society and diversity and inclusion to establish a culturally diverse and inclusive educational experience that develops sociocultural proficiency thank you Mr Tessa can I have the role Miss Lee here Dr McKay here Mr Schwarz here Dr Shelton here miss snodgress here miss Vitali here miss Weedman here Dr lson here Dr King here thank you everyone is here next for the official minutes can I have a motion to approve
003the official minutes from the January 9th 2025 regular board meeting moved Chelson second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor I I motion passes next we'll go on to reports from students our H middle school student representative is Sophia klei good evening everyone my name is Sophia KY and I'm a seventh grader here at HMS I'm excited to be informing you guys about what's been happening at haford Middle School believe it or not tomorrow marks the end of the second marking period we are officially halfway through the school year this is an exciting time for our school Community as we celebrate our Winter concert season tonight we have the seventh and eighth grade winter Coral concert and the sixth grade Winter qual concert is scheduled for the upcoming Tuesday these performances are a wonderful
004Showcase of our students hard work dedication and talent our winter athletic teams are also thriving this season our student athletes are learning growing and enjoying the competition as they prepare to close out their awesome winter season in the upcoming weeks looking ahead our theater program will present Beauty and the Beast from February 6th through February 8th we are thrilled to bring this production to life and can't wait for the community to see the incredible hard work of our cast and crew thank you for your continued support of of our students and programs have a good night everybody thank you and I do not see Austin so I am assuming that he is not joining us for this evening okay all right so we will continue with the superintendence report great thank you so much Dr
005King uh we have several items in the superintendence report we will begin this evening with a presentation from our monoa students so I'd like to wel welcome their principal Dr ad Lizzy here as well as the students who can proceed to the podium and we're eager to hear what you have come to share with us this [Music] evening good evening school board members and guests I'm Nikita scavellis and I'm CeCe cozy welcome to the Special recorded edition of The monoa Morning News each morning our Mano our monoa morning news crew brings daily updates to our students and staff including weather reports School happenings and birthday shoutouts our news program is run entirely by our fifth grade students every fifth grader has the opportunity to participate in both on camera and off camera roles students gain
006hands-on experience with recording using green screens editing videos management scripts operating cameras and learning how to produce a produce a polished news broadcast but tonight we're here for a very special reason we are excited to share our highlights from our amazing Dr Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service activities originally planned for January 20th but postponed to January 22nd due to ice and snow Dr ADI our principal along with some of our very own monoa students will be sharing how we honored Dr King's Legacy through service projects that made a difference in our school and Community for making kindness cards for local seniors to organizing donations for family in need Mustangs truly show showed what it means to lead with kindness and compassion just like Dr Martin Luther King did and we will soon go
007live to the Oakmont administration building where Dr ad lizy and our students are ready to share more about these incredible projects we are so proud of the hard work and big hearts of our monoa family keep up the amazing work Mustangs and remember every act of kindness counts have a wonderful evening and as always go Mustangs over to you Dr ad thanks kids so as you can see every morning that's how our um monoa students received just their daily uh announcements you know what's happening what activities to join what's for lunch uh that gets a lot of uh booze or cheers depending I guess on what is on the menu but I want to thank uh first of all the school board for having us this evening Miss saxa for allowing us to present and
008share um since I've gotten to manoi I would be remiss to not thank our uh PTO uh some of our PTO members are here tonight including our president miss Osborne uh their unwavering support for everything monoa uh is what made the event you know that we actually ended up having yesterday after school possible um and I think there's no no better um messenger for what we did than the three students I have with us today we have cor Osborne um then miles dit and Patrick beer here so kaora I think you're up first hi my name is Ka Osborne and I'm a fifth grader at manura to honor Dr Martin Luther King Jr manura hosted a day of service we collected donations made bracelets cards place mats dog toys and blessing bags which all went
009to different local organizations my favorite though was a welcome to manow packet that we made it asks us about our favorite things that we love about manowa in our community it will go to all new families at our school it shows that monoa is not only a place where everyone feels like they belong and can be themselves but it also gives the hope that we can continue helping with both small and big acts of kindness whether it is coming together to do a service project like we did or reaching to a new classmate to make them feel welcome the opportunity to do good every day is what make Mano Mano special thank you good job hi this is Miles DWI and M Day of Service was fun at my house I helped sort all the
010supplies for the stations then we brought the supplies to school and I helped the blessing bags we made 100 blessing bags for the Kensington project seeing all the teachers friends and families together made me proud hello my name is Patrick Peter and I am a fifth grader at Manola Elementary when I walked into the Martin Luther King Day of Service at monola I saw how beautiful it is when everybody works together to make one giant team we had all these different stations that we could go to but personally the dog toour station was my favorite because everybody worked together to make braided dog toys out strips of donated t-shirts out strips of donated t-shirts the dog toys will be donated to the main Mine Animal Rescue which is an organization that cares for and finds
011forever homes for abandoned animals the ml Junior service event at manowa showed how much good we can achieve when we work as a team it also felt really good helping people and animals that are need thank you I think it just speaks you know I had asked them if they needed any help preparing uh you know their remarks for tonight and all of them were like no we've got it I said okay great so you guys did an excellent job thank you guys can we just give another round of applause please um and our new welcome to monoa packet is hot off the press so I think we have some delivery go some more Mustangs and so the purpose of this you we do get a lot of new students really from all over the
012world at monoa um and the purpose of this is for the students to to welcome other students to monoa and really to the community um we have a lot of students who don't you know live in htown or haven't been in htown and so the purpose is to just share what are some of our students favorites um things that they like and maybe just some advice uh for for incoming students and so this would be something that as we get new students uh we would share with them uh and their families so thank you so much for having us tonight I appreciate all of your hard work and effort and have a great evening it's such a testament to the service that many of our schools provide uh to hear the excitement in the students
013voices and to see the product of all your work thank you all for the work that you've done to your families and to the PTO and of course to Dr at lizy and the staff there for making this event such an exciting and helpful and important one I'm going to hang this one on my wall for sure great uh we're goingon to continue with lots of good news because at this point I'd like to ask uh Mr Leon Smith to join me at the podium so that we can recognize his selection as the Pennsylvania teacher of the year I'm not going to use this step stool not a bad idea well it is uh again my pleasure to welcome Mr Smith here uh on December 10th of 2024 haford High School social studies teacher Mr
014Leon Smith was named the 2025 Pennsylvania teacher of the year at the Pennsylvania Department of education's annual professional development con conference this prestigious uh recognition highlights Mr Smith's commitment to student Excellence educator development and educational Equity Mr Smith's career spans 24 years at haford high school where he teaches ninth grade honors and advanced placement US history and African-American studies beyond the classroom he serves as freshman boys basketball coach African-American culture Cal enrichment advisor Mentor he helps students Thrive academically socially and emotionally if there's an event at the high school it's probably uh sure that Mr Smith is the MC or the coordinator or the sponsor in some way he is really the lifeblood and has is so so involved not only in what the students are learning in the curriculum but also in their daily
015lives um his also uh Dr brushi has praised his uh transformative work she has said quote Leon embodies what it means to be an exceptional teacher his dedication to his students and his Innovative approach to education have a profound impact making him a role model for fellow Educators and for everyone who is fortunate enough to sit in his classroom we are so proud to celebrate him as Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year Mr Smith's advocacy for public education includes leading District professional development in effective instructional design culturally responsive teaching and differentiated instruction his impact extends far beyond the classroom as it exemplified in the creation of the African-American studies course and the development of a grow your own program initiatives designed to increase Student Success and Foster educator diversity Mr Smith's advocacy extends to Statewide policy
016reforms uh as a policy fellow with the teach plus PA organization where he has championed legislative initiatives to address teacher shortages and promote teacher diversity Mr Smith's selection as teacher of the year is the culmination of a rigorous process out of more than 660 applicants our nominations Statewide 12 finalists were chosen for their ability to inspire students Implement effective teaching practices and engage meaningfully with their communities candidates participated in interviews they shared recorded teaching episodes and demonstrated instructional excellence and Innovation this year's finalists represented a range of subjects across grade levels all across Pennsylvania showcasing the talent and educa and dedication of Educators throughout the Commonwealth as penssylvania Teacher of the Year Mr Leon Smith will travel the Commonwealth to share his expertise collaborate with fellow Educators and represent Pennsylvania in the national teacher of
017the year competition we could not be more proud that Mr Smith has earned this well-deserved recognition and we are just so pleased to take a moment today to honor you and your contributions Mr Smith thank you thank you very this is a it's very heavy so I don't I want to warn him before I hand you the the black Mr a glass a commemoration for you to have wherever you would like thank you very much this is beautiful appreciate that make sure I hold [Laughter] it you're like it's going to be pop bral for you now awesome conat congats now we've we've let Mr Smith know there are finals and he the high school starts early in in the morning so uh Mr Smith you're welcome to stay but we also recognize you have other
018obligations all right okay thank you stud okay uh so thank you very much to our students and teachers we are now going to hear uh about our 2024 independent audit and uh that is going to be presented to us by Carl Hogan who is a partner with Witham Smith and brown wait okay got you oh start the oh okay all right I didn't know if my presentation would come up on okay got all right uh sorry about that um so today I'm just going to to go over a couple things related to your 2023 2024 audit I know a couple weeks ago um Bob from my office came to one of your um U came and me met with the board and kind of went over the preliminary results since then we put together the
019whole audit document um for your review and we're going through the process of reviewing and approving it within our office um but I anticipate um almost positively that none of the numbers that were presented to you a couple weeks ago or being presented here tonight um are going to change in any type of fashion so um you know that being said I just picked out maybe 10 pages or so to go over um to go over the highlights of the audit um kind of like what I've done in previous years kind of go over what kind of audit report you received um what your financial results look like and then also finally um you know what the results were in terms of findings or any kind of question costs or any kind of anything we
020consider material weaknesses or significant deficiencies so the first three pages I picked here tonight are the independent auditor report um the independent Auditor's report is you know keeps on getting longer every year they keep on adding additional information to it um but this independent auditor report is a boilerplate report you want a boilerplate report you don't want to report with any kind of modifications or any kind of additional language indicating that um the um indicating that there was uh issues with the audit so um that's a good thing um the opinion paragraph is by far maybe the most one of the most important things in the audit report um basically what you're hiring is for to give an opinion on your financial statements basically stating that the numbers that were presented to us by management
021for the year ended June 30th 2024 were fairly presented and what you're going to find and what you probably saw a couple weeks ago is that everything that was being reported to you by the business office and management um is being directly reflected in this audited financial statement um the different sections of the auditor report um stay the same Management's responsibilities um our responsibilities um I'm going to mention also the required supplementary information on the bottom leftand corner there on page two um in relation to um we're going to go over the budget to actual schedule which is um required supplementary information but just like in previous years I really encourage everybody to at least read Management's discussion and Analysis um because not only does it give management the ability to talk about what happened
022in 2324 but also to talk about anything that's happened since the end of the year and to talk about what's going going to happen about in the future um unfortunately the audit is a historical document so it just gives the opportunity to go from that point in time that we stopped our audit procedures to current to kind of give context of what's happened since the results of the audit um the first two pages here um there's the budget to actual schedule um the budget to actual schedule is actually in the back of the audo report it's like a 70 page report and it's back of in the back of the audit report on page 51 the reason why it's in the back of of the audit report is because we don't audit your budget numbers
023we only audit your actual numbers um but I think it might be one of the most important um items within the audit report just because of the fact that putting out a budget on an annual basis for the board is one of the most important things you um you do as a um um if you think about it you're constantly in a budget cycle um you know you're going into 25 26 at this point in time so you need to get Baseline for 23 24 kind of take to um you know you know what's happened these first two six years as you kind of um take into consideration what kind of budget you're going to have for 25 26 so up at the top there you're going to see your total revenues $146 million and
