001we on um it's so there we go we're live now okay thank you miss welsh okay we'll call the meeting to order please 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 okay our first item on the agenda is presentation by mr kubiak for the proposed final budget thank you um give me one second i'm gonna share my screens um i just want to thank you guys for giving me the pleasure of doing this wonderful interesting budget presentation i do every year um last year i didn't get a chance to do it so we're going to pick back up and you know be smart to this thing so the
002first slide you guys will see is just our budget process um nothing has changed um administrator submits like this in my office myself and doctor struck they review them um we do anything necessary for preliminary budgets exceptions things of that nature and then we get to may where a proposed final budget is loaded on while doing this process we look at you know several things you know we want to continue the quality of programs that we have for our students um while doing so we look at economic conditions uh local state national um as we've talked about before um the pandemic has been a huge um issue with school districts lately um luckily you know our district itself has not um reached a level that we thought we're going to with decreases um we're still
003not where we were priority code but we are a lot better off than what we expected so um this budget will show increases in a lot of revenue categories um because we weren't you know last year we budgeted um in the middle not even was expected and you know we're lucky to be doing better um you know with that being said we still do have some tax appeals out there i'm pending um they weren't as bad as we thought or were cool so before april so was another benefit we had you know coming into this um in may so um those are just some areas we look at in this budget that will be voted on next week there are a couple of overview things going over so first off act one index is set
004at three percent um in prior years right now this proposed final budget is showing a increase in real estate taxes to that index um which would bring the millage rate to 20.084 with that being said right now projected revenues are 43 million six hundred thousand one hundred four dollars while projected expenditures are 44 million one hundred nineteen thousand six hundred seventy three dollars so that means that right now we are still showing a deficit of five hundred and nineteen thousand five hundred and sixty nine dollars with real estate taxes raised free him there so what that means is there's no other way to increase um revenues we're basically where we're at um real estate is really the only area we have to increase our local revenues um so in order to get that deficit down
005what we have to do is you know still work on the budget decreasing expenditures um right now that deficit will come out of the fund balance um which is projected to be at around 4.75 million dollars um this year and with the budget being adjusted around 520 000 next year that'll bring that fund balance down to 4.2 million a little later on i'll be on the more details of where that money is um revenues increased by about 1.25 million dollars from the 2021 budget whereas expenditures increased by 939 000. um and as i said you know administration i felt that dr strzok will continue to work on you know decreasing these expenditures so this slide shows just where you know a lot of our money comes from so as you see 71 of our revenue
006is from local revenue as real estate taxes other taxes things of that nature 27 comes from states and 1.76 comes from the federal government this slide shows more detail on um exactly where i break it down more in revenues i'm not going to go over every item but you know i do want to point out a couple things as you see the biggest you know change would be real estate taxes and other taxes um with the raising to the index as well as increasing eit um slightly because you know we didn't experience or suffer losses as we thought it goes up to almost 1.2 million dollars um the remaining current taxes go up about 667 000 and the rest are sort of you know in line with where we were i do want to point
007out um the debt service reimbursements for our bond payment additions will be the first year the district does not receive any revenue from the state for planned parenthood versus for our debt service so we'll see later on a decrease in the expenditures as well but we're also not getting revenue there's also a decrease in other state revenue which were grant funds that we received last year that we weren't expecting through this year as well as federal revenue for the same thing um i would like to say you know ahead of time the covert relief money that we are using for buildings and grounds is not in this budget because that's a capital project fund thing so you won't see expenditures or revenue on the general fund budget for that have it right now until we
008see more details later on you know before this is voted upon in june you will see a trans revenue and then a transfer to the capital project fund for the final amount but you do have ester money in for books right yeah so um and then i'll go over that in the expenditure side so right now there is about 190 000 in the revenue side this is covering textbooks that are shown in the expense side so you'll see um some of the supplies increasing from last year and that's part of the reason is because we are purchasing 190 000 worth of books that is being offset by extra money in the revenue side so this this slide just showed the millage history of the past 10 years and as i said um this current proposed
009final budget does show an increase to the index which is that new millage rate 20.08 with that increase i just did a quick you know little synopsis on what that means the district so raising it to the index will generate 775 000 more for the district raising it will also i have various scenarios of what that tax increase means to the public um over the course of the year so as you see now the 200 000 value house has an additional 117 dollars a year um whereas you know a hundred thousand dollars is half of that at fifty eight dollars now we're on to the expenditure side um so as you see the majority of our expenditure to stick over 65 is on salary and benefit um with the recent ratification of the teacher contract
