September 24, 2024 7PM Regular Meeting of the Board

001for e e e good evening everyone I'd like to call to order the September 2024 meth acting school board this um Regular board meeting uh please stand for the pledge pleas to the flag United States of America to the na indivisible jice the public is here by advice of audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting by way of attendance all board members are here except for Miss Cano who is excused next's guest and schedule speakers Dr Z thank you Madame vice president this evening we have three presentations the first I'd like to introduce High School principal uh miss doc or Dr Deborah uker she will present the M Awards Dr uker good evening Dr Zerby do I just press it again there we go good evening Dr zeran School Board

002of Directors thank you for having me today today we are going to celebrate all the recipients of the M award the M award is a distinguished award that is given to any student who received a 93 or above for their entire school year um very prestigious So currently there are 365 kids in our school who over the course of last year achieved this uh great milestone of 93 and above we're going to start with our current sophomore class I'm just going to list the names for you um so you can Pro through the names uh the current sophomore class has a total of 116 names on uh students who have received the M award we're going to move into our current junior class in our junior class we have a total of 121 students who

003achieved an M award last year and lastly we have our seniors our seniors is the largest class of ma awward recipients with a whopping 128 names on this list everyone in the entire methacton High School Community is extremely proud of these students they'll be receiving their award their certificate from the counseling department during school hours thank you thank you Dr uker and thank you to all of our student awardees next on the agenda we have uh board honor rooll it gives me great pleasure to uh do the following uh for decades psba has been recognizing the contributions of dedicated long-term local school directors the honor role is an assoc is the association's way of thanking individuals who exemplify leadership by giving unselfishly of their time and talents for the betterment of public schools and students

004across the Commonwealth this month we want to recognize board member Samir Purdue who has is being recognized by the State Board Association for five years of giving her time and talent for the betterment of public schools and the importance of this volunteer role to shape the future of public education Miss Purdue congratulations a new photographer is here congratulations Miss Purdue and it's a testament to all of our school board directors for the time and talents that you give each and every day uh to this uh extraordinary School community so thank you all uh with that said we do have uh our next presentation which is the new high school Financial strategy with pfm and Raymond James uh but before we begin that presentation um I want to uh on the new high school project I

005want to bring the public up to date on a few items our next public meeting on the new high school is scheduled for October 2nd 2024 that meeting will be relocated to the high school library it was previously scheduled for the auditorium but it will be moved to the high School library and the presentation will include the educational impact information from last week's presentation as well as any updates from the PM's presentation this evening the presentation will be live streamed on October 9 2024 we had had advertised a scheduled special meeting of the board of school directors this meeting will be an opportunity for the administration and the design team to summarize the process to date and for the board to hear public comment or feedback on the proposed new high school project this October

0069 meeting will not include a vote or actions by the board it will serve as an opportunity for the public to provide feedback prior to a vote at the board's regular scheduled voting meeting on October 29 2024 again on October 29 2024 a vote to proceed forward with the next phase phas of the planning will be placed on the agenda with that I welcome uh our financial team uh to the podium members of the school board uh you have in front of you the presentation and paper copy uh for your review we will be presenting this uh presentation up on the screen and uh we then can take some any questions that you might have of the uh of the presenters from members of the board at the conclusion of the presentation Zack okay yeah

007thank you so I will apologize to the public in advance you have to listen to this boring Finance presentation we do have a lot to go through so there's a handout in front of you it's also on the board I'm Zach Willard from pfm financial advisors okay with me your underwriter Scott Kramer and Ali Mackey from Raymond James as we walk through this you know we want to get through all the information but we also want you to ask questions okay so you know feel free to chime in but kind of let us get through some of some of this might be answered as we go through the different pages um so yeah we'll get started um page number one is an interest rate chart I'll turn this over to Scott here at a quick

008talk about rates but I think you all know the FED met last week and they did lower the rate by half a percent the overnight rate which you know does impact markets but so far we haven't seen much happen but Scott knows more about interest rates than I do so I'll turn it over to him well it's set me up a little bit there um so yeah I would agree that last week everyone was waiting for with beta breath as to what the Federal Reserve was going to do I think there was a little bit of surprise in that they lowered uh short-term interest rates by 50 basis points instead of 25 basis points um the market had largely anticipated that move uh and so what we've seen since last week is actually short-term interest

009rates have moved up a little bit and actually long-term interest rates in the 10 to 30-year spot of the curve have moved up slightly as well um I don't I think that's a little bit of a short-term knee-jerk reaction I think the trend over the next 12 18 24 months is for the FED to continue um lowering short-term interest rates and I think that's going to be an opportunity for you all to take advantage of rates as we think about uh the high school project various interest rate charts you see on the page here um top of the page is is showing you what has happened with more importantly short-term interest rates uh middle of the page I think is a good um summary of uh where interest rates have been historically um we're still

010in a very good uh relative to rates over the last 50 years a good place to be thinking about projects uh and refinancings that we're going to touch on later in the presentation um so I think that's a fair start to you know your timing is pretty good with respect to interest rates yeah yeah and you know where school districts of you know similar to methacton are borrowing in the market right now is an all-in interest rate of somewhere between three and a half and 4% so if you were to go do a borrowing today for 25 years to start Capital prod projects you'd be somewhere in the three and a half to 4% all in so you know good interest rate different than what you've been hearing about on the news page number three

011for those of you that you've been around for a while this is you know the same page we show you every time this is what we call your debt summary so this is the top half of is all of the bond issues that you have and then they add up to column 12 which is what's in your budget every year you see a line item for Debt Service payment uh right now in the 25 budget year about $9.4 million of existing debt so this is kind of the page that says if you do nothing this is what your debt payments look like uh for the rest of their life the bottom half is what we call the local effort so that is net of the state reimbursement that you get on about three or four

012different Bond issues that date back to the early 2000s plan con does not exist anymore at least in its its old form it's been in a moratorium for about 10 years we don't expect any plan con for any future projects so we don't assume any plan con for any future projects but you still get plan Con on your old bonds that had those okay the only other thing actually I want to hit on this pages in column 12 when you look down that column you can see your debt service pays off uh fairly rapidly it might not look rapidly but it is you know you're at about $9 million then in a few years it drops down to 4 million and and then out in 2035 it drops down to about $2 million a year

013that's a very advantageous debt structure for large C capital projects in the future because it allows you to wrap the new debt around the old debt which minimizes the budget impact and the impact to the taxpayer so you are positioned well to borrow some type of money for future projects to have you know what would be a lower impact than a lot of schools that have level Debt Service you know say at $9 million for the next 10 or 15 or 20 years then you're kind of stacking new debt on top of old debt here we're going to stack new debt behind old debt okay and we'll show you what that what that really means in a moment on on page four we have a couple different bullets the discussion tonight is similar to the

014discussion we had two weeks ago with the finance committee which is what does it look like if we borrow $200 million for the project okay so that's the numbers that we're going to focus on this evening bullet number two there talks about we do anticipate that this would happen over multiple years all right because you're not going to need all the money at once and it takes a little bit to phase in new Debt Service of that size and over that over that multi-year plan we're also going to assume that you earn interest on the borrowed money which can be used to downsize the overall cost of the project a lot of the different things that we talk about are all ways to minimize the budgetary impact okay because that's the goal right is to

015make this as cost cost effective as possible so by by utilizing the interest earnings to shrink how much you actually have to borrow is another way we're going to help minimize that and you do have that in this scenario which we did not have two weeks ago okay because we do have a draw schedule now um under federal tax law it's important if you look at 3A we always like to remind everyone when you do borrow money the expectation is you're going to spend that borrowed money 85 % of it within three years so another reason that we would not run out and borrow $200 million today or 100 million or whatever it is because you're probably not going to be able to spend it that quickly so when we talk about phasing in the

016project one of the other reasons is we just need to make sure that we stay kind of within the IRS guidelines as to the borrowed money to make sure um you know we're above board there and then item 4A is one that's more relevant for the beginning part of this borrowing plan okay so there's you know some talk about if you would authorize the financing team for this calendar year to borrow money that we could borrow up to $15 million this calendar year what that would do is it would get you startup money for the project whichever version of the project you decide to move forward with and because it's 15 million or less in a calendar year it would allow you to be small issuer exempt which is bullet 3A which means that any

017Arbitrage that you earn over the borrowed amount you can keep it so let's talk numbers here so if you go borrow money at 3.5% okay and you take that money and you put it in a construction fund account where it's earning 5% or four and a half percent you can earn what's called positive Arbitrage which means the money is actually going to spin off interest you know higher than what you borrowed at if your small issue exempt you can keep those earnings and use them again to minimize the cost of the project so one of the thoughts as you kick off the project is should you move forward with $15 million small issue exempt to take advantage of that um that exception to kick off the project and and again um you know prepare for

018whatever you decide to move forward with in the future whether it's 200 million or some version of that going forward okay now if we Swip switch to page five so this one will be a little bit easier to see at least on the board so one of the things we have to pay attention to when you're borrowing you know this kind of money is is it affordable obviously can it fit into your budget okay and I think Dr Zer is going to talk about that in the slide here towards the end of the presentation but then the second one is is does it fit under your legal borrowing capacity Pennsylvania state law has a legal borrowing capacity calculation which we tried to put up here on under this Gra graph but they basically they take

019225% of the average of the last three years of Revenue and that's what your borrowing capacity is okay so if you look at the the blue bar in the middle of the page under 2024 year it shows that you could borrow up to $284 million Under Pennsylvania state law and that's not saying you should do that it's just saying that you could right then you have to net out the outstanding debt that you already have which is about $77 million so that shows you then your remaining your estimated remaining borrowing capacity of about $27 million as of the 2024 year okay and then what we did was we kind of put it in graphical form below that the point of this page is to show you if you were to move forward with the $200

020million plan as we have it laid out here and and I'm sure it's going to change right but let's just say it doesn't your borrowing capacity is going to go go down as you borrow over different steps and you're going to kind of hit a low point in your borrowing capacity in 2028 of about $107 million okay so that would mean that if other needs popped up at different schools you could borrow an additional 107 million dollar in the 2028 year okay now let's say you don't have that problem and you kind of keep you keep moving with status quo after the Project's complete after we borrowed all the money then as you see it starts to go back up because your revenues in theory are going to grow up go up and you're also

021going to be paying off the existing debt which makes your baring capacity go up so the point of this slide is to show you that you can one you can fit it under Pennsylvania State Law you can borrow that 200 million do for the project okay and you're going to have capacity for other projects should they arise in the future again this chart goes out to 2032 just to show you kind of how as you go forward your baring capacity increases is again to make sure that you can um borrow for future projects if you would need to okay I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add on that slide anyone I know that was an important one to finance committee okay great all right so page six has a lot of numbers

022and it's small don't Focus so much on exactly what all the numbers are it's more this is more just to show you the process and the thought pattern behind when you borrow money and you invest the money okay so what we're showing you in columns four and five is the uses of funds so that's basically what what are you spending it on and how quickly are you spending it this is a monthly page so it's showing you construction draws that are estimated in column four for a $200 million project you know every month you're going to spend couple hundred thousand in the beginning then you're going to be spending you know six s million dollars a month towards the end okay so those are the project draws so in order to fund column four we're

023going to borrow money in specific amounts in column six column six seven eight and nine are the sources of funds so how you're going to pay for the uses of the funds you're going to have the sources in column six would show in this hypothetical example you borrow about $15 million December of 2024 then you're going to spend down that money okay then you borrow about $42 million in October of 25 then you're going to spend down the money then you borrow $80 million in 2026 and so on so that you can then a fund fully fund this $200 million project okay now at the bottom of column six you'll notice that the borrowings don't add up to 200 million they add up to about $196 million the reason is is we're estimating interest earnings

024in column 8 on the borrowed money of about $3.7 million so we're using those interest earnings to downsize how much you're going to actually borrow by about 3.7 million now we assumed interest earnings here of about 3.25% over this you know four-year period we don't know what that'll really be that will depend on what the fed's doing right but we know it's not going to be five and a half like it was a week ago because the FED just lowered interest rates it's probably not going to go back down to 1% like it was a couple years ago so we kind of picked something in the middle that number will change okay and the way that we account for the change in column 8 is we don't downsize the borrowing until we get to step