024they almost came in right on budget um what you're going to notice here and what I'm noticing across all the school districts um there was a lot of velocity at revenues in previous years related to real estate transfer taxes real estate taxes um um different types of local Source revenues but that's kind of slowed down and we don't you know that kind of came in line with budget we've saw a lot of volatility there in the past couple years um the current year you did see a positive if you actually drilled down into that um we did see uh you know a positive number related to investment earnings but then we saw an offset related to such line items as transfer taxes so was kind of a give and take um with the investment earnings
025you really couldn't have anticipated when you went into the budget process that the interest rates would have went up to where they went to and then stayed there for the rest of the year and then also that you know the real estate market kind of went from really good in 2223 to not so hot in 23 24 and they kind of offset each other um State sources um where you're going to see there um you know came in right on budget which would be expected and same thing with Federal sources you know what those revenues are going to be on an annual basis from the state and hence they always seem to come in on budget um total expenditures um once again 145 uh no 146 million um they came in a little bit over
026budget $1.2 million if you look at the right hand column it's always the same um you know some that are up some that are down um but overall when you're looking at $1.2 million on $145 million um that's a really good budgeting job um but once again um you know some of those line items that are you know a lot of school districts had have uh don't have that you know things can get volatile let's put it that way in relation to special education and transportation and special education within the transportation so as you can see U those positive variances that you may have had in some of those other programs are being offset by those negative variances there so it's a good thing that you had some positive Varian but overall um it worked
027that within a good percentage of what your overall budget was um at the beginning of the year you budgeted to use $2.1 million of fund balance um you actually used $8.5 millions of dollars fund balance so the 2.5 million 2.1 million budgeted transfer over to the capital projects fund um actually turned into 8.2 Mill so over the past couple years um we've kind of gone through a period of time where the district has been able to put money aside for capital projects and the anticipation that that money would be sent to the capital projects fund so you committed that fund balance and then when it was time and when you had um the projects said you're ready to transfer the money over uh you transferred the money over um the reason that was done is
028to kind of help alleviate future uh borrowings of um Debt Service so instead of having to borrow as the district is going through its capital Improvement program um the district is able to kind of uh smooth in other sources of uh funding rather than having to borrow all the funding for all the projects that are going on at the school district so this was a plan transfer over from committed fund balance over to the capital projects fund um hence reducing the committed fund balance by about $8 million and reducing the overall fund balance we'll kind of look at it in a different picture here um shortly on the next page over there um so the fund balance was 27 .9 million um it decreased as you transfer the money over the capital projects fund um
029down to 19 about $19.5 million within your general fund fund balance but all planned in terms of these planed capital projects on the next page here is kind of the same information we just looked at you have the general fund and then once again I'm talking about the capital projects Fund in the in the in the middle column there and what you're going to see is you're going to see that $8 million kind of jump from that left hand column over to the middle column there and then also you issued some debt um during the current year um for the ongoing projects as well there's 22 uh over $22 million of debt issued of which some of that was refinancing some of that's Bond premiums um but overall um when you take that transfer in
030from the general fund um and the net effect of the bond issuances um we had an increase in $15 million in the capital projects fund it was at $1.1 million at the end of last year and uh now is at $16 million at the end of the current year so um you know as that money came in you had the $22 million plus the other money that came in net of the refunding and net of also the capital expenditures during the current year the net effect was a positive balance sitting there for future capital projects of about $16 million um so the next page I have here this is the balance sheet so we went over over the ins and the outs uh of the year and this is as of a specific point in
031time as of June 30th 2024 where your current assets where your current liabilities are and what the excess of those assets of liabilities being your fund balance um so uh once again if we come down below um you're going to look at the fund balance it's broken into different categories um you have your committed your biggest you have your committed fund balance and your unassigned fund balance and then you also have your restricted uh fund balance but that's related to your capital projects so if you go over to the comparative column over on the right hand side you're going to see that there's $14.7 million that was sitting there for the capital projects and then you utilized $8 million of it during the current year now your um restricted cap your committed capital projects fund
032balance is now 6.4 million that could be utilized and sent over to the capital projects fund to kind of offset um any kind of future capital projects and then also you utilize $2 million of that fund balance to balance your 24 25 budget and then finally you have 10 .8 million of unassigned fund balance and that's within the 8% of your next year's expenditure budget as Allowed by pte I think it's 7 you know 7 point something but um not up to the the total amount that you could have in there but it's about 7.5 or so I remember from reading in the financial statements let me go back um just one other thing I want to point out to we do um you know you know even though the general fund is primarily we
033concentrate most of our um audit we also um you know obviously the capital projects but also there's the Food Service fund um we added that as well um that's its own separate um uh fund within the school district basically it's funding itself with charges and also any kind of subsidies from the state um the food serer fund had another good um year um with an increase in its net position to $500,000 um the Food Service fund has continuously over the past couple years improved its financial position um the internal service fund this is your participation in the Delaware County Health consor um this is monies that are put aside um so every year you pay premiums on a monthly basis um based upon what your anticipated premiums are going to be on an annual basis
034and um as you can see here um uh the at the end of the year you had an increase of about $500,000 in funds that are sitting within the health care Consortium so $14 million are sitting within the healthc care Consortium as of June 30th 2024 and that gives you the ability to kind of smooth you're going to pay on an annual basis um you know as you go into your next year's budget there's um mechanisms in place with the healthcare Consortium that you could utilize those Monies to kind of offset any kind of volatility and those costs um that you're going to experience on an annual basis um you know the health Healthcare Consortium does require you to keep a certain amount of fund balance um within there um just because of the volatility
035of those types expenditures I'm not sure what it's up to at this point but you've had some very healthy years and gives you the ability to kind of offset future kind of increases in your premiums because of the healthy fund balance that you have at the healthcare Consortium um I just want to put this I usually don't bring up the footnotes at all but I just want to show as you kind of go on your Capital campaign or Capital Improvement program um as you continue to build um new debt into your debt structure um and until it gets to um you know the end of the capital Improvement program but currently um you know your uh Debt Service burden on an annual basis is about $14 million and that's about 10% you know if you
036145 million maybe a little under 10% of your annual budget um you know that's kind of in line with what I'm seeing in the other school districts you know 7 to 10% on you know related to their Debt Service budget and then the last uh page I have there is just the schedule findings and question costs like um just wanted to kind of go over the ultimately in the back of the audit report talks about the ultimate results basic we talked about the unmodified audit report um also just wanted to talk about the um there was nothing that Rose to the level what we consider a significant deficiency or material weakness um in your internal controls or anything over related to compliance or internal controls over financial reporting um I'm pretty sure we didn't have
037any type of material or um any kind of journal entries that were being recorded that would um make your financial statements different than was being reported to you on a monthly basis and then it also talks about the federal money that we uh perform an audit on it's pretty funny your federal money is such a small piece of what you get but has the most we spend a lot of time on it um just because of the fact that we're required to um you know not only does the IU kind of hover around your special education money but also um they also require us and due to the amount of spe Ida money that you do get um that seemed to be a major program and the other major program now that the Esser money
038is gone which I'm very happy about um you know the SRA money's gone your other major one will be your Child Nutrition program on annual basis so they'll kind of get rotated um unless there's any type of other new program that that show up in the future and that's it so um also you know um the business office has a reporting deadline to file an annual financial report with the state um I mean I don't know if you hear much about it it's a pretty complicated report it's glad to report that you know the you know the U uh business office was able to file that in the timely basis so you know it's a good accomplishment to get that in as well so and that's all I got that a question because I heard
039you say there was no material weakness or significant deficiencies found but I see on page 65.4 it says one material weakness and one significant deficiency I think that might have been related to the the previous the previous year that's a typo number number four on page that needs to be Chang there is there there are that that was Rel to the previous year okay okay I had the same question it does move through and then clar it does have a later paragraph about the 21 22 22 23 years but yeah um I noticed that inconsistency that was so glad to hear there are no fin no no there not I'll get that f it would it would have been caught it is a big report and I appreciate you going through and highlighting the most
040pertinent sections um I think it would be helpful just to hear a summary statement about the District's Financial condition if you could give one um well I mean now that I've been here a couple years it's gradually improved I mean um the school district um when it first came here didn't have a ton of fun balance and it's been able to um you know gradually increase its fund balance over a period of time um to be able to put it into a position where they can take money and put it towards capital projects that kind of help out um you know smooth out you know future burdens related to Debt Service um but ultimately I from what I've noticed is that especially when it comes to budgeting um you're extremely conservative with relation to your
041budget so in those right places in terms of revenues um in those line items um even though your trans just take for example your transfer taxes you could have been really aggressive and you know said hey we're going to get this again next year and then you would have been really you know and then the investment earings I don't think you would ever known about but you're conservative in relation to the budgets and then you're also you know on the expenditure side doing the same thing too as well you're not being you know trying to be oh we could do more with with less or whatever like that I think you're just being very realistic about what your budgets and how they're going to end up on annual basis so um I think that's the
042reason why you're in the position that you are today thank you the board will be asked to accept this uh independent audit report uh later on in this evening's meeting thank you so much uh presentation and the information up next I'd like to welcome Ken Matthews of CB development services to provide a construction update good evening everyone uh we'll start off with chadam Park uh so I'm sure if you've driven by you can see there's a lot of activity all the Steel's been set and done uh we poured all the concrete floors uh so that's in the front of the building in the rear of the building you have a masonry structure going on uh 7° weather is not helping us with that very much right now uh so the rear classroom is a little
043behind where it needs to be but we're working through that uh and we'll we'll definitely gain back some time but that is u a real struggle right now so hoping the weather turns here quickly and then we can get the second floor uh done in the back of the building so you know overall I think we're we're in pretty good shape um things are moving along uh generally as we would like except as I said the rear classroom we do have a little work to do there with the contractor so again we're working through that um so as far as progress you know overall the contractors are all getting along well they're they're good all good contractors uh that very lucky to get as you know it's it's low low bid wins uh so you
044don't always know who you're going to get but they've been all uh done a great job so a lot of the mechanical electrical Plumbing is all being done inside the building they're working at night uh uh when the students are out to get a lot of the new infrastructure running the hallways uh so they're really they are making great progress so um so generally speaking I think uh we're in good shape uh as far as chadam Park is concerned um and then I didn't know we had uh some chadam Park change orders on your agenda tonight so I didn't know if you wanted me to answer any questions now or just come back up under the finance portion of the meeting certainly we're here uh so you let let me know what you prefer so
045um there is going to be an opportunity for Port members to ask questions if they wish um once we get to that portion which we get to that portion perfect thank you um and then we do also have an update on Cooper town uh Jeff strob the lead architect for the project is here so we're you know moving to the Final Phase of design um so Jeff has a little PowerPoint presentation so you can see where we are uh and because we'll will be coming back to you here before too long uh to finalize the project budget and then you know go out to bid and uh have bids come back here uh in in the spring so Jeff before we move on to Cooper town can I ask a question about chadam Park sure
046um and this might be for the administration but um has there been any sort of survey or like what are the check-ins like with the staff and students there to make sure that the ongoing construction isn't having any issues with instruction or or other parts of the student day sure thanks for asking and for your concern for that um we have heard from staff um they uh Dr Whitehead does a really good job of staying connected with staff and providing opportunities for them to share what's happening uh he also has uh lunch bunches with various student groups where he checks in and and asks about those sort of things uh we did hear it was cold uh the last week or so I mean I know it was cold everywhere but in particular there uh