010it does include all those new salaries um so that is in there the next big area also other purchase services so that includes our transportation utilities and charter schools i'll talk about charter schools later on but that's one of the big areas of concern that increased significantly compared to prior years this this slide shows more detail of the expenditure based on prior years so as i said before um you know pretty salaries and benefits have increased um everywhere else as you know sort of state status quo except if you look at the 800 and 900 categories at the very end that decreases due to our volume decreasing so with that um it's decreased around 717 000 but we are also not receiving 675 000 in revenue so really the district is only seeing a net
011savings this year of around 40 000 due to the bond decrease the next big area you'll see are the 500 categories and as i said supplied before that's because of charter school payments increase so one of the biggest areas that you know the coalition has always faced is teasers these are just the projected rates and current rates from teasers directly as you see and i bring this up the past few years we're sort of hitting a in a level area where we're not seeing significant increases but it still is a significant expense for the district for next year the dishes will be paying almost 35 cents on every dollar two pesos for an employment salary this slide just shows more detail of the estimated expense and prior expenses on where we're at so as you
012see um you know for next year we're expecting our peter's cost for the district to be about six million one hundred seventy six thousand dollars so um you know that's a significant portion of our expense the next area that we saw a pretty big increase in is health insurance um this year health insurance the medical side health insurance did increase five percent um debts will stay the same envision increase seven percent so that's another big area of expense for the district um as you see for next year it's about 3.4 million dollars this slide shows charter school tuition so usually i show on this slide what was budgeted for this year rather than what we're projecting to do but in order to show the significant impact of where we were i have our estimated cost
013so compared to last year we're seeing about an increase of 380 000 in charter school payments we only budgeted 1.225 million dollars so we're going to be over budget right now projected by 323 000 um you know while we're seeing an increase in revenue that we didn't expect from the beginning of the year we're also seeing costs like this that are increasing as well so this is an area um you know i did a little more research in and even for next year we're not projecting to really see that cost go down you know so we had to increase that budget amount of 1.65 million dollars um charter school costs go up every year um it's based on formulas from our afr data so you know that's part of the increase as well so that
014cost is primarily just the straight cost of the tuition not because of a jump in the number of students receiving it correct so it's a little bit of both but it wasn't a significant increase at first we thought do those pandemic maybe a lot of students have gone out um that's not the case when we dug in deeper our enrollment is actually pretty similar um there may be a few more students like three or four that's pretty similar to um years past it's really the cost of tuition and where people are knowing that at certain update costs so you know we don't see um you know part of my research is to see how many are in 12th grade how many are leaving things of that nature and there aren't too many you know students
015that we're going to see decreases this slide shows that service statement um i want to commend the board for keeping this you know it's two bars now um i've never seen it so thank you guys um you know it makes it you know very easy it's not very easy but a lot easier on me that you know next in 2023 all our bonds will be paid off so as you see these are famous for the next two years it's great wonderful i honestly don't know of any other district that has done this i think the public should be very proud of the board for managing this and getting this to this level where you know we don't have to take out bonds we're you know doing everything in our power not to burden taxes with
016things of that nature so um you know this slide shows that as i said earlier you know we will not receive reimbursement from the state on these either so while this goes down but in the year 23 24 um the school district will have no more debt so this slide just shows an overview of what i went over um as you can see on this slide um it just compared last year's budgets of this year's budget um all the data is in there and you'll see at the very end are estimated and they spot balance as of june 30th 2022 so on this slide i have broken it down balances are as of the audited financial statements of 2020. it breaks it down into the category so while you saw that 4.2 million dollars in
017fund balance that's not all unassigned and you know usable and all right so um we have a non-trendable portion which includes prepaid items uh we also have a committed fund balance which is for the school district hotel liabilities um as i said before the public and to everyone that's only our portion of our there's also additional teasers portions that i do not pick up um just because i don't think that's reasonable but this is you know bishop's cost for every retiree or individuals who are in health insurance that is payable at some point in the future um the assigned time values are taught to state and absolutely um this is six day payments to all eligible employees who would retire um and be eligible for a payment so this cost is also um due to