025you know four or five out in 2028 by then we'll know exactly how the Project's going if there's any change orders exactly how much interest you've earned so that we can then decide in that final step how much money do you really need you know we're assuming you need 16.2 million now but when we get there could be a little bit more could be less you could decide to use other reserves to shrink that last borrowing so that last borrowing is important we call that the cleanup barwing it's where you can right siiz the project you know once you kind of know more facts okay so I think again this is a busy page but those are the main points we wanted to hit on here so we're going to use that estimated 3.7 million

026to downsize the project Zack just to clarify that the draw schedule was provided by dwey who Who provided the draw schedule was yeah that's correct CH owner's representative provided the draw schedule as a sample for this project yeah and again I'll just say everything that we always show you in these pages is always estimated and I'm certain that this draw schedule will change you know maybe not drastically but it will move around I think the point was the shape of the draw right it yes was I believe sort of sort of like a Bel shaped curve for the most part is how the borrowing would lay out yeah the heavy draws are kind of June of 26 through April 28 and then it kind of shrinks quickly yeah you're correct okay so page seven is

027kind of the main event in this handout again apologies for the small print so let's start at the left hand side of this and we'll kind of walk through it now there's different versions of this that we can run in the future but again right now we're focused on the $200 million project if you look up in the top in the green under step one what we have in the first one is a placeholder for total reserves in the capital projects fund we're assuming that through this plan you spend none of the money in your capital projects fund okay when you go over to the right hand side in column eight it says there's 18 million remaining at the end of this plan in your capital projects fund so we're assuming that you spend none

028of it that is a concern conservative assumption I don't think that's what's really going to happen so you do have $18 million in reserves that you can put towards this project if you're going to use them towards the project we do recommend using them towards the end of the project both for credit rating reasons and just so you can kind of see how things evolve right over the over the multi-year plan the second line item shows you available for projects so it shows you how much we're borrowing each year for the projects that number ties to the draw schedule we just showed you the third line item is the estimated interest earnings which as we said is $3.7 million so when you look in column six in the red it shows you you're borrowing 196

029million plus 3.7 million of Interest earnings gets you the 200 million needed for the project um in the green the settlement date December of 24 October 25 and so on that shows you the estimated timing I also expect that to change okay depending on what the market does there could be a situation where we decide to speed up the borrowings if rates suddenly drop and we say hey instead of borrowing 40 million next year maybe we should borrow 75 because rates came down significantly or vice versa maybe the project slows down so we slow down the borrowings again these are estimated um you know an estimated schedule for Illustrated purposes we always want to be flexible with the financing plan because we just want to do whatever gets us the best answer okay and then

030the last one their term so these are all expected to be 30-year borrowings the reason their 30-year borrowings is because this is a very large project if you came back and decided to do this do aund million version or $150 million we would investigate if it makes sense to shorten the term you don't have to go 30 years 30 years is the max but depending on what the project is and how it impacts your budget we could borrow over a shorter period of time so then down to the bottom half of the page so starting left to right in columns eight and nine those are your fiscal years and then the existing debt that we showed you back on the second page of the handout so again column 9 is if you do nothing that's

031what your debt looks like so remember how I said your debt falls off rap pretty rapidly so what you're going to notice is if you look columns 10 through 15 the payment structures doesn't look like your mortgage where the payments the same every year okay some of the payments or most of the payments are lower up front and then as your existing debt pays off in column 9 that's when we fold in the new debt that is called a around Debt Service structure again it's something specific that you know Municipal borrowers can use and it is very commonly used schools cities counties buroughs townships because it has the lowest the lowest budgetary impact okay so we use this structure so columns 10 through 15 um are the impact of The Debt Service to the project

032so when you look in colums 6 and 15 that's the red that's the total of the The Columns before that you can see you're going to borrow the $200 million for the project your debt service in column 15 is going to kind of run at about $10 million and then by the time we get out there it's going to jump up to about 12 million I'm sorry I'm looking in yeah no that's correct looking in colum 15 and it jumps up to about $12 million and then if you look at the very bottom of column the column in red it shows you it cost about $420 million over the life over that 30-year period for the project and then the number that you'll see after this is all done is column 16 so you'll look

033at column 16 you'll see one line item in your budget every year that says your debt service is 15 million you know $180,000 that'll be built into the budget and then when you scroll down you can see it it doesn't change so once you get the mills in place to pay for that $15 million it's it's funded in the budget uh for the next 30 Years okay any questions about that one other thing we have column 17 which is a blank column now I just want to point to that real quickly depending on how things evolve with future Act One indexes and tax increases you we could use some of the capital reserve in column 17 in order to phase in the projects so column 17 is kind of like a safety valve that if

034you you know if the Act One index is lower than what you expect you can use some of those reserves in order to help phase The Debt Service into your budget over maybe an extra year or two if it's needed you don't have to do that but it's kind of a backup plan okay so you're going to go from column 9 to column 16 to fund the project again we have conservative estimates in here for interest rates you know if we went to go borrow money today we would do better than what we're showing you here but one of the points of borrowing over multiple steps is it does hedge your interest straight risk you know we'll hit the market at some lower points we might hit the market at a little bit of a

035higher point but you're not just kind of putting your eggs in one basket with where interest rates are um page eight is the graphical version of this so this page I think is really just more helpful to show how it's wrapping in behind your existing debt so the black is your existing debt that's the do nothing column right and then as we borrow the multiple steps you can see how it starts to phase in you know and in the back you can see that the bars are larger than in the front that's the the wrap structure taking effect so I don't think there's a whole lot to point nothing's really different about this page it's just the graphical version it's a little easier to look at than all the numbers um page nine I'll go

036through this quickly some of this we already kind of hit on as we walked through you know some of the the the strategies that we'll use but these are just general what we call Act One millage strategies so act one came into play back in 2006 limited uh the district's ability to increase taxes to fund a project well just to fund the budget in general so after act one of 2006 you had to use certain things in order to make sure you could fit a project into your budget the first one and the most common one and the most obvious one is you fit it into what the Act One allowable index will allow you to increase um taxes by okay and that changes every year it's been high the last few years and it's

037expected to you know kind of go lower and then level off but that's step one right that's where you start thinking about this step two we talked about that's where you use estimated interest earnings from the construction fund towards the project so that's that $3.7 Million number that we talked about we do plan to use that um and then you can see 2B talks about the small issuer exemption of 15 million or less uh number three contribute cash or refunding savings towards projects we did talk about how this assumption assumes no cash is being used but I don't think that's what'll really happen I think some cash will be used for the project okay so that's something that will you know as the project moves on we'll begin to populate you know how that's going

038to play out we didn't talk about refunding savings what that is is when we refinance your existing debt and we will have that opportunity okay we will use or you can use the savings generated in order to you know lower your debt service payments in certain years so potentially to offset you know a future tax increase depending on the level of savings so that'll be a strategy that we use that'll be further down the road and some of that will actually happen after the project is completed but it's something that we will you know want to plan for and look at and just on that topic we we have a page at the very end that we might not get to but the refinancing that you did authorize the team to proceed back in February

039because interest rates have slowly come down since the beginning of the year that is back in play now and we expect to potentially price bonds for that refinancing and save you know somewhere between $200 and $300,000 uh hopefully in the next few weeks just depending on if the market cooperates so I did want to just bring that up as a reminder that that's still out there and is now back at the top of the radar screen okay uh number four break borrowings into smaller portions we showed you that again borrowing 200 million all up front comes with a number of problems okay so we have this as a multi that plan um but we do want to say that we will likely and may very well change the size of the borrowings as we move

040through that colored page um that we just showed you but breaking it into multiple steps is a very common way to help um fit this in under Act One the wraparound payment in column five and then capitalized interest in column six there's two forms of capitalized interest one is where you borrow extra money in order to help make your payments I don't think we're focused on that one here I think in this this case it'd be Item B or I'm sorry if you look through through item a it says or District reserves that's where we would use some of the capital the capital reserve in order to phase this into your budget okay the rest of these are not planned on being used and they're used less commonly um indirect cost savings is where if

041you're going to save money on electricity you would use that to help fund the project or Staffing or something like that a debt restructuring where you take your existing debt and move it around um capital appreciation bonds which are a very expensive way to issue debt and then you have a referendum at the bottom of the page you know which is very uncommonly used and very unsuccessful um and you don't need to do that because you can fit this in under the state borrowing limits and you can fit this in under act one and then the last page of this part of the handout is a timeline so what this is showing you here some of these things have already passed if you kind of scroll down to the middle of the page we're September

04224th to discuss the plan now you'll notice on this timeline there's two areas where there's kind of a blue font okay those are the items where the board may take action if it should choose to so one of them is tonight and that's where you can authorize the financing team to prepare for the the the borrowing this year that could be up to $15 million okay so that I think that's on the agenda for this evening and then the other one is down at the bottom October 29th which is where you know depending on how the deliberations go you could then have a debt resolution in front of you to vote on which is the formal action needed in order to borrow that amount of money again I think 15 million is kind of what

043was mostly discussed um at the meeting two weeks ago but I will leave that up to you and then we would be locking in interest rates according to this timeline sometime you know right before Thanksgiving to close the transaction before uh the end of the year so any questions about timing so I think the the the second part of this overall presentation is uh we we've received the uh the way financing would would occur to uh to address the 200 $200 million borrowing I think the next part of this presentation is really how does that impact the budget and does how does that impact the budget with the change in the draw schedule as well as uh an updated figure associated with the Act One index so if we could there should be another slide

044that we want to put up on the screen and members of the board you have a copy of the of that uh at your table so for those of you who have been foll following this uh discussion for for a number uh of meetings now you'll recognize that we use this format to outline the revenue and expenditures associated with uh a five-year projection on the budget obviously the 2425 U uh column represents uh the the actual budget for for this particular school year this slide is entitled The Five-Year budget projection including $200 million borrowing uh on the sample draw schedule provided by cha our owner's representative and at the projected Act One index down at the bottom of the slide you'll see there just two footnotes the first is is that the Act One index

045is the projected by the independent fiscal Office of the State and that's as of November 2023 and again the sample draw schedule is from cha which is factored into the presentation provided by uh pfm here this evening with that said uh this slide represents an update to the budget projections that have given the draw schedule and Cha's uh on building $200 million High School within the projected Act One index as such this model demonstrates that the district by maximizing the projected Act One index in each of the next four years will with the exception of 2028 2029 projection will simply cover the ramping up of the interest in principle associated with $200 million borrowing for each of these years there is between six 1.6 million and 2.2 million included in each of the uh budgets

046for a budgetary transfer to Capital this is typically how we fund capital projects and in the 2028 29 uh school year could reduce that transfer to Capital to cover the $700,000 projected shortfall as listed in the red on column uh under the net change in column 2829 so as you can see then there is room within the projected uh budget to reasonably manage to proceed forward with that I think it's we want to give an opportunity for the board to ask questions of pfm or of myself regarding the uh Financial uh strategy for you this evening Mr wyers yes so one clarifying question so um for Mr Ward on and it might be misinterpreting the numbers here on my part but on slide seven where you have the total reserves for Capital reserves fund you

047have $18 million is that is is that evaluating our cash related to unallocated or is TR truly just our Capital reserves fund so so I believe that's just the capital reserve fund yeah that that that is that includes the existing Capital uh reserve of $1 million and the projected by the time we reach the the uh 2028 uh year given the uh transfer to Capital projection all right that's that that anything else Mr wers okay Miss clear um the $3.7 million that you talked about on the U estimated interest earnings on the on a $200 million borrow my question is can a school district um reinvest that money to to earn more money or is that not something a school district can do so on page so this is on page six if everyone's looking

048back to column eight so we are assuming that you invest that money at of a rate a rate of 3.25 which today is conservative but you know two years from now could be right on point or it could be lower than that you can't take that money and buy Apple stock or something like that but you can put it in very safe treasury Investments which then yield whatever the market is yielding so we are assuming that you take the money as borrowed right so the first step would be you take column six you borrow $15 million okay and then if you look right over in column 8 that's assuming that at 3.25% you're going to earn about $37,000 that first month and then as you spend that money you'll see that the earnings go down

049because you're spending money on the project so there's less money invested and then then Inc comes the next borrowing in 101 2025 of 42.5 million so then all of a sudden when you look in column 8 you'll see the earnings jump from 28,000 and so on to 145 and that's that's kind of how that process works I don't think I asked the question appropriately so no I apologize um I was really asking the 3.7 million of if we if we assume that we're we're going to earn interest earnings of 3.7 million on this SP can we take that 3.7 and reinvest it to make additional money can a school district do that no so so the way it works because you're borrowing tax exempt money and I'm not your lawyer right you have a separate