047so that was something that we were working on and of course our facilities folks get out there you know and do their best to help accommodate that sort of thing um Dr Whitehead assures us we are you know looking forward to the point when we're ready to move classrooms and those are the kinds of things that are on folks Minds now because that's sort of coming sooner rather than later and so they're sort of planning how can they move on uh how can they pack up that kind of thing uh and it's been just amazing remarkable how well the staff has uh adapted to this and ensured that the students are still having a high quality experience and and being flexible so our compliments to the students the families and the staff there thank you
048and and just from the construction side you know there's might be a little issue where truck is in the way or you know so we're there taking care of any small issues like that or if there's something's a little too noisy and interrupting a class uh so you do have a few minor things like that but so you know Jabari and Karen at the front you know we we take care of those issues if anything comes up you know they're few but they do they do happen uh now and again but overall it's it's been very good thank you no problem anything else for chadam all right great go ahead Jeff thank you thanks Ken okay we have a a PowerPoint presentation just a an update on uh where we are currently with Cooper town
049and um then we also have everybody should have a I believe a handout for the ACT 34 booklet um I'm not going to go go in real detail through the ACT 34 booklet if anybody has questions I think a lot of it we're going to handle in this PowerPoint presentation with sort of a an update and overview um of the project so just uh jumping into the project uh We've we've been finalizing the site design moving forward with Land Development approvals uh and really at the end of the day it's going to be minimal sight impact we have the two additions at the back of the building uh new main entrance and uh entry uh with the administration at the front of the building and probably the the largest uh change with circulation and parking
050is we'll we'll be having a uh a one-way exit to Cooper Town Road uh that will help with Bus drop off in in the morning uh the overall layout of the building has really been uh finalized uh from La previous presentations to the board um really sort of minimal uh nuances with engineering's teams uh with your facilities teams uh as an example uh there was a request to try to increase some of the storage throughout the building so we've had some minor additions for instance to the back of the building just in the last uh week uh week um and then what you can see up on the screen is the numbering that you see in the blue are uh throughout the building uh K1 is in the upper leftand corner uh second and third
051grade or or sort of towards the middle and the bottom left and then fourth and fifth grade uh groupings can be seen as well and then Distributing the green uh up on the screen is uh learning support special education sort of distributed evenly throughout the building uh both uh as the district uh has has utilized the building administratively but also following Department of Education uh standards for the state and then just some overall uh the new administration at the front of the building and secure entry there's about a lot of discussion about how uh students uh and visitors will move into the building and secure that throughout the day uh converting the old Auditorium that was UN underutilized into a new library uh adjacent directly off of the main lobby bringing the cafeteria out to
052uh also to that main lobby and expanding the existing kitchen and receiving for the building uh adjustments to the gymnasium adding a a stage platform as well as um bringing the instrumental and music together is is what you see with the two uh the two M's with um sort of in the pink uh magenta color as well as some learning support and then two rear additions of the building uh clustering the third grade with learning support and the goal here is to have uh support whether it be storage uh r rooms uh directly adjacent to sort of minimize that movement throughout the building and and increase academic time for the students and then mirroring across uh to the fifth grade pod so we're going to uh show some updated uh renderings we had we had
053uh presented them I think in December just preliminary and so uh really the exterior new entrance and expanded Administration um has been finalized what you see to the left is uh the old Auditorium we've added Windows uh for the New Media Center Library and then also uh visibility of anybody approaching the building for building for Safety and Security and then just another uh view of that and then uh once you enter through the secure vestibule this will be the main lobby uh with both entry into um the media center library and then the second set of doors is the entry into the cafeteria and then at the end of the hallway you sort of you uh will then uh have access into the classroom Wings there's lock down doors each of those sectors so uh
054whether there's an emergency the building can have a lockdown for Safety and Security or just after hours if you want to have the building open for Community use um keeping people out of the back classroom window of the building and then just another view of at the end of that hallway um uh we had some structure uh we're trying to work with the existing structure of the building as well as expansion and we uh where that was occurring actually is just becoming a natural bench um to sort of enclose some of that those components a view in the uh Media Center we're still working on some of the uh final color accent paints things of that nature uh there's going to be an upcoming meeting with the building Administration on uh whether it be uh
055uh logos things of that nature that we will'll put on the on the wall similar to what we did at chadam Park trying to incorporate uh and make the the building unique for the Cooper town community uh the new expanded cafeteria uh we're also continuing to make uh upgrade or uh design uh for the upgrade uh to the the main entrance to this building and uh sort of going through that that the district office main entrance will be an alter an ad alternate for the project uh similar to what we did at uh for chadam Park which will um for these sort of smaller projects it's it's very often difficult to get uh contractors to bid the projects but by combining that with Cooper town we'll get very competitive bids uh for this component of
056the project which uh really was a success related to the Middle School cafeteria with chadam Park uh cost estimate um we uh did receive on January 10th the third party cost estimate that was based on the 50% uh design development drawings um I'm happy to say um the estimate was roughly 77 Pages uh so very volumous we're not going to go through all that this evening for all of you but probably the takeaway is the the construction cost uh in October was $22.5 Million um the third party cost estimate came in at $23 million um a Delta of 2% So within the era of margin so sort of right on the Mark um we did have a lot of back and forth with them for about a week week and a half they were also
057looking at the bid that the advantage that we had having CH Cooper town right after chadam Park uh we were able to share those budgets the breakdown of materials from chadam Park and incorporate that with the cost estimator to Cooper Town um very rarely do you get that level of knowledge of what's occurring in the construction Market uh right within the community uh so it really helped us Zone in on that estimate as well the third party estimate incorporates a 5% estimating contingency of 500,000 so that even you know when you when you take that into Factor we're you know we're virtually right on budget uh from where we were back in October uh we will have uh two ad alternates for the project that I mentioned again or two large we may have some
058other supplemental alternates but uh the the uh main entrance uh to Oakmont here for roughly $400,000 um that's that's more of an allowance placeholder we're actually hoping that might be a little bit lower uh but just early on the project we weren't quite sure what the scope was there was going to be and also we're incorporating a solar array uh for uh for the building uh soft cost will be incorporated in the full budget that'll be Prov provided by Ken and his team very similar to what's been done on chadam Park uh as we get later in the project and just itemize all the cost in the ACT 34 booklet for now we're we're quite frankly taking the uh soft cost that we used for chaden park because the projects are so close in scope
059and dollar value uh with really both additions as well as uh Renovations throughout the the building to really modernize the entire building and then again the the third party cost estimate was completed on January 10th uh so really we're we're we're moving very well right now we're actually I think um next Thursday we'll be turning in the 50% construction documents so we'll really be just about a month uh from being comp complete uh with the documents and ready to go out to bid so with that um just overall um schedule and I'm going to probably focus a little bit more on the act 3 four booklet that you all have this evening um this sort of more of a takeaway if you have any questions some of the financial Pages the backup uh for pfm
060they are uh they are still working on those numbers because we had just gotten the cost estimate we've Incorporated that in the ACT 34 budget and then pfm will be finalizing their numbers over the the next uh week so this is a draft format um and anticipate that the final draft then will be uh completed in the next week and uploaded for all of your review ahead of the February 6 uh board meeting which uh we'll be asking for a vote to approve the booklet um so that we can then uh schedule the ACT 34 hearing for March 6 and there's a 20-day waiting period we've actually got about 30 days so we're just trying to be a little conservative uh with getting that advertised and everything um some additional things that are occurring in
061the near future I mentioned uh the documents that'll be turned turned over next week on January 30th uh we'll be going to Planning Commission um as well as zoning Commission in the coming weeks February 6th we'll be at uh for zoning February 13th we'll be doing Planning Commission so we're moving through all the the site approvals for the project um we will be out to bid um again drawings will be completed uh the same day March 6 as the ACT 34 hearing we will be out the bid uh March 11th and then uh we will tentatively be receiving bids in April and bringing that all uh forward to all of you um and then hope hopefully the goal is that we'll be uh moving into construction at the beginning of June when school school lets
062out okay so with that that's uh a quick overview of where we are are with the project really not a lot has changed since we've presented to you previously really just a lot of refinement which has really been the advantage that we had from chaden Park we really had a very Solid scope uh that we wanted to incorporate to to create Equity uh between the different buildings in the district um as we move forward so I have one quick question ma'am um I feel like I may have missed the memo on one thing so in the packet number 12 page 12 okay there's an overall existing second floor plan can you explain to me that was a typo on my part okay great I was like I did not believe we were adding an additional
063second floor to Cooper town that was that was a typo on my part thank you for for catching that okay all right that's all and I have a quick question with the cost that you have there the solar array of the half a million um half a million dollars is that for that is for Oakmont is that where where is the no that's actually for for Cooper town all right um and again that is also an allowance I would you know I think we're really trying to have it similar to the array size previously um so we'll be finalizing that with the district in the coming weeks on the on the size of that okay MH just like curiosity does that include the um the 30% IRS rebate um that is that would be the
064the anticipated whe whether it's 400,000 or 500,000 that would be the uh size of uh or the array on bid day to you but then yes um we would anticipate we we will be structuring the bids that you could s submit for Ira fund uh reimbursement funds uh in whichever manner so total I mean at the end of the day then the $500,000 is what we pay get back 30% of that which is 200 uh probably about $150,000 that I do my head engineer calculators um okay okay thanks okay was Cooper Town one of the facilities that was assessed by uh Mr Santano that was one that he did assess but would require more um more of a study because of the pitch I believe the pitch of the RO that's what I understand that
065with his initial scan it was not a feasible roof because of the slope SL and the ability to put a solar array on the so there might be a little more work involved so that one would require a little more study um looking at slide five of the of the presentation or the book the presentation okay um so I'm looking at the K And1 Wing I you can put it up on the screen um and I know that kindergarten classrooms have to have bathrooms and so I'm curious about the first grade rooms I can't read this writing here but are those bathrooms as well yes okay um and are those additions or are those existing that's all exist all the existing Wing that's all the existing fitting within the existing building so there's not any
066additional rooms being added with bathrooms uh we are uh there are existing toilets in the K1 Wing we are adding uh individual toilets both uh in the the third grade pod as well as the fifth grade pod so it'll be in close proximity to those grade groupings so you'll have that throughout the building uh typically those are for um your faculty but also they're available for students um if you have a student that doesn't want to use uh you know the stand bathrooms or or there's there's some need so yeah and that was a specific request from uh from the school district okay and then I want to look at the um slide 12 which is the 3D rendering of the front of the building and I'm just curious what went into this look the
067design and if there were other options given um yeah to me it doesn't really look like a modern design I don't know if it's just trying to keep with like the general tenor of the building right now which looks like it's from like the 50s and 60s um was there thought given to making it look more modern you hit it on the mark okay it's always difficult when you're doing an additions and renovations to the to a building especially when the majority of Windows um and the exterior of the existing building um is in really good condition for instance the windows are um are U you know modern do not have to be replaced um so we did take a different approach than what we looked at um for Chad and park or uh which
068was sort of modeled after things that had occurred at lywood right which very modern and exactly sort of look like a new build I mean obviously Lynwood is a new building but like the way that chadam I think is going to look is that it's going to present like a a new modern building exactly and I think part of that is the editions at chadam Park are are much larger and it's a two-story Edition is part of part of the component of chadam Park where here the addition was more modest um there was also and we did go through quite a lot of uh variations um and we we were even looking at the same color palette as Lynnwood and chadam park um and it just seemed to be very foreign to the building um
069another component which you it's a little hard to see here but you see it on the left for which is going to be the New Media Center is um the stone on the existing building we went there was a lot of discussion back and forth on that um and it turns out that that stonework is actually uh unique to the cooper cooper town community and there was a lot of discussion uh from uh the staff at the building about uh maintaining that incorporating into the design and so we started to step backward and say instead of trying to bring in the same color palette that was on um chadam Park and on Lynwood um how could we maintain what was already and unique on Cooper town so we we had a discussion of okay let's