018the district at some point in time which has lobbyists funded assigned it the remaining fund balance is unassigned and you know out of june 30th 2020 that balance is 2.783 million dollars so um really when you look at it that deficit is going to be coming off of that number um the committed and aside from that and not spendable may increase some decrease some from year to year but um if it decreases it's not going to decrease much so you're basically looking at taking all that revenue um off of that understand plum valve but i i guess that's just my comment to that is like remember that's the plan like that's the problem yeah so that's not necessarily a terrible thing and actually my wife was saying on a different subject but i think it
019it well applies the other day that you know if you're not spending emergency funds in the middle of like a hundred year pandemic like when are you going to it's spend the plan but that being said that was a quick overview um i'll open up to any questions from the board if there's none um at the next finance committee meeting um you know please come there we'll be going over it um it'll be updated numbered and we're hoping to decrease that you know you have to system but in the meantime you know feel free to ask some questions i have a quick question um this is a follow-up i know uh dr strzok i talked a while back about uh some of the reconfigurations that were going on within the catholic schools in the area
020and what that might do to our busing situation do we have any i know it's a weird time here to be asking about what their enrollment is next year but do we have any ideas yeah the uh uh st uh saint margaret st phillips and folks is in perhaps uh they are now a merged school that's july first um their enrollment is in flux right now um for a number of reasons but it's a merged capital so i'll have to say nothing else about it so that is basically that will be the only parochial school within the boundaries of the school district so um we do incur a little bit more costs now because of the merger of the four catholic schools outside of the district that formed the south hill just south of here
021that would be the configuration of saying the instinct bernie said thomas more insane uh uh the gabriel yeah the other one in scotland whatever there's four that emerge because we have one school they operate out of two buildings so right now we do box kids over st burners and then some of them always down the st thomas more it's the same school but operating in two different buildings so it's still a little bit too early yet because it does haven't stepped with the um the the play out there um so yeah we are keeping an eye on it but fussing is fussy is an issue it's very interesting to bring up us i guess all of you should know the state caught onto this and has reduced our reimbursement for busing because of the number
022of times that school districts have to close because of the pandemic and so on so forth you know you're always one year behind because the pleasure said we are not getting as much in state honey now that scares me a little bit because um superintendents months ago received a letter from a group of legislators senators uh in harrisburg indicating that we should be very careful on how we spend our money the essers money all that federal money uh and because that's one time one-time money so it's better for one-time things not for occurring things um and basically don't expect the state to kick back and help you up now what scares me is that today is maybe 11 we're giving you a proposed final budget next week you'll vote on that's just proposed a month
023from now you'll vote on your final budget but we're about a month and a half away from june 30th and the state has not talked about the state budget and that is that's concerning to me because we did do some predictions and i think uh joe has done a great job some of the f well they're not estimates they're technically guess the myths um of where we're going to be with the state funding um so uh we will see that that's good so really you know that's a really really good point one with the boxing with the parochial schools that that's that's a good point where we are two so that you know the state does not have their budget done yet or talking about it now the governor by the way he's saying that
024what the governor proposed on february 4th i joe and i both agreed came rolling off our mouth that's a fictitious budget that's never going to fly never never going to fly so we didn't even go with it we didn't even leave pretended it even exists it's not going to happen there's no way so uh what we'll let you know so this is the time of year right now we'll just be tweaking the budget here and there you'll see a little bit of us you'll see a little bit of downs um if if if a wealthy benefactor gives us a half a million dollars we'll see a balanced budget i shall throw that out there if you know anybody that can give that to us we'll take it but i think overall to what the math
025has said here this evening too that that deficit spending was planned for it was anticipated it's been part of the long range three-year budget predictions you're going to get you're going to get that budget predictions this friday and my council report shows some of the supply to you so you will see that it's typically the time of youtube this is when you'll see it and where we are and it's all planned for it the positive piece is there's only two bars of your deficit on your to pay your debt and then we could do things that will no longer that hopefully will actually help out in a year and a half from now when you're sitting here passing that budget that will really be beneficial to our community and the people where you might be
026able to start saying you know we really don't have to it's but we'll have this little veteran but we do one of the things that i would really encourage the board to do and i know there's um there's the energy to do this is that we can't let our buildings and our grounds and that get into a condition that they were in like when i showed up here okay and uh let's not let that ever happen again so we have to use our monies wisely and so some of that money that you know people think oh you're just gonna save and put it for a rainy day we have built we have buildings that our kids go to and our teachers work in conditions we have to improve those and keep them up to speed