050Bond Council from eard Seaman that would would tell you but I think what he would tell you is that the money that you earn on the borrowed money must be used towards the project you can't take that money and then put it in its own Reserve fund to spin off operating cash for example okay thank you y Miss graph yes thank you so much for the updated presentation I will say I do very much appreciate the graphic because I think it really explains when you say we're going to wrap the new debt around the old debt that didn't make a lot of sense to me yeah but when I see it in that graphical form it makes sense that it Stacks in behind the old debt so that thank you for that um I had

051a question though about the small issuer exemption so the small issuer exemption applies to the 15 million that we're talking about authorizing to move forward and again this authorization tonight would be to authorize you to prepare the documentation and then you would come back to the board for the final approval for that um but does the exemption only apply until we borrow additional funds above the 15 million or is that first 15 million exempt until we use it yes so it's exempt until you use it now the way because we're talking about again federal tax rules they think in terms of calendar year so the way this works is if you borrow 15 million or less by you know 1231 of this year it would be small issue exempt and then it would be small

052issue exempt all the way until you spend that 15 million then assuming that we would follow this plan next year you're going to borrow 40 some million doar so it would be up and above so that 42 million would not be small issue exempt but the 15 that you did before 1231 2024 would still be small issue EXA and then you also have the requirement in which you have to spend it 85% of the 15 million in the three years that first three years that you have correct so even though it's tax exempt you you only really have three years to spend it and it is a it's called a reasonable expectations test so there's there is times when people don't spend the money within 85% you know if you hit some big delay in

053the project or something like that those are reasonable things that happen to to a project that wouldn't take you out of compliance with this but the rule is in place because they don't want people to go borrow money because rates are low or they don't want to people to go borrow money because they can invest it and earn Arbitrage and then not really have a project to spend it on yeah I mean I could see that being very profitable for the district if we were able to do that so we're not doing that just to be clear we're not we're not allowed to do that um and then I had a question on slide uh five where you have the graphic about the borrowing capacity so I just wanted to confirm that the numbers that

054you have in the table for 24 25 26 and so on those numbers are included when when you say the debt outstanding you're including our current debt and then also the debt that we would incur for a $200 million project correct so even with the high school project at $200 million the lowest our potential borrowing capacity goes is that middle sort of 2028 number that is correct okay thank you and you can see that when you look in that middle box there you can see your net Geo debt outstanding you can see that starts to go up drastically that's in conjunction with the borrowings okay thank you so much sure Miss Purdue um thank you for the presentation I do just have I don't have questions I think it's clear to me but I think

055considering that um this is something your firm do I figure maybe the slides will be presented a little bit differently I'm just wondering like and I don't know if because you don't have animations just because some of them are very small to see some of the numbers and I know you bring us to to it to focus on you call out the ones that are critical but I'm wondering is there another way to share it like in the future like are you able to do animations I'm thinking like even slide or page six or seven are you able to animate it so you can make those boxes bigger as you go through it we've struggled with that for 48 years so you know sometimes we show up in places want a summary page you know

056for example this this was a new one that we did but then other times people want to see all the numbers um maybe we can talk with Dr Zerby before the next presentation and figure out where we want to highlight you know something specific and blow it up I do think it's important you know that we show you kind of all the backup numbers even though some of it might put you to sleep but just so you can really see how it works but yeah we can try to do a better job of that yeah and it's not really a matter of putting as sleep I think it's hard to um I can imagine if I'm in the audience and I don't have it it's hard to see if I want to be able to

057follow along because it's so small so I I was just wondering if they had like a magnifier um option when you're presenting that you can um do so I'll be interested to see if if that's something that's possible in the future for some of these presentations yeah no I can't disagree with you yeah all right that's it I think I don't have any questions in reference to them for so thank you any other questions to my left Miss Austin hi thank you for this presentation and for incorporating a lot of the feedback from the finance committee in into this to help everybody understand I really appreciate that absolutely um I just was wondering on on slide seven um where it shows all the different steps um column 19 the millage impact just can you help

058me with the arithmetic like yes we didn't we didn't really hit on that one so when you start in column so again you're going from column nine so we're on page seven this colored summary page yeah that up on the screen please so you're going to go from column 9 to column 16 when all the dust settles and you've borrowed 200 million right and then so column because you borrowed the money in multiple steps over multiple Years you'll notice column 16 starts to I don't want to say gradually go up it jumps up you know multiple years until all of the new debt is phased into your budget which happens you know right around the 2029 budget year okay so some places like to think of it in terms of dollars others like to think

059of it in terms of what is the millage impact so if you look at the footnote footnote number four we assume that one mill of the district is equal to about $2.5 million so we're taking the annual increase in The Debt Service and dividing it by the value of a mill in order to show column 19 which is just it's a different way to say instead of saying your debt service goes up $600,000 a year you can also think of it I don't know how you all talk about it but you also might think of it in terms of millage which is what column 19 is showing you is that helpful so can you just take me through the arithmetic because I mean we don't often talk about things in terms of millage but I

060know that millage is is important to everybody who pays taxes um so if a mill so in column 20 so in go back to column nine so in the 2026 budget so the second year you're at 8,491 th000 or no I'm sorry look at um number 20 I'm sorry budget year 2025 you're 9 million4 for your debt service okay then the next year you're going to go up to $10.9 million so that's an increase of you know about a million n over that oneyear period okay the value of one mil is equal to $2.5 million using round numbers so that's about7 Mills on a millage equivalency basis that 1. okay so you take the difference from the column above it correct and that's the Mills okay thank you very much any other questions to my

061left any other questions on to my right uh U Mr mki so again on page seven um so in total we're borrowing $196 million and the total principal and a and interest payback at the end of 30 years is 423 million correct round numbers correct yep I did notice that it was slightly lower ratio than um some of the previous presentations I know some of the earlier presentations were like 2.5% payback this is about 2.15 is there a reason with the change we did change this plan significantly from two Tuesdays ago because we didn't have a draw schedule two weeks ago and now we had a draw schedule which kind of more clearly laid out how we think this might happen which shifted when we borrowed money right and then so it also shifted you

062know the total interest payments over the life so this was a little bit cheaper because we borrowed money faster would you uh consider that 2.15 ratio fairly normal in today's market yeah I mean again you know we're assuming you're borrowing here you know at four four and a half percent in reality you're borrowing probably a percent lower than that if we did this today if we did all this today and you are borrowing over 30 years so some schools might borrow shorter so therefore the total cost would be less you know it's kind of if you think Home Mortgage you know most people do a 30-year mortgage because it's a more affordable payment even though you know you're paying more over the life but if someone has the ability to borrow over 15 years right

063you're going to maybe have higher payments up front but you have less payments over the life so it does depend on the specific project in the specific District but in this case this looks fairly normal okay thank you Mr wyers yeah and we are going to go to the credit rating discussion as well we we certainly can yeah so uh I just want to the $15 million um I know this this is the question in the room is the $15 million if there's a decision later on in October not to proceed with a a new high school but go with a different that we estimate higher eyeball of100 million can this $15 million be used to that1 million yeah so that's a good question so part of the reason we were talking about 15 million

064for this calendar year was our understanding was you're either going to do a $200 million project or you're going to do a $100 million project what you're going to do something so by doing the 15 million this year you can take advantage of the small issue or exemption knowing that you're going to need this money regardless of which option you ultimately decide you're going to move forward with so the 15 million could be used for whatever project uh that you're gonna do in the near term I think that was your question yeah okay and then uh also Dr Zerby the the update on your slide that you had presented um from what was presented in the uh the the town hall meetings you use the uh projected act one that was from the fiscal off

065independent fiscal office and if I understand that pretty much everyone except year one is lower so year one is higher and the next three years are lower because of the act one yes so the uh the the projection from the Independent fiscal office projected the numbers as they're listed on that slide with 4% being for the 2526 year 3.6 for the following year 3.2 and 3.1 and so happens to be that that projection is accurate so for this fiscal year the Act One index for metha and I'm sorry for the 25 26 year the Act One index for methacton is 4% and you're correct that uh the original presentations that we had a did not have a draw schedule in a bell shaped curve and B did not include these ex act one indexes from

066that fiscal office projection but they do now and um as you can see uh all all we we're able to uh you know proceed forward knowing that we have levers in terms of using District cash to be able to take care of the last year okay thank you and the last question do yeah Dr Willard congratulations Mr Willard um you you you commented on a current debt dropping off from 9 million to down to 4.8 in from a local effort so down $4 million by the year 2029 um what have other districts what do other districts face if they have a a uh a Debt Service that is sort of stable for the next 10 years so if they had a much lower say even if they had s million do of debt for the

067next 15 years what do they face as op stacles sure so let's just say it's a district that's comparable to methan as far as budget size goes right so similar budget if your debt service runs flat at $9 million for the next 15 or 20 years mean you're facing an unaffordable project you're have to change the scope of the project because you just can't do $200 million and phase it into your budget you were looking at um delaying the project you know we have a couple schools that are just going to have to push the project off for a number of years because again they can't fit it in uh under the current assumptions because their debt you know is running level um I mean those would be the two main ones you know you

068do again I think I said this before you do have a good situation where your debt falls off very rapidly which is you know I don't know if it's coincidental timing or just good timing for a sizable Capital project yeah I think Mr wner is not sure if this helps you with your question but but typically if we were finding ourselves uh in the neighborhood of four four million $3 million $2 million in ter terms of Debt Service as a as a decline as a as a decreasing Factor um if we were to wanting to borrow $200 million for a high school say 10 years from now uh where we had a uh a Debt Service of of two million $2 million it'd be very difficult under the existing act one uh constraints ever to

069get there so you would never have that opportunity to build a school in that scenario any other question is graph yeah I have a question on the five-year budget projection slide um I just wanted to make sure I understand that on this slide instead of us providing an a projected tax increase per percentage at the bottom we're assuming that the tax increase would be comparable to the Act One index is that correct that's correct and so this slide basically is telling us that with the projected increases in our taxes it is sufficient under the Act One index to be able to fund the project except for the last year that's correct um and does this uh debt and transfer row that's essentially where we have the funding for the project right that's where the borrowing

070comes in yeah so on slide on the pfm slides I believe the overall local effort um those numbers in the local effort are in the debt and transfer column plus additional plus additional uh uh leases that that are incurred in there as well right okay um and the other question I guess I had was the debt and transfer row that's on this budget projection slide doesn't take into account any of the interest earnings for that last year it does not okay so those interest earnings if we held them till the last year could offset the $700,000 of of overage with the $3 million of Interest well well so there's again there's different ways to use the interest earnings and we would just need to check with Bond Counsel on that the most common way is

071you just borrow less money at the end you can use the interest earnings to um kind of act as the capitalized interest that we talked about maybe make a debt payment so there's different ways to think about that and one other question I guess these Act One indexes are projected so let's say in 2728 the act1 index that's projected at 3.2 actually comes out at 3.1 could we use our capital projects fund to offset the borrowing in that year to reduce our tax increase to get below that Act One index if we needed to well we could actually do two things one we have existing uh Capital project funds right now as I mentioned earlier $1 million and uh we could ALS so we could use that to offset it but we also could reduce

072the transfer to Capital uh that is built into each one of these years uh to offset that cost as well and do you know and I I apologize for asking you this off the cuff do you know what that transfer to Capital estimate is on an annual basis annual basis um it it it it goes from $1.6 million in the first year to 2.2 in the last year so that's basically the money the district is putting away as a savings account fund for projects in the future is that correct that's correct and we can use that to fund any projects in the district obviously not necessarily operating expenses but capital projects would be for any Capital project correct okay thank you are there any other questions uh for PF FM this evening over Miss Austin

073I know we have gone over this I'm just asking it out loud here but are there other um large projects on the horizon that could interfere with this plan so one of the things that we had asked our own as representative to do was to take a look at our 10year Master facilities plan and they are currently working with our facilities and working with our assistant superintendent uh to organize a a presentation for believe to be delivered on October 22nd uh to the board of school directors and obviously as well in in October to the property Committee of the board uh to show how those projects would be I'll call it moved within that timeline so that a we can manage uh projects that we know we need to address and B that we can

074fund the projects that we know we need to address okay great well hopefully this was helpful for everyone and uh we'll wait to hear from Dr Zerby thank you very much Madame vice president that ends our guests and scheduled speakers presentations uh for this evening um we will then go into uh reports and then from there into um a public comment following reports are we going to do the rating discussion presentation yes we we are we are so I just want to make sure uh our presenters we have the slideshow ready BR that back up so we going to go to slide 11 I believe it's okay 13 is where it starts I'm sorry yep there we go so I don't know that we need to to go through each one of the slides a