070let's just separate Cooper Town completely from the other buildings and not just try to repeat um so we're trying to play off of that that stonework um The Masonry that's on to the right um is um sorry a brick that will be complimentary of that stonework we are trying to go with a very sort of modern overhang that wraps uh that administrative block and then play off the window design uh with going with an anodized aluminum window so what we're trying to do is it's more of a subtle modern version and then we tried to bend the roof line up and then that becomes the form of the main entry that's complimentary to the same angle that's existing on the Media Center so that was sort of very much what we were discussing and then
071that the color the the red uh uh metal work that you see on chadam and Lynwood instead of having that directly on the exterior you can actually see it uh in this image is uh the red uh wall that goes back through the main hallway um it'll be more subtle during the day but the discussion was that'll sort of glow that that uh main volume will glow in the evening and sort of be a sort of a beacon was the discussion um as some somebody that's coming up to the building in in you know in the evening hours so um you're right it's not quite as modern as as the other buildings but uh I think the discussion was trying to be sort of a muddle not muddle I'm sorry a uh uh sort of
072a more modest uh interpretation of a modern design so I hope that gave you some detail and that's helpful and I guess guess I'm just to be clear that the PE people some people involved in this discussion were members of the community or or the the staff or who who was involved staff Administration there had uh we didn't have direct conversations but they they had had discussions with people in the community and were conveying that information back to us uh cuz very early on we actually were looking at covering up some of the stonework and we heard very loud and clear to not go that direction and and you know In fairness we we were coming and we didn't we didn't realize that there was some kind of tie to the community and I guess
073that that stonework is not only utilized on the school but it's actually utilized on many of the the the houses in the community and I was happy to hear that the um community and hopefully the students are involved in the design on the inside as as was the case certainly at Lynwood um because I think that'll really tie into their identity over there at Cooper town and that will really resonate with the children that they can see you know that that their communities represented on the walls so I know these like I was looking at it I was like what's with all the blue um and so I was happy to hear that this was just you know well and and I would mention on the interior uh we're talking more about the exterior here
074but the the one Nuance that you're you're seeing in the interior renderings is they're not quite as um I'm going to say Graphics that you saw on on uh chaden Park and part of that was chadam Park before we were even involved had gone through a process in the previous years um under uh uh uh uh Mr Whitehead's uh direction of um sort of they had the spike logo but it was really refined and really people were brought together about fi you know finalizing that logo um there is you do have the cougar logo at um Cooper town it's not quite as developed as uh the spike logo at chadam Park so some of the discussion has been and we even had that discussion today um that will be developed Ving that logo either with
075the art art Department in the school involving the students um we you know whether we might need to bring a graphic artist in to help help with that process so the goal is that we'll be developing the interior Graphics very similar to chaden park so thank you okay just also for Jeff there's always me getting on about cost so I mean in all seriousness saving that stone is a big deal because if you're ripping it off now you're putting a whole new facade on so there is that balance of you know trying to to do their job and be creative and then they get pulled back a little bit so that is part of the process so just wanted to make that statement yeah I appreciate that and I think one of the things like
076looking at it as a rendering and you know obviously things look different in person and as it you know you go along further and design things were fine sort of like I feel like the building's almost like Whispering Cooper Town Elementary at me right and so like it kind of looks like almost an afterthought um again just thinking about like what the um lywood looks like now and what um tattam Park is going to look like it just seems more prominent and so you know thinking about making sure that this is representative of the community I'm happy to hear about the stone and that was a big discussion and it was kept but again just thinking about like the way that our buildings look and the way that that makes the students feel coming into
077the buildings every day isn't getting lost for you know um any sort of reason well and we'll take these comments from this evening and uh we are still you know working on design F we still have a month and a half finalizing everything uh so we'll take those comments uh to heart just have a question about the K1 Wing I so I obviously all the kindergarten classrooms have private bathrooms I notic all the first grade ones do as well is that because some of them currently do and this was just a way to make them all the same or was there some addition was there some I believe that's really it's been the administration it's really the you know Administration standard um and it's very common to see uh bathrooms both in K1 uh sometimes
078you got variation between uh buildings but okay and and also just briefly this is obviously we've seen come down the Pik possibly from Harrisburg uh this would accommodate full day kindergarten uh we are providing four kindergarten classrooms and we're actually trying to standardize the K and the one actually to give you more um options for the future but that's more of an administrative uh discussion for all of you we sort of similar to chadam park we're setting the building up and then uh that gives you options in the future as a district okay thanks okay thank you very much for your time have a good evening thank you great thank you both okay uh the next portion of the superintendent's report is the uh overview of our academic performance presentation and I will welcome Mrs
079Carter to the podium she and I will take a few slides um each and review uh or provide a sort of a general overview a little higher level presentation of the academic performance on local our our state and our national assessments the um actual detailed really nitty-gritty presentation occurred on November 14th at the curriculum committee meeting so if you are interested in the details and the subgroups and all the sort of minor uh not minor in importance but just smaller level information we really encourage you to watch it uh it's got lots of good information it's got presentations from the principles it's a really strong um picture of where we are uh today we're going to pull up a little bit and just give you the the general gist um so uh uh I don't
080have do you have the clicker I have the great you to the next one thanks Mrs Carter uh we always like to begin any academic performance presentation with a just a big picture of the many ways that we assess student performance um these are measures of both academic achievement as well as non-academic factors as I mentioned tonight we're going to just talk about pssa Keystone proficiency and growth and advanced placement and sat performance but you can see listed here the many many ways and this isn't even everything um that we do uh determine to what degree our students are successful in learning the standards as well as um developing the um the way that we would like them to through our mission and our pillars um I I just don't want to go without mentioning
081you know there are daily assessments that occur in the classroom they're called formative assessments I mean that's when the teachers are looking around and determining can the students in front of me do the things I would like them to be able to do or that are meeting our objectives and that is really you know some of the most impactful and important testing but of course we also need to know at the end of the day did they learn it you know at the end of the grade and and that's what we're going to present here this evening the next oh H is there any way we can change those to Black they were black in the original excuse me conveniently we do have a copy of of uh one of those slides they're gonna they're
082going to switch that slide over there um this will look familiar to those who are in the room because we do have one of these tables posted in our boardroom uh each year we take a look at how our students perform on the state assessments as compared with the um state and local districts so these charts oh thank you very much that's great uh reflect our ranking of the percent proficient or Advanced students both as a percentage which is the one to the left and as a number which is how we got those percentages uh in the chart to the right uh the as you can see we've listed here the last three years with the most recent data that most recent data is in the sort of the darkest yellow the column all the
083way to the right in both tables um and the source for this information is our state run website it's it's ppva as. SAS sas.com um and I just like to note that this what's nice about this information is it is up Tod date so you can see it's got the 2024 information sometimes on other websites or whatever lists are out there they're they're sort of lagging behind a couple years so it's nice to be able to also have this information uh that's more up to-date so I'll just say with the actual content of this you'll note that our ranking is in the top percent percentages of the state and that they've gotten higher in several areas uh and so while this is certainly caused for celebration we're also mindful that these percentages can fluctuate based
084on many factors um for example we're implementing new Ela curriculum in the elementary level uh this year and and research shows that there's typically an implementation dip when you're doing that of course we're working really hard to mitigate that and we're seeing good results in our map assessments but it's possible that we would come back in another year and there might be a percentage ranked slightly lower we recognize that that these are fluctuations and they're to be expected however there's lots to celebrate here uh just to take a look you can see our math across grades four through eight uh went from 2022 we were in the top 6% of the state to the top 3% and if you sort of just translate that across as the Top Line you can see um you know
085we're 19th out of 648 uh what they call eleas so those are districts as well as charter schools that um have those grades um and then you could just sort of go down the chart and get a sense of the rest Ela we in the top 2% science grade four or sort of like hovering around eight or nine% science grade 8 we went down a little bit in our percentage ranking so we're looking to sort of find out more about that and you can see our keystones are are top one two and 4% as well uh so those are achievement that's like straight up did you pass right did you meet a cut score are you proficient or are you Advanced the next slide um finds another way they use those data they extrapolate it
086out to determine whether to make predictions about to what degree student performance will grow and then they measure did they meet those predictions or did they meet what they're calling the growth standard so you'll hear us say peas that's about growth so it's about relative position a group of students took the assessment they were sort of in the middle the next year did they remain sort of in the middle did they go up a little bit now they're toward the top did they go down a little bit now they're toward the bottom that is a peas um that we are referring to the official definitions are written up here for anyone who's viewing the presentation later uh bless you we just want to say that um the state actually puts out there that the comparison
087of these measures to the growth charts that you might see at your uh doctor's office or the pediatrician's office they say you know that's one piece of data that can help inform our instructional decisions and help us make uh determinations about how well our students are growing but it certainly needs to be taken with a lot of other data sources which is one of the reasons we always start our data presentations with that uh uh review of what we're looking at so now I'm going to turn it over to Mrs Carter who will actually share with us some of that data thank you for having me this evening so my goal is that I know it's been a long evening you've looked at a lot of numbers so that I don't get to data glaze
088there goes over your face as we go through but please stop me if you have a question so here you're looking at the famous Scatter Plots that we love to look at as a district when you look at it you're going to see that you have achievement on the far left going up and down and then um horizontally you have growth our goal is to always be in the top right corner where we have high achievement and high growth on the other side you have high achievement and low growth and then low achievement high growth and then in the bottom left low achievement and low growth when you're looking at this chart we're looking at um Ela for our schools you are seeing that there are 620 to 648 school districts and Charter Schools represented
089across the state of Pennsylvania those are in the purple we have 18 um school districts or Charter Schools represented in the turquoise squares it's kind of hard to see looking in from here but the turquoise squares and of course we are the gold star that you can see for ELA we have high achievement and high growth which is our goal as a district is to always have that in the bottom you see um what many of our principles this week have this week or the past few weeks actually have been learning all about peas and what the colors mean and I want to just go through the colors a little bit for you so the to understand what you're looking at as well so to orient you when you're looking you're going to see green
090means that you met the growth indicator set by pte light blue means moderate evidence that the school exceeded growth dark blue means there is significant evidence yellow indicates that there is moderate evidence that the school did not meet expected growth and red means that there is significant evidence that the growth was is not met as you can see several of our schools have met or are well above their growth expectations when we look at it for ELA we have two schools who are well below and our curriculum teams and principles are continually continuously looking at what they can do to help improve this we had conversations today it's always at the top of mind to figure out how can we help our students to grow all right here we're looking at the same type of
091graph again we have high achievement and high growth so as we look at that we can also see that many of our schools are meeting those growth expectations we have one who did not but again our teams are consistently working our math coaches everyone is all in on figuring out how we can help improve our growth scores and learn from the schools that are are doing really well and our principles really work as a team to figure that out they it was exciting to actually see them today get excited to see what their scores look like as a whole and then how they can help each other along the way can can I ask quick question sure um so just to be clear the bars on the bottom of the slide that's just growth it's