027so but we're not sitting back and going how do we do this and if we can make it work you know through 2030 let's say and make it work without even bothering to do it that's what they need to do so a strong strong capital plan needs to be in place to be able to do it and i think we have it i think we have 100 buildings and crime committees leadership people who are on there and under mr lyon thanks joe for the presentation you know i think it's a very positive budget i really did anytime you could do any budget regardless and under the conditions we've been in and say you're only going to take a half a million dollars out of your fund balance and you have the money wow i mean
028there's there's your name you know i'm sure there's a lot of districts right now wishing they were in that situation and as i say that i should continue to talk i do have two more questions um one's kind of attacked born from mr kubiak you know there's been some things swirling around from the last couple weeks i heard kind of flared up again this weekend uh rumor that um we're cutting the athletic split so i just wanted to ask you you know this year is compared to last year budget um what what what are we doing athletics yeah so um from this year and you know athletics is in the 3200 um you know you can see it i'll have it posted after this you know moving on next week but um compared to this
029budget that i just presented as to last year we're actually seeing an increase of almost a hundred thousand dollars um i can't say you know every area got tough by me from was initially turned in um so everywhere every area across the board um is cut every year based on zero-based budgeting however you know when it comes down to it we are seeing an increase of about you know a hundred thousand dollars and you know a lot of that is in you know supplies other areas that aren't just salaries so um there is an increase um it hasn't been cut um you know significant or you know really um compared to other areas and this is one area where um this year you know we didn't cut it you know drastically compared to other questions
030thank you and then for bill just in general because it it is still a rough situation as you said there's probably some districts that are taking some hard looks so i mean how does this compare in terms of what the community what the students are going to see what what what's going to be offered for them next year their their pets are their editions what you know what's the highlight so uh all the highlights are no programs are being cut uh no teeth uh we're gonna be offering everything as is that obviously if there's pockets and places where enrollment seems to be down we may see some shifts okay um there's going to be some shift in uh program delivery but the programs aren't going to be limited and i will say that right now
031one of those shifts will be on the way how we deliver the specials in the elementary school which has been discussed and uh there's a reason for it but we are not we are not there's a house we work with we're not losing any programs whatsoever matter of fact i still have my eye on some programs for the very new future that i want to add but right now for next year's probably not the time to add them but to prepare for the 2223 yeah i believe that there are some programs that we need to look at between now in the fall to start planning for should we bring those photographs and how we how we're going to do things a little bit different because one of the things that we have learned in the
032past 14 very long interesting months operating schools and coding is that we can do public education differently we should and we're not going to return back to some of the old wastings because not every student out there it has struggled through this academically some of them have thrived and have learned other ways we've seen that i was just on a call this afternoon at 3 30 with a local universe college actually college and talking with a group with a particular department and so it's not a fair statement to say well everybody has struggled and it's this and that we struggle because it's not the way we knew life to be but with all that being said and circling back around here we we're working to learn how to do things a little differently that's going
033to save so what are one of the things we had no intentions 14 months ago of going full-blown one-to-one initiative but yet right now we have 1900 1900 okay chrome books some are in hand and many are locked up right now that every child next year k through 12 will have a chromebook so the teachers in their professional development at the end of the year will be doing and i'll be talking about the new strategic plan which i never had a chance to really roll out because of the conditions is about how do we deliver instruction differently what does a chromebook do well for some kids they could read that they're okay doing stuff on there not everybody some of them i mean i still need all right i only need the sunday newspaper because
034i have to have certain sections but i can read the newspaper online every other day not every kid can we may not have to be you you're going to be approving a lot of textbooks for next year with the love we may not need a huge amount of textbooks for every kid some of them may be okay but we'll have them with that but you'll have a chromebook that will be able to do things simple things like planners we don't need planners you know that will help our pfos out help us out because let's teach the kids how to keep their records and their questions in their google they're good at it so those are things that we can do differently so it's sort of like nine years ago when i came and we were
035spending forty thousand dollars on ink cartridges and i said we're getting rid of all of the inkjet printers on 146 people's best and everybody's panicked we don't even think of anymore you go to a coffee machine you make it or you just deal without it you don't need it and so those are places that we've learned to cut but it's never effective teaching it's not it's not affecting teaching you're on your agenda tonight you're approving a hundred and ninety thousand dollars worth of textbooks that were given and supplies that are in here which we really didn't cut oh we probably sliced a little bit we don't leave as much paper anymore we learned that right but programs are not getting cut and we will soon be talking about soon programs that we need to look