075lot of the stuff um that we went through two weeks ago we kind of came back and and gave you some uh some additional information but one of the things that we think about um with the financing team and the folks at pfm is when you're thinking about a large project like this you have a very good rating going in you want to make sure you come out on the other side with an equally good rating not having jeopardized the other stuff that you want to do on a regular basis here at the school district programs and all the good stuff that you're doing and so the rating presentation that we just actually walked through yesterday uh kind of said a lot of the same things that you're going to see in this U these

076few slides um it it shares with you how you stack up relative to some of your peers in the neighborhood um but it's it's looking at metha and School District Through The Eyes of someone in New York who doesn't know anything about you they simply compare you um and the numbers that you can put forth in your budget and compare it to metrics um across the country um clearly you stack up very well this shows you have a doublea rating uh from Moody's before we go into this project um that's a very very look at the right hand table that's a very very very good rating relative to um districts that are rated um in Pennsylvania you can see the first bullet point that there's 27 Schools rated doublea 2 by Moody and one you're

077one of 72 school districts in Pennsylvania rated in the doublea category so that speaks to that speaks volumes actually about the good work that the administration and the board has done here over the years um in keeping the financial house in order so that's a really good starting point um that's very hard to achieve um I think I'm not going to steal Ali Thunder here but um there are some slides in here that speak to um the other metrics um and how hard it is to get to the doublea category so you should be very proud of of that um the bullet the other bullet points on this page speak to uh the rating scorecard um that you have before we go into this project and some of the credit strength strengths and challenges that

078Moody's um outlines in that report it says you have an above average resident wealth and income level um consistent strong operating surpluses some of the challenges would be obviously if you're thinking about a $200 million project um what the stress might look like on your budget and so that's really that was largely the conversation two weeks ago which is you know we call it the stress test of okay we know we have a good rating currently what happens if we stress test your financials and add $200 million of debt to it and and really what the next couple of slides tell you is that you're going to be just fine you're going to have that good rating you're likely to keep that rating there might be some downward pressure on it um but the message

079to the rating agencies is that if you have a plan and you stick to that plan um and you plan accordingly and you share that plan with them you're likely to come out on the other side um again as as Zach mentioned um the plan is going to have some changes along the way how you phase and mill clearly will change along the way um but I think if you have a good plan going in and they know it um that's better than kind of flying by the seat of your plant pants and not having um given much thought to how you're goingon to Endeavor to borrow $200 million so again I don't know that we need to spend the time to go through if you want to go to the next slide slide 14

080um I think one of the most important things there is that most school districts in Pennsylvania are rated A2 and above and you can see the bar chart I know I'm a visual person as well where you would Stack Up on the as a doublea rated School District relative to most of the other school districts uh in Pennsylvania so I think that speaks volumes the lower right hand portion of this chart shows you again uh the other Montgomery County SCH County school districts um some rated higher some rated lower um and a lot of that's a function of how much cash you maintain uh one of the things that I would second to what what Zach said is I think we want to be very mindful of uh your cash balances and the use of

081those reserves and keeping them until the end um what the scorecard tells us is um that will give you a lot of flexibility as you plan out your financings over the next three four or five years um and keeping that cash um to allow you to roll with either Act One indexes that aren't what you were expecting um budgets that were a little challenge more challenging than others um and so keeping your cash to the end will give you a great deal of flexibility at as you navigate the next three or four years um so with that um I'll turn it over to Ally to walk through a couple of slides briefly and you can answer um ask questions as she goes through thank you all right I'm gonna start on slide 15 so I

082think there was a desire to understand better what actually goes into a R's mooding or a Moody's rating and what components you can control and not control within that rating so tonight I just wanted to quickly uh run through what those components are and how they're calculated for you so you'll see on this page there's four components that go into the districts what they call above the line rating the economy leverage financial performance and the institutional framework the economy section is worth 30% of your rating and those are all factors that the district itself cannot control it's driven by Resident income full value per capita and your enrollment Trend those things are statistically not something that you can influence uh so those will be what they are the other one you cannot influence is the

083institutional framework which accounts for 10% of your total rating score that's a score that Moody gives to all Pennsylvania school districts which is an a everybody all 500 plus school districts of Pennsylvania have an a rating on the institutional framework you can't change it um that's just how they view the support of the state for the district and the the framework here in Pennsylvania but the two areas you can control are the leverage and the financial performance sections and that accounts for 60% of your total overall rating and you'll see there that the the four categories that they look at are the long-term liabilities ratio the fixed cost ratio the available fund balance ratio and the net cash ratio those are all simply driven by leverage and cash on hand so we'll walk through a

084little bit in further detail on the next page how those metrics are actually calculated since these are the four pieces that the district itself can control the financial performance there you see is worth 30% of your score with your available fund balance ratio being worth 20% um these are numbers that come directly from Moody's they Source them directly from the district's 2023 audit so that's where these numbers all stem from um so you can see that the available fund balance ratio is nothing more than your available fund balance divided by your operating Revenue that gives you that 7.1% that Moody has on their scorecard below that you'll see the net cash ratio which is 10% of your score that's simply the net cash you have on hand divided by your operating Revenue which gives you

085that 17.7% metric again these are all just coming from the fiscal 23 audit Moody's does reserve the right to make adjustments for things like um giving you credit for outside reserves or um making other adjustments for onetime expenses and things like that but these are the numbers directly from Moody's for for your district for your scorecard that they've most recently updated on the right hand side you can see the leverage ratio also worth 30% the long-term Li liabilities ratio is 20% of that 30% and you'll see the calculation there which is just your outstanding debt again um this is as of 630 2023 the number that was in your audit so it might not be your currently outstanding debt but that's how the metric was calculated and then they add to that your adjusted net

086pension liability and your adjusted net oped liability and divide the sum of those by your operating Revenue that gives you that 1698 then the fixed cost ratio is probably the most convoluted ratio um and hardest to calculate because they use their own internal metrics to calculate what they call the tread water payment that is noted here it's just an indicator that indicates Moody's estimate of the pension contributions necessary to prevent underfunding of the uh pension liability year-over-year year assuming that all the Actuarial assumptions are met so they do have a report where they outline how that number gets calculated but I didn't want to go into those type of weeds here tonight uh we can certainly provide that if you're interested they also calculate your implied Debt Service they do this based on a 20-year

087level debt amortization they do that for everybody that's how they compare you to somebody in Ohio or Texas or somewhere else that might not have a wraparound Debt Service structure available to them um so they just take your outstanding debt and do it over a 20-year period to get that number so they recalculate that and then they take your OPB contribution um and total all three of those up to get your adjusted fixed costs of 12.4 million and then divide that by the operating Revenue which gives you the available fund balance ratio of 10% I know that's a lot and if there's questions on that I'm happy to take questions but I think uh if you sourced back to your audit you'd see where all those numbers come from on the following slide um this

088is your actual scorecard and where all those numbers go into so you'll see there on the left hand side there's the 2023 fiscal year audited financial statements column this is exactly matches to scooty uh Moody's scorecard that they've provided to you the last time they evaluated you um all of those values in that in that column match to the previous slide where we just calculated them and you can see there that once they wait and score all those columns out you score out at a a A3 rating in that blue box at the bottom uh Moody does reserve the right to what they do call Notch you so for other factors like they like where you're geographically located or you have other outstanding factors in your favor they can move you up or down depending

089on how they view you and clearly they view you as stronger than a double A3 so they Notch you up to that double A2 currently so we would expect that to continue um we did do a post financing plan where we layered on that $200 million worth of Leverage we're pointing out with the red arrows that those are the four pieces of your ratios that we can influence we're holding everything else constant just because we have no idea what your enrollment trend's going to do or your resident income and the like uh but we do know an estimate of how that leverage will affect uh the district going forward we also assume that you do keep that cash on hand and this is the important part of this analysis is that we're going to not

090spend that cash till the end we're going to keep it on hand we're not assuming it grows which would be a positive influencing factor and if in fact that is the case um but we're not going to spend it and keep it in hand so that we can try to minimize the impact of the additional leverage on the rating ratios so you can see here that even when we we layer in that debt it does show a one notch downgrade or downward pressure on the rating however again we've kept a lot of these other assumptions static those will be mitigating factors to the downward pressure and if we do this methodically and stick to a plan as Scott mentioned um we'll be able to tell that story to the rating rating agency and hopefully come

091out at the end of this with the same rating that you currently have as long as we appropriately and properly manage the project all the way through with the rating agency um the next slide is just some rating considerations and takeaways I think Scott went over this when he was here last uh again just cash is King with the rating agencies they want to see that you have that flexibility if something goes wrong with the project it doesn't quite work out the way we thought it was uh going to timing changes whatever the case may be which is why we always just say just keep the cash on hand till the end we're not telling you not to spend it on the project just don't spend it until you're at the final step there or

092the cleanup borrowing that Zach mentioned um because that will be favorable for your rating process the whole way through this project and again the higher your rating the lower the interest rate you're able to borrow at so that's why it's so important that we try to keep the rating as high as possible and then um you know having a plan they love a plan they love when boards stick to a plan they love to see an outline of how this is all going to lay out for them so we always present that to them we update them as it changes and we're really focused on making sure we have really good communication with with them going forward and then the other thing we just always um like to do if we can is a site

093visit for a project of this magnitude just as Scott mentioned these folks sit around the country Dallas Chicago New York they don't know where methacton School District sits they don't understand the local economy um so we like to to bring them here it gives them a real sense of what it's like what the you know local Vibe is how close you are to certain things um it just the need for the project they can see why you're doing this uh that all helps so we would recommend that uh if you do embark on a a large Capital project and then the final slide is just those four ratios that I had mentioned and we had gone over that you can control I wanted to show you where you stack up against some of your peers

094so these are other double A2 rated um school districts in Pennsylvania that are the ones that are kind of geographically closest to you um and you can see here then how you stack up in terms of each one of these ratios against your peers you can see that on the two um ratios on the top the available fund balance ratio and the net cash ratio you're kind of towards the lower end and again that's not problematic but it's why we want to keep the cash on hand it it helps us tell that story and bolster that going forward and if we can grow it I know we you know have projected the 18 million by the end of the plan that's even better and then the long-term liabilities and fixed cost ratios you kind of

095fit squarely in the middle on those two of these selected peers um so you know adding The Leverage for a needed project isn't going to hurt us as long as we continue to stick to the plan put the necessary increases in place keep the cash and kind of Roll Along telling the story to the rating agencies that was a lot and so I will open it up for questions if anybody has any questions for the financing team uh Mr wyers yeah uh thank you for doing this I think it it really does show and it's an important aspect to understand what's going to happen and it's not just gut feel but based on math um but if you can go back to slide 17 please so this this shows the before and after um so

096one just small question you our rating related to long-term liabilities ratio goes down but you have the value staying the same I assume that second value is not correct the 1698 that is a typo you are correct that would go that would change for sure apologize Dr reg Regina found it um um and then I think it's important also to just highlight the available fund balance ratio at 20% so that's our unallocated fund balance right primarily yes and it's 7. .1% our our policy is to keep it at 7% as um methacton I think we're allowed to go eight eight and a half percent I'm not sure exactly but that's the limitation to the state um but it is our lowest rating today at baaa and we go to despite that we go to a

0975.8 and we go to a boua or AAA right A B A3 and and the reason for that is we're holding that cash balance that fund balance static and your revenue is growing so the denominator is growing while your yeah numerator staying the same hopefully that's not the case but we just want to show like a worst case scenario situation here yeah no I understand I I think it's also point out that we couldn't really improve it though I believe if we moved uh our unallocated fund balance to 8% that it it when it's compared to other school districts around the around the country that it would still be our lowest rated piece at 20% is that correct yep okay thank you other questions from members of the board Miss clear thank you I do

098have some clarification questions that'll help me understand this a little better my understanding is different than than uh or is not as sophisticated as perhaps Mr Winters or the rest of the finance committee so the the reason why the bond the rating is important right is because the higher that is the lower the interest rate on the money we borrow correct correct okay so I just want to better understand the down the downgrade Factor So currently we're at a doublea rating and I think I'm hearing you say that with if we were to borrow the a two $200 million borrowing scenario since that's what we're talking about tonight are you saying it's likely that we would be downgraded I think that there's downward pressure on the rating that we see but I think we've been