092not you have the scatter pot that's growth and achievement yes okay thank you this was the easiest way for us to get you a lot of information in one slide instead of making you look at a lot of slides I I love to talk about data but I know you don't want to be here all night to talk about it so hopefully that helps if you do have more questions about achievement we're always happy to give you some more information do I need to double click it okay there we go so here we have um the pssa for fourth grade and for eighth grade as you can see for fourth grade we have high achievement but we have lower growth just to give you a little bit of background when you think about growth for
093fourth grade the state looks at it based off of their Ela and math scores because they don't take a science pssa before that they use the fourth grade to help inform the eighth grade growth but that's what you're looking at when you're looking at the scores to identify how the state looks at growth and then for eighth grade we are close to to the line but we have high achievement and we still have lower growth that we're continuing to work on for keystones can I just just for one one thing I want to make sure I'm clear on that the fourth grade helps to inform the eighth grade yes and so that is um what is used to measure the growth based upon how eighth graders so the eighth grade Piva score is based off
094of how they performed in fourth grade so how did they grow from fourth to eth which for science right yes just for Science and I know it's a lot because you think about all of those standards are now combined okay thank you you're welcome so here we have Keystone literature same orientation I can go through these quickly we have high achievement and high growth again and you can see we're in the blue at the bottom as well for Keystone literature biology again high achievement high growth in comparison to the state and other districts in our area and in the blue again and then we have Al the algebra Keystone which this includes the middle school and the high school so because our Middle School also takes the algebra 1 in 8th grade you see that
095they also have a high growth here as well but you can see they are off to the side where there's not many others around them when you think about it for math which is exciting to see and something to really celebrate the math work that's happening around our algebra work hand it back over to you great thank you Mrs Carter okay so that was the growth we'll go back to achievement this is just giving a longer view of our achievement uh proficiency and um the reason we go it's from 2015 to 2024 the reason we go back to 2015 is because that's the year that the assessments themselves changed and pde does not recommend you look prior to 2015 because it was a completely different test in fact they don't even like make that data
096available to us in the same data sources anymore um so that's you know this kind of gives you a picture of where have we been for the last nine years or so and uh we we have all the way to the left is 2015 Ela is at the top math is at the bottom and this is for element um so even if you just see there's a little bit of fluctuation year to year that is fairly typical um and and you'll see the state sort of does the same thing it also goes up and down a little bit some years are down a little farther some years are up a little higher um we are pleased to see that in several cases we're sort of back to where we used to be however this is
097the kind of information that we look for patterns so is there a particular grade that we're still like not trending in the direction we want to be trending and in this uh instance we do have uh lots of success it's listed here by building we look at it by building but we also look at it by grade um there had been a question at the it's okay you can go to the next one Christina but there had been a question about sort of what's a significant difference between years you know is this statistically significant to see that kind of fluctuation the state does not publish that kind of information I can just tell you that the standard error is very low like. 34 but they don't give us necessarily um information about how each district
098or each school um you know changes from year to year and what is statistically significant so just wanted to mention that uh Middle School we also have a nine-year review uh again Ela at the top math at the bottom you can guess which years were which right uh uh 2015 is all the way to the left 2024 is all the way to the right and um as you'll see later I'm going to show you a cohort uh piece where the kind of increase that we are seeing for our cohorts or even maintaining is actually positively bucking the trend we in the state things tend to go down and here at our Middle School we are seeing things actually go up um so that's one of the reasons you see so much blue at the middle
099schools because everybody else is either staying even or going down and we're going up in some cases so that's that's sort of how they get that result uh the next slide is that cohort comparison and I know these numbers are tiny I apologize this is all available on the website um haford is to the left of the line Ela at the top math at the bottom the state is to the right of the little green line um so you can see here this is a cohort of students so if you're looking these are the other ones are like a different set of kids every year third grade is a different set of kids one year as it is the next year this is following third grade into fourth grade right now following them into fifth
100grade how did they do how are how are they doing is fifth sixth seventh grade so um what you see here is that we have a pretty consistent performance for cohorts across their number of years now every once in a while there's like a Dropout here where somebody didn't get tested because it was not a year that they didn't do the tests or something like that but you get a general sense of you you can see a fairly consistent use across uh performance across the years whereas in the state if you even look sort of the bottom right you can see how it sort of goes down a little bit ours does not do that um in ela everybody's a little bit more even so we're doing sort of the same thing that the state
101does so we just wanted you to know that we do look at those things we're trying to look at it at many different angles um and we do that for both um keystones as well as for not keystones for ELA and math uh pssas as well science and then the next one is keystones this is a 5-year review just giving you a sense of where we have been over the last five years um the top are all three keystones for haford and the bottom are all three keystones for the state and then the next slide oh we're going to pass it over to speaking of high school to Dr Moyer who's going to share just a quick overview of our essay performance good evening no forgot my all right okay this this slide um shows
102us the scores for the high school over a three-year period the school's sat performance data reveals fluctuations in both participation and mean scores 2022 saw a total of 338 students students participate and they achieved the mean score of 1184 2023 participation increased to 374 students but the mean score declined to 1145 and in 2024 the number of participant slightly decreased to 358 while the men score improved to 1168 this data suggests variability in both participation and performance and the highest average score we recorded was in 2022 and the largest number of participants uh we saw of this 3-year period was in 2023 uh many colleges and universities in the US have adopted test optional admissions policies especially after the covid-19 pandemic and this has reduced pressure on students to take the SAT so we're seeing
103some um some lowering of the uh participation rate uh since the pandemic okay this slide goes through the AP scores for um the high school um and this is another one of those slides that we should celebrate uh total AP students um increased uh there's a steady increase actually in the number of students taking the AP courses over the years rising from 519 students in 2020 to 6 11 in 2024 largest jump was uh happened between 2023 and 2024 with an increase of 86 students participating the number of exams given um mirrors that Trend and it rises from 986 in 2020 to 1146 in 20124 and this tells you that on average students are taking almost 2 test 1.8 tests each um which is good good level of participation as far as the number of
104students scoring three or better um the number of students scoring three or better um declined a little in 2021 compared to 2020 likely due to the uh disruptions um that the students face like the pandemic however uh the numbers recovered in subsequent years peaking at 548 uh this past year 20 24 the highest in the data set that we have um percent of students scoring three or better um dropped from 8748 in 2020 to 81.5 one again that same time period um likely reflecting those challenges the students face there and uh we also had a rebound in the score showing that uh 89. 69% of students scored to three are better in 2024 that was the highest over the 5-year period showing that um improved preparation performance among students was positive um the overall trends
105for participation in AP programs it's grown significantly over the years and with the addition of uh other AP courses that I believe are planned uh the rate or not the rate but the number of participants will probably likely increase uh in the near future okay thank you Dr moer you're welcome um that's that's sort of the general overview of the state and and National Data but when we um met on November 14th with the committee there were a couple of questions that were asked so we wanted to take this opportunity to provide a response to those questions and the first uh that we are going to talk about is going to come from uh Dr David Parker who's going to share some information about WEA scores if you don't mind and you'll explain what that
106is yes okay great thank you good evening pardon me tonight I'm here to address a question was raised at the no November 4th uh committee meeting regarding our English learner population how their WIA access scores correlate with proficiency levels on the pssa and KY exams for those unfamiliar weda stands for world-class instructional design and assessment the weda access assessment is an annual standard reference test that measures students English language proficiency across four domains speaking writing listening and reading the we to access assessment categorizes proficiency into six levels ranging from one or level one excuse me entering to level six reaching to help Educators understand a students ability to use and comprehend English and academic settings as an example students at level one and two are still developing found excuse me foundational English skills and may
107face challenges demonstrating their content knowledge due to language barriers compared to students at who progress to levels four and five their ability to engage with academic tasks improves sub substantially leading to Stronger performance on state assessments as reflected on this slide uh our data includes proficiency proficiency levels one through five this is because all of our higher level El students in the 23 24 school year were reclassified or in other words were exited from Direct Services before reaching level six turning to the 2324 data is important to highlight the demographic cont context during this period our El team provided direct instruction to 140 students K through 12 of these 62 students were eligible to part participate in the pssa or the Passa and for English excuse me English language arts um Andor the Keystone exam
108in literature the table on the left summarizes the assessment results six students achieved Advanced scores 18 students achieved proficient scores additionally 30 students scored at the basic level and seven students scored at the below basic level and as I mentioned a second ago one student was eligible for the Passa while multi multilingual Learners were identified as a lower performing subgroup on the pssa and Keyon assessments is encouraging to note that according to the peos data which is there on the right our El students met or exceeded growth expectations this demonstrates progress even if not all of our students reach proficiency on the pssa or the Keystone exam the waa assessment or excuse me the waa access assessment combined with State testing data enables us to refined structural strategies aligned with Thea standards and Implement targeted
109interventions to support our students in achieving success in both academic and language development you have any questions for me great thank you Dr Parker and uh Mrs Carter will now take the next set of questions all right back to the Scatter Plots so additional questions were asked about how our individual schools are performing when we think about achievement and growth so the next few slides are going to just show you exactly where our schools are performing same orientation similar information you're going to see at the bottom the schools have been coded with the names so that you can see which one is which so we're starting this time with math so was notable that I want you to look is that all of our schools are actually above that 50 line so when we met
110with the pis consultant with all of the schools over the past two weeks she really wanted to note for us in every single building that we should be really really proud of how our students are performing and achieving because by them being above the average line we have some really high achieving students in the district which means we have to do a lot of work to help them grow so so that is a highlight when you see um each of our buildings looking at them so here are here's math and for ELA here's where all of our schools are performing and here's for science fourth grade specifically so when we talk about our students performing really high something to note when we talk about about that is look at Cooper Town Cooper Town had 100%
111of their students were proficient or Advanced on the pssa for science but when you look at their growth you see that they're below so you ask the question well how how does that happen right but when you have them and some of them are reaching such a high level you have to work really really hard to continue to help them grow and maintain that growth and our goal when we think about the colors at the bottom is how do we help students maintain and exceed what is expected of them so that's kind of where people ask that question of but how can that be if they're achieving so high why would it be that we don't have the same type of growth that you would think would go with it and I think that's the
112last one I have a question related to what exactly achievement and growth means um so when we're talking about achievement we're talking about achievement as as it relates to the test that they took so like though that sort of standardized measurement of achievement like they did well on this test right but when the pssa or the Keystone and then when we're talking about growth that would be how well they did in if if they were at you know they got 80% of the questions right last year and they got 85% of the question right this year that would be a positive growth is that what we're talking about yes and you want you want to take it you want so this is the same question that a lot of our um we had teacher teams
113this year join us for all of the page training so we can increase the capacity around understanding and it's really looking at where did they enter versus where did they exit and then based off of where it was from the previous year and whatever the expectation that was set by the state for them to make that growth so a achievement is like yes they achieve what that level is that they performed but did they meet those expectations based off of where they left off for the state I hope that answers it if not tell me when I'm when I'm thinking about growth I think about whether the person's meeting their potential right and so like you're you're a high achiever you're doing well um by your academic measurements and then but when you're thinking okay