036at to add or to um i would say the violence to actually give a little bit of a well i say a booster shot let's change it it's great to hear i just wanted to add just because we were just saying how positive the budget looks and i i feel it's positive too but i i do just want to know that there are some people in our community probably in the hospitality industry particularly that may still be struggling and we realize this is a tax increase unfortunately these things have to occur from time to time so we're not cheering that we have to do that so i'm sorry those people who are still struggling um it is what it is and i really hope that come may 31st will be a little bit more back
037to normal for those thank you okay concluding that discussion um let's move into public comment ms welsh do we have anyone online for public comments we do not have anyone online thank you dr straub k do we have any written we do just one this evening it's from mrs vicki bruce from castle shannon uh her comment is hello just wanted to ask if there were any plans in the works for fifth graders going to tour the middle school in person fifth grade graduation as well as kindergarten graduation and if there have been talks about allowing field trips next year if we go back to a five-day in-person schedule has there been any updates to the guidelines the district is following in regards to precautions distances spacing etc thank you for your time so um we'll
038be getting some communication out uh i may just email mrs bruce if she's not on tonight just let her know most of what she's talking about needs to go to her building principle because i have speak in speaking with the principals we are having um i could speak for at least myrtle i'm sorry for one and again they are having a field day i've approved it because of the way we're going to do it i've already approved graduations if they want so i've heard from those two principals the middle school is going to be having some dances coming up that are going to be outside i've approved them we have a national honor society still going to take place here we're going to have a full day for seniors and a graduation for them along
039with a parade and a bunch of things for them here we are going to have a normal graduation for the high school seniors on the 15th as possible it's going to look a little different because we have to space things out a little bit so the the as you're looking at here tonight we're still all about six feet apart because still by the governor's regulations we still have you know in the classroom it's three feet but we still have to and the governor we all know looks like on may 31st everything is a go except keep your mouths going right and try to keep your physical distance but we have not received clear guidance from the department of education for the department of health with regards to schools so if that comes out but i
040do know that everything that we're planning is in the classroom in curricular oriented three feet it's everything else six feet we still all have to wear the mask uh we have not heard yet about though it's very confusing the ccc guidelines uh if you're fully vaccinated you could all have your masks off and they're not out and so but we're in the process right now looking through all of that not the chain upset the alpha part but the bottom line is i've given full approval for everything to happen you know even even the high school musical has been given full approval to have capacity and people that was given you know back in january i said i know you can do that so athletic events and what have you there's no reason not to you
041know and people don't want to attend that's fine you know that's that's okay but i'm looking forward to graduation yeah she is one of the things she's talking about here i think is a fifth grade step up um yeah and then i guess the one not mentioned here but eighth grade step up today would be the other one and both of those are being worked on right now they're probably not going to be large scale they're going to be multiple with smaller groups like a through d e you know what i mean yeah we just have to do many more but there's there's no reason why you can't do that there's no reason and now two um i guess it's here's the other change too i guess now that age is 12 and 12 to
04218 can get the fives or and you know as we know yesterday uh giant eagles already reached out to us and has done a clinic and wants to continue coming in and doing the clinics so how did that go i guess it went well because if i didn't hear anything about it must have been well i mean i know where there was like a target of 100 yeah you didn't hit that um but they didn't do it right yeah they were here but they still holidays you just mentioned just the castle shannon borough meeting just because abby lyda is the senior council member oh yeah yeah i just mentioned that she said that her her and her peers were very excited um for the opportunity i think that she didn't mention that to council so
043we even had some teachers who took it because they were late to it because they couldn't get it the other times because they were they themselves would either be 14 or may have come down because of themselves and it had to wait so uh we're um and this is an estimate because i don't have to sell the numbers in front of you but i think we're pretty close to 90 percent of our staff is vaccinated that's that's pretty good when they're saying you know in the country there's probably 20 to 25 that aren't going to receive the vaccination but we're there but it's not a requirement so it's not a requirement we're not requiring it's okay somebody asked it's not a requirement to okay that takes us into um the next agenda item we'll be