099conservative in assuming that everything else stays static so I believe that if properly managed and we continue to put Debt Service into place in the budget for the project like Zach's um outlined here that I think we have a very good shot of maintaining the rating as long as we do those things because we're not accounting for that in the metrics okay the other thing I would add to that is the stress would come at the end of the project and so I think the plan would be to maintain your doublea rating as long as we possibly can um and to put it in perspective if if your doublea rating carries a three 3% interest rate a double A you know one notch downgrade is about 10 to 15 basis points so we're not talking

100the difference between going from three to 5% it's really a very small change in interest rates and so one of the other things that we want to be mindful of whenever we advise clients with the help of the financial advisor is is it really worth it to take you to the AAA rating um to hoard cash or to build areas of your of your budget um that really don't produce additional meaningful savings to you and so we would say it's likely that you're you may see some downward pressure at the end of this plan but even if you do you've already done the lineon share of your financing over the next three or four years before that would happen Okay so I think I'm hearing you say just bear with me that if there is

101going to be a a rating downgrade as a result of the pressure it's going to come at the end of the of the borrowing okay and if it it does come I just want to go to if it does come I I hear you saying that you know it may not um if it does are you would would you imagine that to your best professional opinion would that be that it would drop once or would drop twice um score the scorecard showing a one notch dowr okay I just want to make sure I understood it and so what what is there any other uh negative implication to the district if we were to if we do drop that one notch no no no again you're you're a very very relative to your peers the daa

102rating is very very strong um and again you're doing a lot of other good stuff around the district and building your financials and so taking you on a project of this size and feeling some downward pressure is Not Unusual the other folks around around you the upper Marans the MU you know large projects of this size um I would not be worried about that downward pressure again I think if you have a plan and stick to the plan you'll be just fine okay thank you one important point to note is that all of your existing debt is fixed and if you get downgraded the interest rate on the existing debt does not change point it's only on future debt so when we talk about 10 to 15 basis points or tenth of a percent that

103would be on some future borrowing existing debt is fixed that doesn't change okay thank you um Mr wers I just to add though I believe methacton was um one notch lower about five or six years ago anyway so we we just in the last half dozen years moved up is that correct I believe right yes I can't remember exactly when you were upgraded but it did happen you know yeah last six seven years that sounds right any other questions to my right down to my left M Purdue I just have one and I I guess I was looking at um the same slide that's up in reference to um what was presented earlier in the 2028 time frame when we see the um the peak do we expect I don't know if you'll know like

104what that rating will be at that time because from what you're saying is that the the down I guess you mentioned that the downward pressure is more towards the end so in the 2028 time frame we still expect to be wherever we the rating that may be at the time that we borrow or close enough or wherever it drop a notch we don't expect to see it drop several notches now correct yeah I think if we did see a one notch downgrade it would occur somewhere closer to the 20 you know 72 plan borrowings in that time frame and then from there on out we would know exactly what the plan is and I wouldn't expect any further downward pressure you'd be firmly within the next rating level I think based on what we know

105today okay thank you any other questions to my left seeing none thank you appreciate your time this evening uh certainly um this this information as I said earlier this evening will be included into the October 2nd presentation and we will um uh continue with with that process uh one one thing before we have our financing team leave on the agenda this evening is the uh the the request for doing a uh a borrowing for the a refinancing for the uh um that was already given parameter resolution so Zach could you just refresh the the board real quick on on that that refinancing sure so so I don't think we need anything from the board tonight on the refinancing but if you remember back in it was either February or March of this year you did

106have a number of existing bonds that were callable interest rates over the past two years did not warrant the ability to refinance them and save any money since interest rates have declined it made sense to take those bonds and set them up in what's called a parameters res olution which is kind of the the final official board action so that as interest rates declined this year we you know we didn't know when this was going to happen but we assumed that interest rates were going to come down at some point that you could then refinance the debt to save some money now the the bonds that we're talking about already have pretty low interest rates on them you know that range between two and 4% okay we're only going to refinance certain maturities that save

107you money so we're probably not going to refinance all of the bonds that we set up only the ones that are going to produce interest rate savings and based on uh interest rates from about two weeks ago we're projecting net Savings of about $255,000 which would then um come in the form of you know a most of the Savings in the 25 budget year and then the rest kind of over the remaining 10 years of the bonds one important point is well we refinance debt we do not change the final maturity of any of the debt you're still going to pay off the debt in the exact same time frame that we originally had the debt structured you're just going to take the old higher rate of 4% and we're going to change it to

108a 350 you know or whatever the numbers shake out to be so again I don't think we need anything from the board we do expect unless unless rates jump here in the next two to three weeks we do expect to probably have that completed in the next two or three weeks at which point you know will Dr Zerby will obviously know and and we'll have those savings locked in for you okay thank thank you Zach have any questions members of the board on that particular matter Mr wyers just to confirm the 255 is net of fees and commissions and so forth yeah so it's net of fees and it's also net of any state reimbursement that you get because as we mentioned before some of your old existing bonds get State reimbursement and so when

109you save money the state wants their share of that savings so it's that's the net net number than excent thank you very much oh miss Austin just curious is this a one-time thing that can happen or could this happen again in the future should interest rates continue to decline so all of the bonds that we're talking about here have already been refinanced once or twice over their life this is probably the last kind of bite of the Apple we'll call it for these bonds all of the debt that we just spoke about if you do move forward with a plan like that all of those bonds will also be Cable in the future and we would fully anticipate refinancing those for Savings in the future any further questions seeing none thank you so much all

110right thank you everyone uh Madame vice president uh we have then that ends the guest and schedule speakers we move on to reports and to public comment action items thank you to the to all the presenters um committee reports are attached um and so we will start with Mrs Washington with the Dei report yes good evening Dr Zerby and School Board directors and it's certainly great to be back after a summer vacation um to share updates of with you from the office of diversity equity and inclusion um and so while we were on vacation over the summer um the work did continue as our building liaison worked with myself the K to2 diversity Equity inclusion and climate counselor to plan events for this Academic Year centered around cultivating a culture of belonging um all of

111our schools had a great start to the year our building leaders welcomed our methacton students into their buildings with assemblies or town halls to create a community of belonging for all I and all staff received a white jersey to wear to school events and embrace being part of the methacton community we will continue supporting our student leaders to bring positive change in our schools the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit will be working in collaboration with Montgomery County Schools to foster a a transformative series of sessions called Dreaming forward this new initiative is aimed at Building self awareness and relationship skills making responsible and impactful decisions and cultivating and leveraging Leadership these sessions will provide five high school students with a unique opportunity to grow as a leader and become a catalyst for positive change and our

112school Community the first session will be in the month of October um and we are looking forward to receiving favorable feedback from our students um today the the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit offered professional development to K to2 teachers administrators coaches El Specialists counselors and Dei coordinators or leaders on supporting multilingual Learners this program called and justice for El's a Leader's guide to creating and sustaining Equitable schools was led by Ayanna Cooper who is a former US Department of State English language specialist and also Al the author of the book um she shared actionable strategies and best practices for establishing collaborative relationships with linguistically diverse families and communities um again as we work towards fostering a culture of belonging and inclusivity so I'm excited uh to enter into another year here at methacton with methacton pride

113because we are methacton so thank you thank you very much um we will move on with reports um the next one is the mciu um mciu actually met in August their next meeting is actually tomorrow the August meeting was a lot of administrative but preparing for the start of the you new school year for mciu um across um all across the district one thing that I wanted to highlight that is of interest and a lot of excitement is that they will be doing a a building dedication for their new mciu discovery center located at 375 Morris Road in lville there's a lot of assignment around that that will take place on Wednesday October 16th um starting at 12:30 to and with a formal building dedication at 1:00 p.m. and if people are interested I think

114we extended it out to all board members but I think the public can also look into it by checking on the mciu website and registering or providing a reservation by October 4th for that event and um I will provide a an update at next month's meeting I do want to add on to it usually we have our um board reports attached I did want to say a special thank you to the maon high school counselors for providing the College and Career Readiness bulletin um creating that bulletin for student students and parents I think it's a very um great um pamphlet that they have put together I do want to encourage students and parents if you have even Rising seniors but um those currently um in senior year if they're looking into navigating the process I

115think they did very well with putting that together do want to encourage you because it's also available on the counselor's virtual website so please take a look at that they presented at committee this month and it was really great and looking forward to having that being used to help all our students and parents navigating through the process I will now go on to the north MCO Miss Austin and Mr Mery okay um the north monco technical career center joint operating committee met on Monday September 16th um we at the beginning of the year North monco Tech welcomed about 1180 students to the school um including some in new programs such as Sports Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy um we did see a presentation offering short and long and long-term strategies around North monotech enrollment and the

116capacity and the weight list that we currently do have at the school um the message is I mean generally in general the weight list is down and is being worked on um and it was also our first inperson meeting with our new superintendent of record Dr Barbara Russell from perom Valley and all agenda items were approved as presented thank you and um we don't have the we will have our student um student board Representatives officially um we'll have them take a o so I I'm looking forward to working with them and hearing their reports and getting to know them as we work through the school year with them and with that we will open it up for the foundation miss good evening um I'd like to take a moment to extend our deepest appreciation to

117everyone who helped the make make the race back to school ma acum 5K run and walk on September 15th at hner Park such a tremendous success thank you to our 200 Runners and walkers for your participation and congratulations to our top finishers to our amazing volunteers we couldn't have done it without you and a special thanks to our generous sponsors and donors because of your support and participation we raised substantial funds that will directly benefit the mytha and backpack program helping us to continue to make a positive impact in those in need so thank you there's a lot of pictures on our site um it was really a good day second we're also incredibly excited to announce the honores for the 2024 Apex award these individuals embody the very best of the methacton spirit this

118year's recipients are for the alumni award Chris Drummond class of 1986 the community advocate is Fran held of Mitzvah Circle the educator awards are Matt alamora and Luanne milky and our Legacy award who is an alumni and Advocate and an educator is Karen flug Felder class of 1967 we're also thrilled to have Cindy Drew methacton alumni and successful media personality as our MC so join us in celebrating these outstanding individuals on November 14th at Jefferson golf course you can get tickets at methacton foundation.org Apex and lastly our fall Grant cycle is underway and we invite all staff to submit creative ideas last year we funded over 19 projects and awarded $280,000 to the school district thank you very much and it was a great day at the um back to school I was happy to

119see that many people turn on hopefully that event continues to um bring in more people from the community thank you and now we'll have the superintendent report Dr Zerby thank you Madame vice president uh this evening uh there are two advisements on the agenda uh for your information and uh in the monthly to no report is on the agenda as well and you'll note that that uh is on there from July 1 through current date of this current month uh we've spent $ 8,248 41 for a total year-to date of $ 36,41 195 on right to know uh requests uh with a year-to-date total of of appeals to uh fulfillment of request 11 and new request nine are there any questions and any of that information from m MERS of the board um M sorry

120what's the to What's the total that the district the total year to date is $ 36,41 195 that's the total but then you gave a bunch of other numbers do we add those on top I'm I'm not I'm not sure what you're asking you said does the I said the current month is is a total of date with all of the expenses for all the months from July 1 forward all in is $ 36,41 195 that includes three things one uh the cost for right to know specialist the assistant superintendent that oversees the right to know process and the legal cost associated with right to know thank you you're welcome and that ends my report for this evening thank you and with that we will move to public comment um the board will now take

121comments on board action items this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be decided upon as outlined in the agenda the board ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less the board of school directors may choose to respond to matters following conclusion of the of the comments on board action items thank you Jim mik War sester talking about item 10d the bond proposal don't don't do it since I only have three minutes I got to make this short Dave you should go you should take Paul with you shouldn't be here shouldn't um the total cost of this project is $425 million and from what I saw you thought we can afford it I disagree perspective Ive you could buy 20 F-14 Tom Cats for that amount of

122money may as well just load up a carrier it's crazy um thank you for a presentation that none of us could see but I guess we don't have to see it we just have to pay for it I mean what was that none of us could see it um where's the plan for these bonds where's the plan where's the amount of money you're going to borrow it's like okay go ahead just you know write it up it's ridiculous um how much are you voting to borrow how much what's the number what are the cost and fees associated with the borrowing because we heard you know $3.6 million in interest problem is you got $3 million of fees and costs legal costs associated with them issuing the bond so it's a wash doesn't help us out