114well even if you're at 100% that doesn't mean that that's your limit right no and and that you specifically can go ahead of that and so I think of growth as potential and I guess my my biggest question is like does this think of growth as potential or like what am I like what what just making sure we're talking about the same thing yes so the state sets an expectation for um each student of what their expectation is for growth they will tell you and they told us within our trainings that they expect for every student to meet the expectations that's set because they believe that they can grow there are only I think they said 10 students across the state that have reached the cap we have more than 10 students here and they're
115not all of our students so we know that we can continue to work with students and that is honestly what our Focus was even today in our conversations was looking at our Advanced students in particular and saying how can we continue to help them Reach their Highest Potential and meet those expectations and Beyond and that is a lot of our heavy lifting here because we do have such high performing students thank you that's really help it can also be helpful it's such a a challenging concept and like we've known about posos for about 13 years and we still talk about like are we sure we going to get training every year about it it can be helpful to think of it as relative position to the group so your group of students performed how as
116compared with all the rest of the students and then did they maintain that relative position the next year or even it's not percentiles but it's like the most familiar thing people have it's almost like did they maintain at the 82nd percentile or are they now at the 89th percentile that means they're probably light blue or blue um so it can be either you did better than everybody else or it could be you did the same and everybody else did better it could be you did a little worse and everybody else did the same it could be everybody went down and now you're still so it it really is your relative your group's relative position to the larger group clear as Bud right yeah that made it less clear sorry we'll keep working on that I
117have oh I have two comments and like a question so one thing I I did ask at the last meeting if and I know at the time I was told that it wasn't available yet if we could have comparisons I know we compare to the state on here but to some of our surrounding I mean in addition to the state not that we can't compare to the state I think you know I'd be interested in seeing that I think other parents wouldn't at the time I think you know the stuff had just come out and it wasn't published yet um so I would love to see that the other um comment was just a sticking point I would love to see with the um AP scores you know a Callum most colleges I mean I
118know none of the colleges my son is apply to take a three and it's shock like I think I said at that meeting shocking to me that like you know when I was in three and above very few do so I mean if you want to keep the three plus column great but I would love to see another breakdown like four and above just knowing that's the reality that um you know I mean a lot of schools are just taking even fives I mean I know quite a few do take four but I would like that breakdown differently not necessarily this year no but in the future um and then I had a question so on the slides uh when we were looking at um the bar graphs with oh no it wasn't the bar
119graphs I'm going to call tell exactly what slide it was when we were looking at I think it's slide three so we conceptualized when it says like have our school district in 2024 is top 3% in math across grades 4 through eight is the grouping in four to8 how we chose to present it or how the state does I'm curious on that yeah thanks good question it's actually on the State website the p. sas.com if it's on the public site there okay and if you um you go and you like search for districts you could look for our district and then they they give you a by grade and then an across grades and when you sort by across grades it'll give it to you in order of like the highest achievement to the lowest
120or the lowest achievement to the highest and when you do that you'll see that for example for math they're you know we're the 19th down from their calculation of across grades okay no I because it's it's I mean that's awesome but then you look at eth grade math we were 45% of our students were basic or below basic and then so that's confusing to me because 3% awesome but I mean 45% of our eighth graders in math being basic like that I was trying to reconcile that all in my head I know Lynwood's fifth grade math around 40% basic or like and I'm like you know I I'm gon to have to look at the other districts and scores I think that would I think I need to go on the website and kind of
121conceptualize that better yeah and I think I think it's a question that like everybody in the state should be asking how is it possible for us to be that high ranked and still have a percent that percentage of students because that's how the test is if you look at the state average I mean like the state average is 26% of the kids not not even State average I'm sorry it's 26% of the kids were proficient or advanced in math and you at some point you got to ask like this has been years now at the state level where it's been 30% of the kids 26% maybe one year was 38% of the kids like so how is it that the highest performing districts in the state are still seeing that level of proficiency at some
122point like if we were giving these tests we would be looking at the tests and we would be saying what's going on why aren't our kids able to do this if these tests were under our control they're not um and so you can see that you know while those numbers are not the numbers we want to see in our percent proficient are Advanced as compared with the rest of the state it puts us in these top percentages because that's how everybody's doing thank you thanks for raising that important point that a quick question um slide is this it's slide 11 in the PDF it's the um Ela and math pssa achievement 9e review paragraphs S I didn't hear you Elementary Ela and math pssa achievement 9year review the bar graphs oh after this okay this
123one yes um so something that stood out for me here looking at the trend line is fifth grade math um we were at 87% um Prof fish in our advanc in 2015 and now we're down to 77 this look like a downward Trend over time and I don't believe we're the only District that is seeing that kind of drop off in fifth grade math do we know um have we started to dig into what's happening there what the skills are that students might need more support with uh we are looking at skills but I'm just going to try Orient myself so we're looking at the uh bottom graph all the way to the right is grade five and we were in 2015 at about 66.8 and then sort of went up we had a high
124point in 2018 I oh okay it's Ela yes okay so question okay frame it but yes it is generally lower Agreed 100% And yes and this is one of the things we were looking at in our Ela audit when we're looking externally like what are people doing where it's working this is one of the reasons we were looking for different resources right because we haven't seen an uptick everybody else seems to be like making their way but what's going on with fifth grade and I will just say we always dig in too because even though it says all of fifth grade here we have to find out is it literally every single fifth grade classroom or is it you know in a certain area a certain kind of Cl like how do we help drill
125down so that we can help uh address it sure okay so just a quick reminder that the the full details I think it was a full two hours maybe two and a half hour presentation of these same data um happened on November 14th you can find that video on the um District website we really encourage you to do it because it's nice to hear the principal voices and and um some of the celebrations as well as the things we're working on many thanks to our families and our students and of course our amazing teaching staff and administrator staff for their dedication to using these data and um helping students succeed and and really working on continuous Improvement so so we really and of course thank you to the board for your support in our work
126in that area and I mean if you can stand my voice for two more seconds I have two more comments for the superintendent report uh number one we you'll see this evening we have uh three charitable donations on our agenda and I just wanted to take a moment to thank those individuals and organizations for supporting our schools and students with these donations uh doing so emphasizes the commitment that our whole Community feels to our students and families in District and we thank them for their support and then finally there is a community conversation scheduled with the board uh that's where some members of the school board of directors will be uh available to have a community conversation it's going to happen on Thursday January 30th at 7 p.m in the Middle School library uh this
127is an opportunity for the community to have informal conversations with some of our board members and with that Dr King I will conclude the superintendent report thank you thank you all right so that brings us to section four public comment um the board values public comment there are two opportunities on the agenda for members of the community to provide public comment during the meeting the first opportunity on the agenda for public comment is to allow members of the community to speak on items listed on the agenda the second opportunity on the agenda is towards the end of the meeting which allows members of the community to speak on any topic public climate allows for residents of the township to speak for 3 minutes a timer will be set set at the start of your comments
128and alarm will sound indicating that your time has been completed should you have any materials for members of the board please leave them at the end of the table with Mr Tesa for later distribution to the board please note that if appropriate a member of the administration may follow up with you at a later date please state your name confirm your residency and a timer will begin for you to be allowed your 3 minute remarks um yep and so I don't have any um members of the community signed up for the first section of public comment I do have some for the second section of public comment I signed up for the first part about an agenda item the uh pupil Services committee and what I have to say I have a lot to say
129about the item on the agenda which there's a section in what I have here which speaks to our lack of knowledge of the artistic reading levels of our our artistic students who don't even take that test and the reading programs in our school it is an item now I don't want to wait another half hour to go through this meeting to speak on an item agenda that I signed up to speak and so the first portion of the agenda is for Action items that are listed I do I do have you noted to speak for the second half though and so I there's also someone else that signed up for the second half and so I'm going to stick with what I have here and based upon what you just said um it is based
130upon items that are listed for an action item so if there's anyone that would like to speak on an action item on the agenda that I don't have your name listed here you're more than welcome to come to the podium if not we will have those comments made at the second half all right thank you so we're going to continue on to section five which is board reports for the first step I have the Delaware County Community College Dr mang yes so two things um to note on um on our agenda tonight we will be voting for um three new members of the trustees for the Delaware County Community College um what happens is the responsibility for selecting the col the college's trustees lies with the sponsoring School directors and so we are also um
131included in that so there will be three individuals um who will be voted on later on in the agenda also the spring um 2025 enrollment Ro um numbers were released today or sent to us today um so in for haford um the enrolled students um are 321 and then for our dual enrollment students um are 30 for this um spring semester so I'm just really grateful that we have 30 students who are taking the opportunity to take advantage of um having Community College courses while also in the high school um so that's that's the report from Delaware County K College I also failed to let you know Dr King that I do have a report from the wellness committee to either do now or later on okay you can go ahead and do that now
132okay great um so I just because the lateness of the meeting I will be quick um on January 13th I attended the wellness committee where we had updates from the elementary school the middle school and the high school on Wellness activities health services and Food Services um the best part of the meeting is always when we get to hear directly from our students and we had two incredibly thoughtful High School Representatives that proposed suggest questions on how to improve the wellness at high school so I am looking forward in the next I hope couple of months that we hear from the high school and how they've considered and Incorporated those students proposals thank you uh next up is dciu Dr Larson we will officially have a representative um from our board to dciu um once
133their board votes on our nomination of Miss latan Lee beginning in February thank you legislative Council Dr Shon there's been no meeting since the last uh board meeting the next meeting of legislative council is February 12th thank you psba Miss vman on okay I have a couple of things from psba one is that earlier this month uh Federal District Court uh made a ruling that uh impacts reporting procedures and investigations of complaints made pursuant to Title 9 UM with potentially Nationwide repercussions pba's legal and policy Services team are going to be reviewing that and providing guidance and assistance and encourage districts to work with the solicitor to address any District specifics uh related to what those changes may bring um this month um the general assembly returned to Harrisburg and on February 4th Governor Shapiro
134will give his budget address with the proposals for the 2526 state budget budget and psba government Affairs team will be uh reviewing that talking to legislators getting their um feedback and reactions and there will be a webinar pertaining to the budget on February 7th a registration if board members want to listen in on that uh should be open now um again board members might be interested in a psba workshop on February 1st Saturday building stronger School communities through civil discourse I've signed up for that one um I also did a psba liaison training yesterday um one of the requests is that uh districts recommit to the governing principles that the district our board has previously signed and is hanging over there um The District staff who are focused on school safety may be interested in
135the school safety Summit that is coming up March 27th hosted by PS PA I understand that is filling up and is always a soldout event so wanted to share that and um I was going to tell Austin in particular if you were here but um the psba has several scholarships for graduating seniors that are available the application is available through March 14th for student leaders uh these are Awards of up to $5,000 um for students from psba Member districts like we are uh so students who are pursuing a degree in education Public Safety or the Arts uh there are uh Awards in those categories and also for a student who has served as a student representative to their local school board so I pass that information on to Dr rushi so uh hopefully the high
136school guidance and students will hear that thank you I'll ask you to continue for finance and Facilities finance and Facilities we have uh not had a meeting since our last board meeting we are next scheduled for Thursday February 13th at 6:30 thank you curriculum and pupil Services meeting Dr Larson okay I hope everyone brought some popcorn um the curriculum and pupil Services meeting um took place on Thursday January 16th 2025 um we had multiple presentations the first being on Ela book recommendations we also looked at the 2627 proposed calendars for the school year um and we had an AI work group update and there were also some information items for the ELA book recommendations U Mrs Sandy Connelly presented the high school English update which included new course options and proposed book recommendations the new