044talk i will be approving the board minutes from last month um nominations for the office of treasurer and then we have the uh informational items i don't you have anything this evening for parkway west michelle oh no i'll wait till next week okay and mr raza is not here for shazda um psba i don't have the date but they are scheduling a rally later this month for charter school reform if anyone's interested i can make sure you have that but i believe it's on their website any news from the boroughs okay we did meet an executive session prior to this to discuss personnel and we will be continuing that discussion after this meeting that takes us into the superintendence report dr stropke thank you for next week there will just be uh there's the adoption
045of the my school calendar only because now with the with the uh ratification of the teachers contract they their new contract they work an extra day 193 does not affect the student days but i still want to approve so the the new day for teachers will be working on january 17th everybody was going to be off that day but that's going to be a day of work for them a professional development okay january 17th but i still need you to approve that so i could send that to pve so that should change here and then there's a whole series of second reasons um people look at the other questions and then the removal of some policies because they are being superseded by others and that's going to be for voting next week but i do
046want to mention i think it's been on everybody's uh radar um it looks as though yesterday it looks like we're going to be able to have a summer program for the kids okay well i have not received an overwhelming number of responses from our teachers extended day services has reached out to me and other schools in which they are in and so we are going to use our esther's money to contract some of our some of our tutoring and that over the summer with them the services and so and so as of right now between that and some of our own teachers are going to work too okay and we'll work on the details but tomorrow or the next day we'll be put some uh uh children have been identified those who have been identified
047by their teachers and maybe being most in need for some services it's going it's going to be offered to them first before we offer anybody else as of right now the three elementary schools i'm looking at providing services if they all take it to 166 kids at this time i don't have the middle school numbers yet and the high school numbers will be based just simply on credit recovery they have to recover from a class but very pleased and thank you to uh um jennifer roberts who was the director of extending services she reached out to me on friday she reached out to a couple other school districts they're in and to help us and to help us out and uh that is fantastic that's wonderful that's wonderful so we're going to be able to
048offer something we want to get that out soon and like i said right now it's targeted to just these kids that have been identified and if they don't want to take it then we could just continue to open it up jennifer's going to give me around 10 10 teachers i have uh six to eight of ours k through eight i have a little bit more for the high school level they'll be able to handle the credit recovery so i think we're going to have a nice program with some sort to offer to kids they will be bus to the elementary secondary necessarily won't have to be equipped because it's online still as credit recovery uh and so we'll bust to the um middle school as well bill is this this is not esy though correct
049oh yeah this is for anybody yeah esy is still running uh is that going to be in person yeah oh you'll be interested okay and k through 8 is going to be in person as well too okay okay great nine through 12 may be a hybrid depending we may do it as a hybrid so there's some of the teachers we're just getting the feel for the teachers who want to do it in the court and we're only going to offer it in the quarter area uh in english south side if they want if they need to do a credit recovery because maybe we did not pass one of the others but they could always do that for our online gap which we've done in the past so we should have a nice program so we're
050going to have that in addition to the esp line okay so um just since we're on the education side of it um i'm sure you all heard in the news about um parents can choose to hold their children back for a year how much do you think that's going to affect us i don't know i thought the same thing i remember yesterday yeah i don't know because it just came out it hasn't technically right now we do have a low kindergarten enrollment we only have 102 students enrolled for next year this time we're usually up to about 120 give or take so it's a little bit lower so i don't know but we do this year had a normal sized kindergarten there's some school districts their kindergarten wasn't horrible this year they were lower because
051parents held them back and are going to sit but we had a normal size we have 130 some kids that's that's not right for us you know so we are a little low in kindergarten enrollment but you know we'll see we'll see uh sarah did put it out again information about the kindergarten so we'll see if they come in and some may be waiting to hear if it's going to be five days in person yeah yeah so the plan is right now everybody it is in school next year will be five days in person monday through friday everything will be normal the only thing that we will be doing is whatever normally it's gonna be five days a week and um right now we cannot we are not permitted to offer the option too the
052state has to change the law yet the law that they passed to allow us to do what was optioned to expires june 30. so if they don't change it however the reason why they're waiting is because next week in election day you're going to vote on a change to the youth to the pennsylvania constitution that may give the legislatures the right to make the decision and not the governor so they're holding off on that so when you go to the voting belt polls next week you will see a question on that you will see five questions for a change in the pennsylvania constitution one of them will be the reason why they have another one of them has gone to effect because there was an argument between the legislature and the governor with regards to