123um and what projects can you show us the projects you've told us it's the master plan there they're talking like it's a new high school so is this borrowing also linked to the new high school didn't explain any of that to to us as the taxpayer um I heard this I love this we heard that getting the mills in place is important for you guys to pay for the $15 million yearly Debt Service coming up right how exactly do you get the mills in place right you raise our taxes that's how you get the mills in place you raise the Mills to get it to 15 million right now yearly it's 9 million you're projecting 5 years from now or four years from now it's going to be 15 million there's one way you get

124there and that's raising taxes um I heard your people say that referendums are unsuccessful well you know why right because the taxpayers get to vote on your spending and it never goes through so why don't you put this up for referendum and see what the taxpayers have to say here's some questions what if your act one projections are wrong what if you're operating budget projections are wrong what if your teachers negotiations go south and what happens if we go into a recession right and where is the analysis of how much this is going to cost an average taxpayer every year I I forgot you can afford it thank you uh Kier Maloney good evening I would like can I just have you state your um municipality La Providence perfect thank you good evening I would

125like not to be interrupted thanks so my question for the board is do you think that the wi residents are rich it seems that you all are real loose with our money last year I spoke about you giving zeria a 40 $6,000 raise um and a second Superintendent at $200 plus th000 a year uh I explain that senior citizens some are working part-time jobs to make ends meet you voted yes on both um and here we are again we all know this is a formality you're going to move forward with it but senior citizens are still struggling I'm standing where I'm standing it seems like it doesn't matter to you guys because you're going to move forward all right same way you did with your $46,000 raise and a second superintendent because you're doing such

126a bang up job um no one should ever be taxed out of their home especially seniors they paid their dues and they put their time in um they should not be burdened with more taxes I have a question for you will there be fist painted in a new building fist on the walls in the school I went and talked to Joe Webster and asked him about it yeah that's what the kids want so when did the kids start running a school that has no place in school none um some young men recent graduates from ma Acton um are on a job site with me for the last few months and uh we're talking and they graduated a few years ago their experience the last few years at the high school sucked that's their Memories Forever

127My High School didn't suck well it did sort of but it was my decisions but that's on Focus here it was not because of the building it was the policies and the politics of this Bor you can have a brand new Lamborghini but if you don't know how to drive it it just look cool don't go nowhere school should be about learning and preparing the children for the world the real world to a lot of us this is our home we were born here um some families here 80 years we're going to die here and we're going to pass our homes to our children you're going to strap us there's people seniors you're giving me that smug look right there's seniors barely making it doesn't matter doesn't matter new school shiny keep it up with

128the Joneses God bless you guys have a good night thank you very [Applause] much evening my name is Jerry Snider I'm resident of Lower Providence Township since 1988 and I'm here first board meeting I've attended and I'm here because I got this flyer in the mail and thank you for sending that because apparently these discussions have been going on for a while I knew nothing about it so I was glad to be informed and um the whole I have to say the description of the financials was puzzling to me had some contradictory information it talked about the strong financials because of plan developments within two townships my question is does that include City View and how does City View fit fit into your future plans whether to build a new high school or whether to

129rehabilitate repair what you've got that's my first question and it said flat student enrollment and I'm trying to understand how a flat student enrollment enhances your financial position ability to borrow money um my first thought is why not spend the 69 million roughly $70 million to repair and renovate what you've got and why are we we going to the you know the shiny the shiny new Cadillac version and where would where would this new some practical considerations where would this new building be built what would be done to the existing High School building if we're talking about that uh during the construction of the new building would the 70 million have to be spent anyway just to keep it operational during that four-year um period of construction the projected four-year tax increase it it looked

130like that was for four years and then it would end and I'm asking you um does that mean the tax rate would go back to the Baseline as it is today after four years um that wasn't clear in the uh in the brochure but uh I appreciate the ability to uh to attend and comment on this and it was especially um urgent to me because you on the schedule here he October 9th they're going to be voting special vote so it sounded like was a done deal halfway down to shoot already um so I would urge you not to jump into this new um High School idea as as enticing as that may sound um I don't think it's the way to go thank you thank you very much uh Robert Canon 32 3240 mil

131Road in war sester um I said this at the information session that we had a couple weeks ago when I was there for the first time I live down the street from the high school on M Road incredibly concerned about the access point for the buses coming out onto a very small short and narrow section of mil Road there at what I call creal Mill West um and um secondly that I live down the street I'm at that high school a lot and I didn't know this project was even happening until I ran into a gentleman from Philadelphia electric company marking out things on the street and I said to him what's going on what are you doing he goes oh there's new high school coming and and I was like H and I think

132I'm not alone I this feels I said this to Dr Zerby at the meeting we had a couple weeks ago this feels incredibly fast-tracked this looks like a shiny trophy for you guys on the board here that you want I think renovation is clearly an option that was in my opinion not fully vetted the way the option three or 3A that we're talking the two 200 million I'm also very concerned about the financial presentation here tonight at the meeting two and a half weeks ago the number that was discussed was 220 million for the project now we're talking 200 these numbers are being thrown around easily we're talking our money our tax basis is going to go up and I'm very very concerned that this is moving along quickly Dr Zerby why was the one

133session for a vote moved back is there a sense from you and the rest of the board that this thing going too fast you moved it back tonight you said it's not going to have a vote on that one night can you answer that or can somebody answer so typically we take comments and then we'll address it and then oh okay yeah all right well will somebody make note of that why it was moved back thank you thank you uh my name is Mary Lannon uh I also live on milroad in war sester um I attended the session a couple of weeks ago to hear about the high school and I really don't want to talk dollars and cents because I think those are pretty much decided I want to talk sense s NSE um

134but before I do that I do have to comment on um the financial presentation that was given here tonight uh as my husband mentioned when I asked the question about whether or not the new school would be the third option or the fourth opt because one was you know less expensive than the other I was told by I guess the architect I'm not sure that the project was now neither it was a $219 million project the financial presentation was for a $200 million Bond unless you have $19 million hanging out just waiting to be spent doesn't take a Wharton MBA which I have uh to know that the that the financials aren't accurate anymore and also the other thing that I I kind of was able to gleam thank you very much um Miss Purdue

135for asking for a larger presentation um yeah view for those of us because I couldn't see a thing um but the time frame the time frame seems in terms of starting the project in in terms of starting to take money for the project may seem a little off because don't you still have to go through the township and from what I saw in the presentation a couple of uh weeks ago you had a number quite a number of variances and things that had to be dealt with at the worest township level that's that are going to take time that are going to take changes to the plan the way it is and that gets me to what I want to talk about which is milroad um millroad was there before the 1959 high school was

136built and there was no access put to it because milroad I asked this at the meeting do you know how wide milroad is versus creal Mill where where all of the cars and buses come out onto the street and go to the light or come into war sester and the answer I didn't get an answer no one knew so we took my husband and I went out and and we took some measurements uh where the buses come out where there have been upgrades there it's about 27 feet wide on millroad it varies it can be 23 feet 21 feet down by the bridge on mil Road after you go past marybrook it's less than that 19 18 feet and so I had said from the very beginning m road was not made for bus or

137even car access the fact that war sester and can I just ask you I'm sorry um typically it's 3 minutes if you can just wrap it up okay so to wrap it up I'm just going to say I think that there should be there are more Cuts in creal Mill Road right now than you have in the plan I think that the parking especially for the drop off should be rerouted the buses should be rerouted because it makes no sense to come out onto Mill Road there isn't even a stop sign at creal Mill and Mill where you're going to have every single bus come and make a right and go up to the light behind the cars from the parents and from the students thank you all so much I'll take it up the

138next time yeah and you can always send an email to the board thank you um just real quick before you start the clock is there any reason why that presentation from pfm could not have been put on the website in advance I couldn't see a thing and I just tuned out because I couldn't follow a thing I mean I think is as a common courtesy if you're looking to borrow $200 million that the taxpayer got to pay let us see the presentation in advance [Applause] all right Brian araw Lower Providence um first thing regarding the treasur um yeah the treasur report I took a look at that today and given that you increased taxes nearly 5% and a lot of the taxes were due August 31st I expected a much higher cash balance went back

139and look at last year August of 2023 and in fact your cash balances are nearly $6 million or 12% less even after raising taxes 5% is there any reason why perhaps Paul acting CFO Dr Zerby you could um enlighten me on that regarding the bond resolution I agree with a lot of the previous comments I'm not going to repeat any of those there was one selling point pfm tried to make was the positive Arbitrage on the rates given that you could earn interest at a higher rate than you're paying interest expense on has anybody done an analysis of when that turns to negative Arbitrage given rates are coming down as pfm start in the presentation i' ask pfm but they exited pretty quickly so perhaps you can comment on that um and you need you

140got to show us what the 50 m 15 million is going to be spent on can't just have a big slush fund you've got enough of those on your balance sheet regarding item 11d the job description for the transportation coordinator my understanding at this job description one of the change is that you're adding the supervision of 11 employees which was previously done by the finance director so my question is is the finance director's job description being revised to remove those responsibilities if not they should be regarding the change of stat status for that position you're going from a $65,000 plus overtime salary to a $90,000 flat salary mainly because of these additional responsibilities are you then reducing the finance director salary for the removal of those responsibilities if not we're paying for them twice U

141then finally regarding the action oh one other thing the superintendent goals I saw that was added late is there any reason why the superintendent's goals do not include two things that are kind of important to me and I'm sure others why don't they include anything relating to the improving the education quality and Bing of the district or anything relating to fiscal or financial matters I would think educational Improvement should be pretty pretty important I think it should be part of the goals and then finally I found this presentation from June 2019 relating to the aut Autobon Elementary School it says let's repurpose this property for the benefit of everyone let's save the Autobon school for future Generations as it has for the past 90 plus years it took you five years to get to the

142right answer decide to sell the school I've been calling on this for five years I'll ask for a levity on time given the previous speaker thank you um you can start to wrap up thank you yes so the big question is you track right to know expenses down to the penny how much have you spent on keeping Autobon on the district's books for those five to seven years how much have we spent in maintaining the property how much have we spent K paying Casey VA to do designs for a park fields a community center how much time and effort has gone into that my estimate is probably $2 million plus from that bad decision not to sell it when it was closed all right thank you very much [Applause] good evening lower Pro John Andrews

143Lower Providence before I start I I'd like to get a little clarification on the mailer that I received on Saturday it goes into uh campus planning process and it says consider joining us for the following dates September 12th an open Forum to discussion and feedback and it says for September 17th your work session discussion and feedback you had a big crowd of three of the public that time then we're tonight September 24th discussion feedback is it going to be a part of this meeting where that occurs or is it just a typo a couple times regarding I think it's 10d the resolution uh when I downloaded the resolution the PDF included the number 2024 and another number that looks like 118 million when I get to the resolution there's nothing about time period nothing about

144money it looks like an attempt to get a a blanket approval for the administration not for this year or next year but forever quite different than other resolutions of a similar nature that that uh that indicate how much would be borrowed and for what purposes the board just cannot vote in favor of a blank check and I hope that the board wakes up and appropriately Reigns in that uh my monstrous era thank you thank [Applause] you hi my name is Eileen walski I live in Lower Providence and I would just like to say that this is bad timing for everybody everything is bad in this country as we all know can this project be possibly postponed for a couple of years we're in hard times we might go into a depression or recession you're going

145to put a lot of people in a bad position and I go to work every day thinking what's going to happen from one day to the next this country is in Dire Straits can you please consider the decision you're going to make when we are taxpaying taxpayers thank you thank you [Applause] I'm Jack jardy I live in Lower Providence I just want to say one thing about the oton school I know you're going to sell it and that's fine because I mean it's mess I live near there and I just hope whoever you sell it to that you realize there are people that live there and been living there for years like 36 years I've been there and if you sell it to something commercial or something like that I mean all the people living

146there I know are my neighbors and they're horrified by that thought because like I guess it was three years ago you talked about making a community center and all this other stuff could you just please remember that you know when you sell the place don't sell it commercial you know to keep it you know respect the people that live there that's all I want to say thank you thank you [Applause] good evening everybody bethan Bitner Maza aabon um Lower Providence Township of the school district um I hope since we've had uh more than plenty of comments on the presentation uh that we will change that for the future and that it will be made available uh to all of our taxpayers uh proceeding this meeting so that they can take a better look at it

147even with the trick of taking a picture and blowing it up on my phone it didn't work was still visually uh impaired and being able to see it um so that being said uh as a graduate um I'm not denying that our treasured School needs some updates but I do think we do need to consider how big of a project that we're investing in and reain it in a little bit and as someone has already said maybe focus a little bit more on what we're putting into our students not what we're putting our students into um there was a lot I wish our financial team had stayed here I did have some questions for them maybe I'll put them in an email to you um because I'm guessing uh only they could answer them uh