137English courses appear in the 2526 High School course selection guide that is before the board for approval this evening all of the English courses are centered around broad themes and grade level standards and skills rather than being tied to specific books Mrs Connelly provided lists of the books currently taught in the courses and highlighted new proposed texts that are being considered for addition to the courses for 9th grade English there were no proposed changes to the texts to be taught next year for 10th grade English the high school English teachers are considering the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird as part of that course the committee had a robust discussion that included some concerns and cautions to ensure that the book which portrays racism from a white perspective is appropriately contextualized that literary critic isms
138are embedded and that the needs of students are respected and met as they grapple with the text Additionally the 11th and 12th grade English courses will have new course choices the um core texts for these new courses have been identified and proposed by the teachers and the design of the courses includes the same goals and outcomes focusing on teaching literary analysis argument and synthesis the goal of the new courses is to engage students by giving them a choice in which topic they study and each topic will be explored through fiction and non-fiction texts leading to an independent research project courses will be offered at the college prep and honors levels Mrs Connelly also explained that the process for selecting proposed books involves looking internally at previously approved and used titles in 11th and 12th grade
139as well as externally at what other districts are reading and considering factors such as text complexity student engagement and different perspectives she shared that teachers read many books and proposed titles to the curriculum coordinator who reviewed the selections and discussed any questions with the proposing teachers before sharing the book adoption forms with the principal and assistant superintended the book adoption forms are available for the board to review and physical copies of the books are available for board members to look through the high school English teachers will continue to provide updates as they work through the courses and any specific new text selections with regard to cost the purchase purchase of these books is estimated to cost around $20,000 or slightly more which is the typical amount budgeted annually for English texts and curricular resources okay
140there are also two new English electives for next year um those are film studies 2 and public speaking in the 21st century um so lots of exciting things going on in the English Department at the high school okay the 26 27 proposed calendars uh Mrs bastelli presented two different calendar options for the 26 27 school year option a um presented a um um a calendar that would start post Labor Day um and that would be in the 26 27 school year on Tuesday September 8th and that is due to Labor Day falling on the 7th which is a pretty late Labor Day um this late start would require an abbreviated spring break beginning on Wednesday March 24th 2027 teachers would have their inservice on Monday March 29th and students would return to school on Tuesday
141March 30th so that's one option for option b school would begin on Tuesday September 1st 2026 this early start would allow for a full week of spring break beginning on March 22nd 2027 and teachers would have their in service similarly on Monday the 29th March 29th and students would return on Tuesday March 30th Miss baselli shared that the district's recommendation to the committee is the option b calendar with the September 1st start date one reason cited is the difficulty families would likely face finding summer camps in September um they emphasize that this recommendation does not represent a shift to pre- Labor Day um school year starts going forward but cited the challenges prevented by that late um Labor Day occurring pretty far into September additionally in terms of holidays although it's not reflected in the
142proposed 2627 calendars Eid Alat is being closely monitored as a religious holiday due to Growing um a growing population of students and staff in the district who do celebrate Miss biselli noted that 111 students took off from school to observe that holiday in 2024 staff absences are also taken into consideration um Miss belli noted that the board may need to consider the inclusion of this holiday in the future 2728 calendar these proposed calendars um for the 2627 school year will come before the full board for review and discussion at a February full board meeting okay do we need a seventh ining stretch okay AI work group update Mr Rob Anderson our director of tech technology along with Meredith Hearn our technology integration coordinator presented an update on the AI working group the AI working group
143was formed after the approval of the administrative regulation to the acceptable use policy which allowed the district to start engaging with AI the working group consists of about of about 30 members divided into secondary and Elementary groups which meet every two to three weeks the group follows guidance from AI for education and skills 21 and other entities to develop best practices for adop AI in schools the district joined groups um around the county to learn from other districts and share experiences with implementing AI dciu offered a pair of groups that the district has joined one for administrators and one for students to learn from different presenters and to share their experiences the working group created Three core beliefs around AI in haford which include the idea that AI will not replace human- centered education it
144highlights the importance of continuous feedback um and Miss Hearn mentioned human in the loop and the importance of that um as well as the need for transpar transparency and accountability in AI use Mr Anderson shared that the district is planning to develop a three-year plan for technology but acknowledged that technology moves quickly and will continually evaluate the district will continually evaluate and review the plan to ensure that it meets the needs of our staff and students additionally there are subcommittees working on three the three Focus areas and developing content around those areas with the goal of having a a technology plan created by late February the plan will be presented to the board in March and implementation will begin immediately after with the goal of being ready for the next school year the district is
145currently in the phase of delivering training to staff on the AI plan with some schools already um completing and the rest to be finished by the end of the month um based on the presentation that we had and its robustness I've asked Miss saxa to bring the AI workg group update presentation to the full board given the importance of AI the timeliness of the topic and the need for our district to engage students with the technology responsibly and ethically okay we're almost there um information items included um an a preview that on the February 20th at the February 20th board meeting we will have an update on the comprehensive plan which the state requires us to submit every 3 years um so that will come to us for discussion and public comment and there will
146be an opportunity for revision revisions prior to approval um finally there is an agreement that went out to AJ Giuliani um an e an expert in the field of AI and he will be providing full day professional development um sessions and workshops on AI and education to staff in the district and I believe that's happening next month okay has didn't fall asleep yet okay and then finally um we've already had this but the academic performance summary we got the preview um is on the agenda for tonight we've already had that that is all for curriculum and pupil Services thank you thank you policy Miss thank you um we are unfortunately in a policy lull right now because we had our last policy meeting at the beginning of December and the next policy meeting is not
147until the end of February so I apologize to all of the policy fans um but no worries we will have our next meeting on um I believe it was February 27th it's the last Thursday in February and it's going to be a jam-packed agenda to take up the the full two hour hour so um more to come on that thank you no questions all right no questions all right all in favor I any oppos the motion passes continuing on 6B change orders can I have a motion to accept the recommendation of owners representative CB Development Services Incorporated and authorize the change orders totaling 4,613 and10 as listed person moved second moved and second gain discussion or questions none well should ask something have tell something I'm happy to answer anything um I can give a
148quick summary I mean these are all standard things that we come to you with we will be coming to every month from unforeseen conditions to uh a district uh request for an added cafeteria um we have a back charge here where one contractor needed to change some uh work the other contractor is getting back charge so it's a net zero change uh we flushed out some additional signage needed in the building after meeting with District administration um and then there were some unforeseen conditions taking up old water lines uh and having to deal with that so they're all really standard nothing uh out of the ordinary here that you wouldn't expect that's what we have uh contingency built into the project for and as you can see um at this point in the project being
149essentially halfway through or more there's still $800,000 left of contingency we're out of most of our well we just dug up Rock the other day ironically the last area we had to dig um on the whole project so uh luckily was a minor item but we're out of the ground essentially uh we do have a little bit more digging to do out front um so really those big risks that you would worry about are are pretty much behind us at this point so it's really going to be dealing with you know any omissions on the drawings uh because the drawings are not perfect you don't hire perfect Architects uh so you you have little things like that any owner changes that come up um then there's always field conditions especially with an exist in building
150so nothing out of the ordinary the uh contingency is healthy uh for where we are at this point in the project thank you thank you thank you other questions thank you for saying all right all in favor I I any opposed the motion passes for 6C Professional Service Services proposal can I have a motion to accept the recommendation I'm sorry did I I'm did I miss one yes okay can I have a motion to accept the recommendation of right On's representative CB Development Services Incorporated and approved the proposal from Tri State elevator company totaling $14 290 104,000 excuse me $290 for work at chadam Park Elementary School okay moved theal second moved in second and any discussion all in favor I any opposed the motion passes item 60 charitable donations can I have a a
151motion to approve to accept the charitable donations listed below Jon moved person second moved and seconded any discussion can we have a little bit of um information regarding the donations sure three different donations uh the first listed here is from the Municipal Employees of hord Township for the purposes of paying all student lunch account debt to date it's a donation in the amount of $10,000 uh so that comes directly from our community we also have a donation from the America Italy Society uh they have donated 3,100 oh sorry $3,233 to support World language activities particularly in the area of Italian at the high school and the middle school and finally uh the last donation is in the amount of $25 from a private citizen who uh has a child work who is in our path
152program and kindly the citizen is unable to attend the coffee shop over at Kelly uh in the mornings and still wanted to make a contribution so sent this directly to that program and we will be able to use it to make more muffins and make more coffee and support the students in those endeavors thank you any additional questions or comments no questions just really grateful for the donations thank you all in favor I any oppose the motion passes item sixe the 2023 2024 independent audit report can have a motion to accept the 2023 2024 independent audo report as prepared and presented by Witham Smith and brown M moved in second moved in second any discussion here were yeah I probably the same comment I mean there there was a correction that was noted that needed
153to be made um so maybe point of information how is that going to be handled if we are we accepting the current report or we can we accept the current Report with subject to making the changes noted I believe it uh with the presentation it was acknowledged it was a typographical error I think he can accept it with noting the review that that typographical error would be corrected okay thank you and yeah there were other comments that were circulated to Administration based on an earlier read and it was acknowledged that those will be incorporated as well so thank you for pointing that out any additional comments or discussion all right all in favor I I any oppos the motion passes item 6f request for proposal for a food service management company have a motion to
154approve approval to solicit requests for proposal for Food Service management company pending PD's final approval of the RFP person moved for second moved and second any discussion turn could we um maybe Mr Tesa could you walk through the purpose of a food service proposal and and the requirements for us to do that we're actually in the last renewal year of our contract with chart Well's food services so pte and division of food nutrition the requirement is that we go out for a rebid doesn't necessarily mean we would move away from but we still have to go through the formal process of looking for a food service management company um PD has a template for how the RFP is structured so you can't really um stay from that you're basically supplying um enrollment information menus and
155other items in there once we have that completed we sent that off to pte they'll review it and come back to us with any edits or any questions that they may have on the RFP or maybe something that we have to change to comply with um their guidelines um once we have that excuse me then we're okay to advertise that bid that RFP for um proposals one thing we do have to put together is a committee that will evaluate those proposals when they come back um the last time it was done in the district um you had a principal at each level one principal you had your business manager your assistant business manager uh and Miss Weedman you were part of that um I guess as your role as the board president um or maybe
156just because of my interest in looking at uh Food Service proposals right so that's one thing that we would have to um have the board agree upon or if you give Administration the uh you know go ahead to agree upon who would be part of that evaluation committee um it is something where we have a scorecard that comes from pde um there's the majority of the points they have set into specific categories and then we are able to kind of put other categories in whether that to fill in the rest of the information um it is advertised for three weeks like most of the bids in two areas of publication and then once that comes back we would have a pre- bid meeting with those interested parties they would tour the buildings it's a requirement
157that they look at all the buildings just see what's out there um and what else after that is done and then we would uh we would meet as a committee and score those those uh bids when they come back we would score them individually but we would have to meet as a group to kind of discuss um what did come back and then we would make the committee would make a recommendation to the board based on um the majority of the points received by a particular um contract you would have to go with the higher contractor as far as that were provided by the so that's something that the board wants to decide tonight who the committee would be or I mean we have some time um usually takes pte around two to three weeks