053closing schools not closing schools and what they were allowed and what was considered an emergency and who should who should call the emergency so with all that being said there's silence on this i think until after the election that's why but as of right now option two cannot be offered option three can be you can still have a cyber school and we are planning on having the cyber school k through 12. we are planning on okay somebody wants it but you're not going to be as of right now you cannot sit at home and be a full synchronous kid as of right now that is not unlocked for next year for next year oh yeah for next year everybody can still do it this year or next year something changed okay well there's time we'll
054probably hear more yeah i'm sure we'll get a lot of things next wednesday thursday friday have we had anybody uh trying to switch at this point in the game like as far as whether they're an option two to an option one or it's such a confusing thing and i i will only say this because i know that you know while i was under the impression that the decision was made when the decision was made and you were stuck with it it still sounds like there are some people trying to encourage children to have their parents allow to come back so the reason where that came from is it has been coming it was very very difficult for the teachers this year they have kids right i don't want to cause a problem for the teachers
055either it's very interesting did you bring it up because somebody passed along some information me today that something was posted on a facebook page and i'm wondering i don't that's nice i'm putting two of two together i'm wondering if somebody may have been told because the other thing we have to be careful too is when we did open our doors for the time here we still had to stay within the six feet now we still have to be careful we can only still handle so many but i don't see that being an option an issue in the fall because it's my understanding it's put your 25 or so kids back in the classroom and it's okay i feel like we had to make that decision before i mean nobody really knew that the teachers were
056you know that johnson and johnson was gonna show up and they were all gonna become vaccinated two weeks after we made this decision and and whatnot so i was just curious as to how many people at this point would prefer to then just kind of send their kids back yeah and if the teachers seem like they don't really want to be doing both of these so you know i don't that's up there i think i'm throwing it out there i don't want to speak for them but i'll thank you most of the teachers would rather have all the kids i bet you they would too but it's important to still give our students and our parents the opportunity to continue the year but i don't know if right now i don't know there will be
057that option in the fall right now i'm not worried about that i'm just i'm just curious as to what's happening the next month or so for for right now yeah and by the way too like all the activities that are occurring in the elementary school field days and so and so forth kids who are fully at home are being encouraged to come and participate i saw that that was very nice we are not saying that oh because you've been first when you can't do this no we're saying how come to school come to school you want to participate maybe mom and dad still want to drive you but we want you to come back this this last month is a good time to transition the kids back to get ready for the well are fall
058back are we doing that though yeah we are so i mean that's not as far as i feel okay it goes what i'm saying is are we start are we going to reach out to anybody given the changes that the governor is making even this month to say hey if you want your kids to come off as synchronous yeah come right out right we want to i think i just don't know the principles he has to talk about the week because he just came out with that very quickly okay and you know i know it's always changing so listen just don't take nobody take this the wrong way but if we could open up our bars and restaurants and you can go yeah and i feel like we can open our schools at this point
059you know it's important to educate the kids though yeah and it just it just can't be true for all right no right right what a free-for-all no you and that's the issues particularly find the high school kids well i'm coming today but i'm not coming tomorrow my friends weren't there so i'm going to stay home and i'm going to dance about it i keep telling them they can't do that you can't just take up your mind yeah because it's not fair it really is not fair to the teachers you know it's been tough but i remember when that all came out it said you cannot switch if you choose in person you stay in person if you choose virtual you stay virtual so people are not following that i don't know that that's the case
060i i was just it was more of a war okay well why though if that's if that's a policy why can't because they're just showing up on the doorsteps and we don't want to tourniquet apparently some of them just shoved it or they just decided to not come anymore and then we have to start the truancy process where are you why are you online i'll tell you one thing that was very interesting during this whole pandemic we found a lot a lot of children that weren't that did not live in this district not bad yes we've had a good number of people that have gotten letters from me saying thank you but you know you spent you were here long enough you don't live here anymore yeah yeah a lot and i know sometimes that
061happens where you're on the cusp of something like you're ready to graduate you move like a month before you know there's there is some of that going on too yeah some of them have just been caught as recently as yesterday and like if they're in the city of pittsburgh listen i'm not going to hurt the kid finish here for the last couple of days because the city pittsburgh they're they're still having their issues by the time you try to enroll get to just stay here but june 15th you're done you have to go to you have to go somewhere else how did you find that out well since you don't see a lot of kids and you do have to mail more things home but that was coming back or or the kids weren't logging