148but I was curious about the arbitri uh earnings and if they were part of the uh interest earnings that helped increase and bring it down bring it down that 3.7 million um but still the borrowing capacity that we're at uh it it seems from conversations I've heard that we're leaning to the larger project versus the smaller project and there is a lot going on in the world and we've seen a lot of changes over the last four years and how incredibly different um costs have changed through the years and so when we look at this project I just worry that if we take it to the Max and we don't take into consideration what future changes could be coming that we could find ourselves in a bit of a financial pickle which unfortunately puts all

149of us at burden the taxpayers at burden so I do ask that when you're making this decision because I have the opportunity to work with a lot of different people not only in this area but throughout the county and throughout the state more and more seniors are staying in place and aging in place and we are I promise you taxing our seniors out of their homes I talk to seniors who are going through their 401 KES and paying and keeping up with taxes so please I urge you to consider them when you're making this decision and finally pass this project in regards to the sale of aabon school um from someone who has many fond memories there not always as a student but through camps and whatnot uh and there is some history there and

150like Mr jardi said and I happen to know exactly where he lives God bless him um there is a neighborhood around that school and when you are taking into consideration who you're selling it to I ask that you think about that the people the neighbors um it saddens me that when we had the opportunity can I ask you to just wrap up sure thanks absolutely uh that when you're doing um that we couldn't come to some sort of decision to make that uh work together collectively uh to make it into a community center so on behalf of all the aabon residents I do ask that when you're working on that sale that you do keep the neighborhood in mind thank you thank you I think think with that we'll close this portion of the um

151public comments and we'll move on to the rest of our agenda at this point we will also have appointment of student board Representatives um and administration of the oath so it's my recommendation that we ask the two student board representatives to come to to come forward after the board votes on item uh one uh under 81 I guess it would be called we vote on 81 and then we would then administer under 82 the oath of office yeah we need to take um all right yeah read the motion all right so at this point um we will have the appointment of our student board representative I have Marissa dealo and Mar Marian Wells I will ask for a motion to approve the appointment of Miss acing High School juniors Marissa dialo and Marine Wells as

152student board representatives of the board of school directors for a term of two years effective 2020 for 2025 school year one motion second perfect so at this point we'll take okay can I check for any comments from the board on this no okay so at this point I will ask for a vote all in favor say I all right and that carries 80 [Applause] okay all right thank you both for your time so at this point I'll administer the oath um of office for the newly appointed student board representatives and you can read after me I do somly swear or affirm I doly swear that I will support obey and defend the Constitution of the United States United States and the constitution of this Commonwealth and that I will discharge the duties of the office

153of student representative to the board with Fidelity thank you very much and with that we welcome you to join us up here and looking forward to it [Applause] have so I do want to say thank you again um we welcome you to the board um and I know this is not a easy task just because sometimes we're hair lay so we do appreciate um your time and looking forward to working with you as we um go through the school year well for two-year term Madame vice president if if I may so suggest could we have the student board Representatives uh provide their report now yes we can have your report now if you have one prepared thank you good evening everyone my name is Marin Ms and I a junior at maon High School school

154to begin school started on August 27th and freshman orientation happened on August 22nd during orientation student ambassadors volunteered to tour the Freshman around the school and also the Freshman had a chance to check out new clubs and play Icebreaker games during the first few days of the new school year each grade was brought together in the auditorium where the principals led a discussion to set expectations for the upcoming school year and new policies being implemented at methacton there's a brand new Esports club that has an amazing new Esports gaming lab for anyone who may not be aware of Esports it's not just kids playing video games but it's a team-based activity where teammates work to work together to accomplish a common goal using technical analytical and collaborative skills Esports has taken off across the world

155and is recognized as an NCAA division one sport and College this club also allows casual student players an opportunity to enjoy the community and game with their fellow peers while supporting our team Mrs Palmer Mrs Griffith and student council have been working hard since the first week of school to prepare for the homecoming pep rally and homecoming dance that was held on September 20th and 21st for the entire week leading up to homecoming the entire student body was able to participate in spirit days with the last days being color Wars where each class wore the same color shirt on this day students were able to choose activities they would like to participate in throughout the morning for example chalk art puzzles trivia and flag football at the pep rally all fall Sports were recognized with

156a small Sports parade this was followed by class tug of war with the junior class being Victorious over all also the teachers were pied in the face at the end minithon organized a powderpuff game that was Juniors versus seniors the winner was the junior team our homecoming football game was took place Friday night September 20th against Boyertown math Acton secured the win with the final score being 39 to4 good evening I'm merca Apollo and I'm a junior at the macton high school during the first few weeks you see fellow sports team interacting with sport themes on their game days either would be random object day where each team member would bring in random objects to swap with their fellow teammates or Country Day where they all wear a theme I would also like to talk

157about the new Carline as said is as it has added a new area to make it more efficient for the Riders and the parents and anybody living on the street we're hoping to cut down the Carline with this new area added and also to help prevent the additional delays that have caused major lines for the Carline I also like to talk about the new K3 auditions for the school's play the play has added K3 auditions for the younger roles for the Christmas carol this has allowed our younger students to participate in our theater programs also has interested our younger people into exploring theater and the Arts as well I also like to touch on the homecoming dance as it was a major success with most students appearing also I want to thank all the student

158council and staff that helped put it together all students enjoyed dancing and playing yard games in the boys gym it was much faster with the new ticketing system which was online and provided by Hometown ticketing this new ticket method has allowed students to get tickets faster and has be and has allowed people to enter student events such as games dances and minthon events to help it has made them to be able to go through faster and be able to buy tickets in advance that's all I have to report thank you both for your report very well and very clear and just from um the first day what we hear is there's a lot of excitement a lot of good things happening at the high school you mentioned a lot of them e ticketing the Carline

159homecoming color Wars and um I think we have a lot to look forward to because we're only one month in and we're happy to have you here and thank you for bringing us all the exciting news that the high school looking forward to hear any more thank you so with that we'll move on with our um the rest of our meeting so now may I have a motion to approve the August um 2024 board meeting minutes as attached right and then second perfect okay both the 20th I'm sorry yes so I should say both um Regular and work session meetings for August 2024 all right and then can I ask if there's any comments on the meeting minutes no comments when no comments can I ask for um a vote all in favor all right

160yes no okay so motion carries 8 Z all right and then with that we'll move into F fiscal items May I have a motion to approve all fiscal items as presented all right and then a second all right Miss chander and with that can I ask I I have a comment if you have comments perfect so a comment I just want to a clarification for the members of the board uh based on the uh the the or consistent with the recommendation from the work session on September 17th and this evening as part of the financing plan associated with uh the either 100 million doll uh borrowing uh doing renovation with the high school or $200 million borrowing uh as part of a potential new construction that the authorization uh for the resolution will be for

161$15 million can I check if this any comments from the board in reference to um fiscal items Miss Austin yeah just addressing some Community comments um so Dr Zerby what you just said that was to clarify the parameters of the of the resolution that's correct okay thank you um and and um I guess just from hearing different comments about sort of related to this to this motion but also in general um do we have a place on the website as we did with Arrowhead um like a single place where everyone can get all of these information presentations and everything and if we don't have that could we please do that yes so uh for approximately a year and a half almost two years we have a place on the district website so when you go

162to www.methacton.org right at the top Banner there's a a big I'll call it a big oval that says meakan high school campus planning process by clicking on that link um you'll be able to see approximately nine different links some taking you to explanation of lunch and learn some to presentation some to the campus uh uh planning process so everything that we've done from the very beginning is located there from the Flyers to the presentations to the uh discussions from the members of the public of the part of the campus planning process so it's all housed there and and certainly uh available for people to digest in addition all the presentations that you would see here this evening will also be posted there for people's consumption and then and then along with that is is it

163our practice to wait to post um I guess there was some there was some concern about the visibility of this presentation and what is our usual timeline yeah yeah so I think there there's really really two challenges with the the process uh one we we we commonly present the the material then post it after the fact but in terms of the visibility on the screen uh pfm typically doesn't give us uh PowerPoint presentation it's done in PDF so and because they condense uh a lot of information into those slides it it makes it I say slides PDF Pages um it would it would require someone uh sitting at the computer to be able to blow those up on a regular basis and follow along and know the know that and maybe for the future um

164we could have either myself or someone with some Financial background and knowledge of this be able to help follow along with the process so uh we certainly consider that okay thank you and then um I guess just because um this also came up um when we do these types of presentations could we also include the uh cost to the average taxpayer I know we do that in many presentations and in many ways but um I did not see it in this one could we please include that in the future it wasn't in this presentation but it's been in all the other for prior presentations it's just a matter of timing till till we got the information uh in terms of the draw schedule and putting all the rest of the stuff together this evening we

165just couldn't put that properly in place but you should expect that uh for the next open public for that we present present on October 2nd okay thank you can I check if there's any other comments Miss graph yeah I also wanted to just get clarification in regard to public comments um the resolution for the 15 million was clarified um but I also wanted to just clarify that that can be used for excuse me anything related to facilities projects so that could be capital projects that the district has to do moving forward or anything related to engineering design or um project at the high school that that is correct so if you know just in reference to uh the 917 presentation when we talked about the master facilities plan actually in the master facilities plan as

166you as you all know the high school is actually built into the master facilities plan as well so it includes the high school it includes design work it would include the actual construction of things but anything related to a capital project preparing for or actually doing it the 15 million can be used for and that's for any of the buildings whether it's the high school alone or for the other ones that are that are within the district's uh main a schedule excellent thank you Mr Winters uh yeah there a couple questions um some of them I I think are were associate I ated with the bond resolution but uh I do believe the Arbitrage was not part of the $3.7 million I think there was a question related to um the cash uh the tax

167rate that es saw on the someone Mr Snider saw on the four years it would not uh retract uh back to the previous rate to just to be clear there I think there was a question from Mr ernshaw related to the cash balance on the treasury I don't know off the top of my head I would speculate though it's related to the timing of the local tax payments and the local pay bills that we get from is it Burke H or whoever deal or whoever is our tax collector related to that um it's probably you'll see that correct itself in the month of September it's definitely a timing issue thank you and when I say issue I don't mean it's a problem I mean it's just timing of of the delivery so just because the

168tax collector collects the the the the funds doesn't mean the district receives them they need to receive them from the tax collector I'll just check if there's any other um comments or clarification before we move on okay so with that I will ask for a vote all in favor Z and we'll move to personal items May I have a motion to approve all personal items that's presented Madam president uh vice president if we if we could let's have Dr serini update the board there were a couple add-ons from the work session Dr Serie thank you thank you and good evening the Personnel items for the month of September include those presented last week at the work session and the following editions four Employments classified Maria longer part-time attendance secretary at the high school Gage Farrell

169monitoring assistant at arola Nissa spam panado power professional at Woodland and Jacqueline Halpin recess assistant at Woodland we welcome Maria Gage narissa and Jackie to the methacton family there are two additional uncompensated leaves professional Teresa Dunbar mathematics instructor at the high school and Lauren McDonald special education instructor at arola and several additional supplemental contracts including contracts for scheduling assistance breakfast and uh bus Duty and also a fall coach at arola thank you thank you Dr serini Madame vice president and I I I will make one note here um we received an abstention request for an item 11 07 from Mr Winters so if we could uh we we we could take if if the if Madame vice president so suggest we could take all of the Personnel items with the exception of 1107 for for

170a vote okay so just to clarify are we going to do a motion for all items and then we'll do the vote separate or should we do a motion for all items or separate it out in the motion you can you can make if if the board so uh uh agrees you could make the motion to approve all Personnel items with the exception of 1107 and then we would come back into 11:07 separately perfect okay so at this point can I ask for a motion for all personal items with the exception of 1107 second second and I'll check for any comments um for it Miss Altin yes I just did have a comment or a question um from the Community member uh is there a change of description for the finance director um is there

171a change any change of job description we're not making a recommendation for a change okay thank you can I just check if there's any other comments no at this point I will ask for a vote for all items um for 11 except for 1107 all in favor all right carries 8 Z and then can I ask for a motion for Second perfect and at this point I will ask for do you have to read it or vote I do sorry guys um based on the ethics act at a public meeting that is being held on the 24th of September it is my atttention to abstain from the vote item 1107 which involves the approval of an item on the homecoming chaperons for the high school due to conflict of interest under the ethics act the