158to evaluate the RFP that we' submitted to them before we can send it out for advertisement so am I right that the criteria then is not lowest responsible bidder it's this other um scoring criteria yes so they have 25 points is assigned for cost 10 points is assigned for years of experience Five Points is assigned for Guarantee so guaranteeing that we would at least have a break even in that process and then we're able to split up the remaining 60 points how we feel um categories that are important to us one of the categories we put is um important in that remaining is uh personnel management and Staffing consideration because strong leader to run that in the Food Services Department um so really that that top 40 points is kind of what PE has prescribed
159and if you um go to advertising um as anticipated on February 10th when would the full board expect to hear about the results of the bids and the scoring so the way we have this listed um the bid submissions would come in on April 1 and then we have a finance and Facilities committee meeting on April 28th so we could bring it there or we could bring it to the board meeting on May 8th you have those options so we do have some time um ultimately you would want to have it approved I would say by the June 5th meeting just to give the board some time to digest and then also get that contract signed get it up to pte so everything can be formal so it's not too close to June 30 is
160it before the 2526 school year yes okay thank you and is it correct that the this um this is the just the second time we've gone through this process yes prior to the current agreement you're in you were self up so this is yeah just the second time and I will just note since we had the presentation of on the audit and the performance of that food um service business line the improving Financial Trends and impact um that we've benefited from with Chartwell uh purchasing power and efficiencies that they've brought um that had previously been and for a long time been a cost more much more of a cost center for the district and now seeing um it's its financial performance pulled together so um seems like it has been an advantageous move for the
161district to bring in this um management company great it's definitely it's their line of business so they know the best way to maximize that profit any other questions all in favor any opposed the motion passes item 6G engagement of services can I have a motion to approve the administration's recommendation that the board of school directors ratifies the administration's engagement of services from Mullen Coughlin LLC to review and advise the district on the report ed py school cyber security event person moved moved and seconded any discussion all in favor I I any opposed the motion passes continuing on to section s Human Resources 7 a retirement and resignation can have a motion to accept the following resignations as listed M moved GE second moved and seconded any discussion there is a notable retirement um we've heard
162the news about this before but Dr ri's position as superintendent is on for her retirement after 10 years of service she gonna go and put that on the agenda she's not here we can't even praise her in person not effective though until June 30th year every other meeting and we still have to vote so we are um undertaking the superintendent sey I asked her she said No 10 years also is very is longer than the average superintendent by about two and a half times the average service so I I think it's notable that Dr R has been here for a very long time much longer than many other superintendents across across the Commonwealth and I look forward to opportunities as her tenure comes to an end for the board and the community to be able
163to appreciate show our appreciation and and celebrate her her dedication to the district thank you all in favor I any opposed the motion passes item 7 B appointment have a motion to approve the following appointments as listed below contingent upon receipt of all necessary clearances including act 168 of 2014 sress moved second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor I any opposed the motion passes continuing to item 7 C leave of absence have a motion to approve the following leave request moved s second moved and second it any discussion all in favor I I any opposed the motion passes item 7D settlement agreement and release can I have a motion to accept to authorize a settlement agreement and release with employee number 21689 okay moved the second moved and second any discussion all in
164favor any opposed the motion passes item 7e affiliation agreement with Drexler University can I have a motion to approve an affiliation agreement with drexon University to use Halford Township School District as a placement site for school psychologist intern students shorts moved moved and seconded any discussion go dragons any other discussion it all in favor I any opposed the motion passes we have nothing listed for Section 8 pil Services we'll continue to nine curriculum and instruction 9A student educational excursions I have a motion to approve the student educational Excursion listed below moved moved and seconded any discussion hope they have a great time good luck good Lu good luck all in favor I I any oppose the motion passes item 9B 2025 2026 haford High School course selection guide have a motion to accept a motion
165to approve the 2025 2026 have for high school course selection guide as presented at the December 19th 2024 regular board meeting moved moved and seconded any discussion all in favor any opposed the motion passes before you move on I was just going to um again compliment the thoughtfulness of our staff for putting together such a robust set of courses uh we heard from Dr Larson's report about uh the innovation in the English offerings uh another thing that was uh presented here is that the um the quarter classes are now all going to be offered on an AB schedule to make all of them available to students uh whether they're in the music department or not um and I think that is um a really thoughtful way to increase access to all the great offerings that
166this uh course selection has I um if we had one of our high school reps here it would be interesting to hear their perspective on it and how hard it must be to pick a schedule with everything that's here but again compliments to all the staff and administrators who put together this uh really robust set of offerings thank you any other discussion items I just ask for clarification I know we had a member of the public who wanted to speak on this topic um was it more a clerical error where their comment was not categorized appropriately a member on the public that wanted to speak on speak on the course election guide I don't believe it was documented that way clerically that's not what I have here so no okay not that I know of
167based on what's here okay you right all right any discussion additional discussion all in favor oppose the motion passes that brings us up to number 10 policy um can I have a motion to adopt policy 9:15 booster clubs in organizations sress moved Shelton second moved and seconded any discussion um I'll just note that this it was a labor of love to get to the bo booster clubs and organizations policy I think it was on um several agendas before it was even on the committee level several agendas before it was even a discussion item and we kept looking at it and saying no we're not going to look at it it needs to go back and so thank you Mr Testa for um dealing with that and going back to the to the stakeholders that we
168thought were really important to make sure that we had all of their input and buy in on this policy because we certainly didn't want to catch anybody by surprise especially um groups that are are made to support our students and support the activities that they do so um I I really appreciate the work that went into this um both by Mr Testa the committee and the board um and this is our our final reading for adoption there's also an administrative regulation which is not listed here because those don't get adopted by the board um but they are for the um the administration on how to implement this new policy so again thank you to everyone there were no changes between the um uh 1 January meeting and this meeting so the second reading and and
169the adoption uh up for tonight thank you all in favor I any opposed the motion passes continuing on to number 11 other items oh I apologize we're going to go back because a it's 11 11 got it all right thank you let's continue so uh number 11 other items the Delaware County Community College trustee appointment um can I have a motion to approve the appointments and corresponding resolution for the following list of people to serve as trustees to the Delaware County Community College for the terms listed McKay moved theal second moved in seconded any discussion hearing none this is a roll call vote Miss Lee Yes Dr McKay yes Mr Schwarz yes Dr Shelton yes Miss SNR yes Miss Vitali yes Miss Weedman yes yes Dr lson yes Dr King yes all right the motion
170passes that brings us to section 12 which is the other section for public comments allowing members of the community to speak on any um items that may not have been listed as an action item on the agenda I invite you to come to the podium um please confirm your residency state your name and there'll be three minutes I have two members of the community that signed up the first one being Danielle V Vitali Danielle Vitali I live in the district at last week's curriculum meeting it was announced that the district was going to resume teaching To Kill a Mocking Bird although it will now be taught in 10th grade as opposed to an eth I was thrilled by this announcement I have fought for this book to return to our curriculum for the teachers who
171fought for this book and were punished for doing so I was beyond Disturbed however by the opposition of some of my fellow board members to to kill mocking Bird's return and our discussions that evening to Kill Mockingbird was called problematic board members objected to the book because it was told from a white perspective and because the book had no fully developed black character these extreme far-left talking points are ridiculous and disturbing to Kill a Mocking Bird is told from the perspective of a little girl who is trying to figure out why life is not fair and yes this little girl is white I did not realize that was a bad thing I also didn't realize that a book had to have a fully developed character of every race and I'm assuming by extension of every
172Faith nationality sexuality Etc to be worthy of our curriculum perhaps the board could provide me with a list of approved books told from all perspectives and with fully developed characters of all types Sandy Connelly WR a wonderful statement from our high school teachers explaining why they believe To Kill a Mocking Bird is a worthy liter Choice with one reason being that included the themes of racism and Injustice and a board member then twisted our teachers words to say that the teachers are using the text to teach racism Sandy did an excellent job of refuting that saying that that was not the case this is a language arts class and not a social studies one but the point appears lost there were concerns of people not being invited into the text which is a nonsensical talking
173point that no one understands and also concerns that the teachers needed safeguards to teach this book to be clear the teachers are insulted that you don't find them capable teaching sensitive material we have books in our curriculum to deal with cancer sexual assault the murder of babies suicide and not one board member has ever questioned these in addition the book that replaced a Kill a Mocking Bird in eighth grade The House on Mango Street has a gang rape in it and no one apparently could care less about needing safeguards for that in response to this board lunacy District administration is now requiring our teachers to complete a lundry list of items to justify teaching To Kill a Mockingbird this is not being done with any other text in our curriculum our high school teachers are
174well aware of what happened with their middle school colleagues when they push to teach To Kill a Mockingbird and are considering abandoning the text not because they want to but because they don't want any trouble with Administration or the board I am horrified by how our Administration is treat teting treating these teachers and the complete lack of support they are receiving but because we all know of to Killa mocking birds and taught Administration will announce that the teachers chose another text and put the blame on them and will not tell about the unreasonable and excessive demands the teachers face that led to that decision I want the district to let our teachers teach this approved text without cowtailing to extremism if they don't I going to request all the things requested of To Kill a
175Mocking Bird for every other book in our curriculum Glass Castle stamped all of them because what you are doing is book Banning you are no different than the far right that you app po you don't burn books you put them on a indefinite pause you don't use profanity but you couch your objections in righteous indignation and left-wing talking points of the day but make no mistake about it your book Banner is just the same the next person that I have than up to speak is Rich mcglory come prepar okay I'm rich M glory and I live at 1246 Dill Road in htown Pennsylvania and I came here tonight to give Miss Connelly the teachers and everybody at the last meeting props for the hard work of the teaching it and I want you to know
176it brought a tear to my eyes because a lot of those books I taught one day in my 30 years ago in the best years of my life it brought a tear so the great Dr adesi and the Manoa magic that you saw today bring a tear to my eye cuz my grandson does not go there but I also wanted to say and this is a part that is relevant to what we talked about the sa test which I've been a reading teacher for 35 years well actually 20 years and I've done the test supervision for 35 years starting in 1975 the pssa tests are the worst standardized tests I have ever seen in my lifetime and I will write the reasons why our test scores are excellent our educators are excellent our children will
177receive an excellent thing but I was sad last week because my little Johnny and his classmates and other kids who are reading disabled will not be able to read any of those books in the English High School classes and we don't have a plan to teach them to read well enough to read them we don't have books for them that are lowlevel high interest books I'm a little up up set because you know for that presentation today it was great she is an expert on the test it measures groups it's not diagnostic it doesn't measure the the things those classifications are arbitrary they don't correlate to any reading levels the most accurate reading test in the world is an in individual reading inventory done by a certified reading teacher we don't have books for my
178little Johnny or any of those kids in our classrooms in our library it breaks my heart when I go into the middle school library when we have these beautiful wonderful books for the typically developing kids but none for my little Johnny and his classmates and other kids who are dislexic we didn't talk about what are we going to do for the kids who scored basic and below basic on those tests and the question I put in there please read every word of what I said in that address all right but do we even know the range of reading levels in our artistic Support classes our artistic populations and other special ed populations we need a reading specialist for my Johnny and other kids like him who is certified in reading and special education someone who
179wants to teach those kids and meet the challenge of finding books and materials and and creating instruction that meets their needs because what he's getting Now does not meet his needs thank you I have no one else signed up to speak for this section is there anyone else that would like to speak no all right we will continue okay um item 13 report on Executive session we did not have an executive session or meet for executive session today we'll continue item 14 uh adjournment the next regular public board meeting is scheduled to be held on February the 6th 2025 at 7:30 p.m. in the boardroom of the Oakmont administration building have a motion to adjourn the meeting moved moved and seconded