062on and the teacher was recording it and they were at home and where are you and so you were doing more probing where before if they may have been driving into the district and then walking from a particular point or you know ubering it really yeah yes i am yes and then you catch onto it so you've seen it more so our our eyes and ears have been open a little bit more than when you do have somebody like uh miss patton who's on top do you find that easily a little bit more so he was all kinds of and also too we had parents call and report other families so it's like a combination i look out for taxpayer money yeah okay education um we'll have some textbooks to vote on to put on
063display um we've got the elementary third fourth and fifth grade social studies programs and we've got uh high school math algebra 1-2 and geometry as well as a personal finance and if anyone's interested tonight the books are in the room if anyone wanted to look at them some on the table over on the table here and on the card over there so we'll be voting to put those on display all of these books come with five or six year subscriptions digital access workbooks for the students and a very nice price point and it will all be paid from esther fund this one is really good i looked through a lot of it i mean we talked about the personal finance being something that kids should learn from a very very young age it's so important
064but that's really very up-to-date yes i'm disappointed that more of more of that wouldn't be necessarily um applicable in the money matters class right yeah yeah much you know yes yeah that would be i like that yeah it is really good practical life right it is something that everyone really should take advantage of yep um and then so we had uh we had an education meeting committee meeting last night and to continue the discussion that we had started about reading we are going to add another meeting june 7th to continue that discussion so i'll send that out as soon as it's finalized i just wanted to just back to the textbooks for a minute i just wanted to just because we've had all this talk about doing education differently and i just wanted to dispel
065the myth to the public who might be listening that um we still have to purchase these textbooks the companies have basically remastered their prices to the point where they're practically giving us the textbooks for free and charging us the same amount for the digital access so you would have to pay it no matter what um so i just wanted to dispel that myth to the public that somehow we're saving all this or that we're doing it differently unfortunately the textbook companies they got to make their money too and they've found a way to do it so yeah but it does open up for the students to give them options where they have the online they have the workbook they have the hard copy book for those who need that tactile yeah it actually feels it
066actually follows the heart of the strategic plan it's personalization and that's the approaches that you have there's different things that they can use with it but i don't want the public thinking oh look this board's approving a bunch of text books right exactly um unfortunately yeah i mean at the end of the day we're yeah like you're saying we're buying the digital rights we're buying the the to some extent the curriculum that's contained in those books as long as our teachers and students are taking advantage of that then it's money we'll spend yeah and the elementary program the social studies actually fits in real closely with the curriculum that we have right now which is nice um and it also has a built-in diversity component that goes along with the program and the high school
067one is a continuation this big ideas map it's a continuation of what we already have in the middle school so it'll be a nice flow there's a great flow now between six through uh algebra two and that's so important because it's same with the series because i've been places where you use one series for algebra one a different series for geometry and they're gaps there's no gaps with this it it flows perfect and the other piece is there you'll think the diversity piece in the social studies is amazing and it fits perfect in with the educational equity plan that you will receive friday that's been completed and you will receive that and you will see even though that's a plan to work on things you'll see dr barley actually used between the plan some of
068the uh action items even ahead of the game so that every curricular piece that we're looking at now will have will be looked at for diversity equity and inclusion every piece and we'll have to go through a process to make sure it meets the standard that we're looking for whatever that needs to be defined the social studies is small the other thing is the social has a wonderful writing and research component to it to start teaching the verb grades i really like that and the content for the reading and the what the content for the reading oh yeah the reading content is the reading level it's there okay um on to the finance report miss lindsay thank you mr leiden um we're going to be um approving the 20 21 22 proposed final budget and
069approving the accounts payable list through april 30th and we have a finance meeting on may 24th 25th at 6 pm joe is that what you have june 3rd we did yes okay i still had it in there but i wasn't sure if we were still doing that okay june 3rd at 6 then yep okay thank you miss lindsay activities and athletics mr laporte we have two items one's the approval of the activities for 2122 school year for policy 122. uh the activities are listed there and item number two is the approval theater scholastic athletics for 2122 the school year for policy 123. and uh they're all serviced there by season that's all so i just wanted to comment the question when i we've got middle school wrestling listen twice there uh i caught it from
070the stream okay yeah but i uh let me double check the cool i look like nerds i didn't see boys volleyball for the high school it is not on here yeah another spring to spring sport right that okay any other discussion can i have a motion to adjourn i'll make the motion okay all in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries meeting adjourned