172nature of my interest is the follows my wife is an instructional Aid at the high school and was a chapero thank you and then can I have for all in favor of 1107 abstentions one so the vote carry 7 um 01 thank you all right so curriculum and programs there are no items under curriculum and programs for this month and we'll move into policy may I have a motion to approve Madam vice president there the items on policy are are for first reading uh there are no second reading policies so we can move on to other okay so we'll move on to um other may I have a motion to approve all items listed under other as others as presented second okay Miss graph and do I have check for any comments or discussion for

173these items Miss Austin uh yes for the um based on the audience comment could we um could you please Dr Zerby just review the zoning of aabon school please yeah thank you Miss Austin uh so there were a couple of comments I believe that were of concern that uh we we take into consideration who we sell the property to if in fact the board votes here this evening to sell the property um if that would to to clarify by that um the the uh the district um will certainly uh take great care in determining who they would sell it to to get the best return on that sale however the property's zone is currently zoned for only either residential or institutional use meaning a school use or some other uh uh um institutional government uh

174use but not for or commercial so most of what I heard was concerned about commercial um and that's not possible unless the township chooses to to change the zoning which you I've not heard of any uh such such thing so I hope that helped clarify things so it can't be sold for commercial yes Miss graph yeah along those lines can we also um I just wanted to clarify when we say residential it's not it's not an option for them to build a large residential complex like a multi- family complex on the site they would have to get zoning changed for that is that correct or are we not sure um yeah let's I I know that our our assistant superintendent for operations knows this pretty well so we'll ask him it's actually zoned R2 residential

175with a public facilities overlay so with regard to the residential component it's single family uh detached dwellings only and there are a limited number based on the zoning that could actually go in there so with the R2 the it's the detached dwelling in some ancillary structures things like a shed uh a pool those sorts of things that would be related to those single family homes and then the public facilities overlay includes permitted uses of a Township building Emergency Services building Library government office Community Center for senior citizens open space Municipal parks and elementary schools so those are the only things that are permitted by right under the uh the zoning great so any additional or future zoning changes would have to go before the Zoning Board of Lower Providence that's correct okay so the public

176would have an opportunity to comment at that time that's correct and and zoning and municipality can't be done just for one parcel excellent thank you so much [Music] certainly yes Mr Mery uh could I'd ask that we have 14h broken out to vote on separately please is there any objection from any board members of taking um 14h that's the enrollment projection update item separately without objection uh the motion uh as currently before the board then would be for all items under other uh 14 with the exception of 14h if I have a comment on 14h we'll just wait till we get there perfect okay do we need do we need a motion again for it we just proceed okay you have a motion if there's no further discussion on any items under 14 than H

177you can move to a vote any other discussions all right so at this point may I ask um for um all items under 14 minus 14h can I ask for a vote for those items all those in favor okay 8 Z and then I will ask for a motion for under or other 14h enrollment projection can I get a motion a second all right and now can I ask for comments and um for 14h or discussion I don't really have a comment I just don't plan on voting for it so I wanted it separated out because I wanted to vote for everything else I don't think it's necessary since we've had one done two years ago okay and um I think my question was really I wanted to ask if you can clarify the purpose

178of having um a new enrollment um project a new enrollment um forecast complet it um I think it's been in discussion uh and I believe property for sure it may have also been a discussion in finance committee but the the conversation has been that there have been uh master plan projects that have come before both of those committees that um were based on the uh the the enrollment projections or anticipated enrollment projections against uh the existing enrollment projections and trying to determine whether or not additions or Renovations were needed for any of those particular buildings and I think second it's uh incumbent upon the board if it so continues and move forward with the high school campus planning process that as part of the ACT 34 hearing process that you would likely be required to

179uh have an updated enrollment study to suffice for that but again that would likely be something that if we continue moving forward after October uh 29 uh uh consideration of of of a motion um it would be probably 12 months from from that period of time okay and I know from the public um meetings um in reference to the meth acne high school campus planning um several members of the community have asked whether we will have a new updated enrollment um forecast provided or I I mean just interest on exactly what we're using to as we're planning forward with the high school my question is when will we have the um forecast available um if the forecast is approved this evening it is anticipated because we're using the vendor that we had used approximately two

180years ago that we would be able to present to the board at the October 22nd Work session meeting okay thank you I'll just check if there's any comments miss the not a comment just um just a question is and and I don't know if you have Dr I know if you have answer um but is uh is every two years about when it would be done or is it around when there's planning such as what we're doing now like what is what is the timing that is usually done with these measures I I think typically it depends on what your enrollment projections are showing so if you're in a district that Contin is is showing a a growth in in enrollment you want you would monitor that based on on the on the trend that

181that rate would occur and similarly if you were declining so that you could properly plan uh the simple fact that we've received um in our last projection that we're going to be relatively flat um it it is it is not necessary to do that more than you know every three years I would I would generally say but but again as I mentioned earlier the fact that we're considering uh a potential new construction of a high school making that type of investment um it it and and having to go through the ACT 34 hearing process we're likely going to need that you know within 12 months of of this time frame anyhow okay Miss graph yeah I mean I just want to make sure the board's aware in addition to the high school uh project evaluation

182we also had requested this as part of our property committee because we were looking at a potential project at War sester and in doing that toal project we were debating whether or not we should add on additional classroom space and you know with a very significant additional cost associated with that we wanted to make sure that if the space is necessary then that's a different conversation than if the space is not necessary because the enrollment projections are flat for that particular school or if enrollment across the district is flat enough that we can potentially readjust our elementary schools to accommodate any increase in enrollment then we wouldn't need to add those additional classrooms at War sester and so when we're looking at that spend for the capital projects budgets going forward we wanted we asked

183to do the enrollment projection as a result of that discussion so I just want to make the board aware it wasn't only for the high school but it also has been brought up in every high school meeting I've been to so no I think that's a great point and that's why I asked the question I just wanted um that to be clear and I think even tonight a comment was made about City View and that impact and we know where um that property is sitting so I think it to me it makes sense that we are looking to have this I know it's um hopefully you'll be able to get some more information or useful information from it yeah mad vice president in in reference to City View um while I can't remember the exact

184properties on the uh August 27 board meeting um that on probably slide six of of that presentation there was a a listing uh that had potential developments within the two townships that that approximated maybe three, some uh dwellings uh a combination of single family mixed and and so forth so so the kind of answer is the question that uh but I can't tell you if if if City View was part of that I I just don't recall I don't have the list in front of me but but likely it did okay if no other comments I will ask all in favor all right that's six um all and any oppos oh I'm sorry seven any oppose one so that's 71 thank you okay and then we will come down to days for board members calendar

185the um up the upcoming board meeting dates are listed on the agenda and also on the mes acting website and then with that maybe I'll just check if there's any if anyone notice any issues or any comments on um the dates that's present here miss Austin yes so October 9th then yeah yeah I'm gonna I'm g go over all that so so if I could I just want to kind of maybe address the comment at the at the podium at the same time make sure that the board is is again apprised of the modifications that I'm suggesting we move forward with in terms of our schedule and the determination of a path forward on the high school uh process C so as I as I ended uh my my uh presentation I want to make

186sure that everyone knows that there will not be a vote on another vote on the on moving forward with the high school project until October 29th that will include uh the potential borrowing that uh we talked about the the 15 million as well as uh the potential uh next step of the process and and and maybe it's best if I make some clarification on what that vote would look like that vote would really mean that the board would decide if if if approved decide that they would move on to the next phase of the planning process it doesn't mean that they will build a new uh High School it means that they're saying they have enough information um to make a determination that going to the next phase which is the schematic design and plan

187development phase which generally lasts between 12 I believe to 16 months um and uh and certainly that will you know be quite a a long-term commitment for us uh and certainly a commitment towards uh spending funds associated with more detailed planning detailed planning in terms of the actual design of of the of the building a lot of feedback from the uh the teachers the public uh feedback from students ALS all a lot more feedback in addition to that there'll be uh additional cost estimates that are that are provided based on on the the development of that plan um and in the same instance it probably will address another person's comment at the podium that during that period of time we would then go before the township to start seeking some of the approvals that are

188outlined like for example there was discussion about the the the road going out to mil Mill Road uh their setbacks challenges there's height challenges so all of that stuff has to be developed and and and reasonably so um if any of those things slow the timeline down um you know we can easily make adjustments uh with our with our with our borrowing and the the the schedule of borrowing would obviously have to change uh assuming that um we wouldn't start borrowing for a new high school until we knew we had you know a reasonable approval from the township and from uh the board to to move that forward so there is a lot more discussion uh on the horizon with respects to this process uh certainly um these are not easy decisions and I do

189commend the board for digging into all these details associated with uh the the planning process associated with the finances and being uh uh stewards and doing their due diligence and and making sure that they understand uh everything before them is it is important and then and like it's like we've said from the onset um we started this this conversation because we recognize that the moment we start investing any money into that High School we've pretty much determine the future for the next 30 to 50 years and this is part of of you know developing a comprehensive plan that could provide uh some significant opportunity for students in the future and for our entire School Community uh so so with that October 9th will still be advertised as a special meeting of the board we will

190not be taking a vote in that meeting and it'll be advertised as such um you will see uh the design team including the administration present an overview of the entire process to kind of sum up where we've been what we've done what we've learned what it is we're not going to be representing the uh Concepts uh you've seen those uh the October 2nd meeting will be videotaped and be posted online so You' be able to see that and the public will be able to see that in it its entirety which includes the educational impact and also any of the updated slides from pfm so that meeting is still going to be held it's been it been it's been advertised uh you know through the Flyers and please recognize that the flyer that many people were

191holding up was one of many Flyers that were distributed in an equal uh uh process uh to other flyers so um I I just want the board to be to be clear on that um so with that said uh we will have an October 2nd uh public uh uh open public form we will uh be discussing some of the matters uh and certainly get receiving public comment on October 9th we will be presenting update on the enrollment and the master facilities plan on the 22nd and we will finalize any of the questions that the board may have prior to uh the the vote uh on the 29th of October are there any questions from the board on any of that Miss Alon yeah just could we please update this agenda then to reflect the certainly

192will certainly will thank you was that all you were asking yes sorry about that and I would just ask um just because I know you have the on the mating High School um campus planning um site on the on the website I believe you have a FAQ going I don't know if you're adding on as we're receiving questions at these meetings also are you adding those on or if they're in there already are you updating them I'm just wondering how you're retaining it in reference to questions that come specifically from the board meetings but not at those special planning meetings so the special planning meetings uh we have a designated Note Taker those notes are then gathered and provided to to me and then provide it on to the board uh we also are uh

193updating the board weekly on any of the uh survey updates uh the survey oh I I shouldn't mention the survey the survey you likely need to close uh probably by the uh no later than the 22nd of October uh so that we have enough time to put all the data together provide uh a final uh you know I'll call it Collective uh you know result of that survey uh but we are certainly encouraging people uh on our at our meeting open public forum meeting on the 2nd and the 9th uh to give us feedback on that survey but generally we at all these open public forums you are taking notes and providing those notes in summary fashion to the board perfect and thank you for the reminder for that survey I think so far we

194received some really great feedback and while the survey is still open I do want to encourage members of the um public just because I know everyone can cannot attend the meetings but the presentations are available and take the opportunity to provide input um into those survey so with that I will move on to old or new business business do we have any old or new business um to add okay Miss chander um I I have some questions that have nothing to do with anything we talked about today but uh from the community I have gotten some feedback about bullying incidents and everything so have some questions about that and if we're not ready to answer those questions that's fine but I want to put it out out there so that we can perhaps continue the

195discussion either in Ed committee or or wherever it's appropriate am I yeah M Miss Chand if I could you I would recommend that you would say anything you need to but make sure you don't give any student identifiable information okay yes uh my questions are more around uh math Acton's policies procedures I guess um and there's three main questions one is what does the District do to make sure victimized students are safe in the building when they're there um when incidents are occurring that's that are outside of the school's jurisdiction what are we doing to make sure that it's not being brought into the school and the third one is what are we doing proactively to kind of address it in the culture and the climate of methacton as a whole and that and you

196know that includes parents and students and staff those are those are excellent questions and I do appreciate you bringing them to our attention uh if I could um and if it's if you're in favor of this I'd like to have uh Dr Regina uh maybe work on answering those questions uh and and leaving this as a conversation for the education committee in in the in the near future but certainly if you have any immediate questions and that's the same with the rest of the board members if you have immediate questions please reach out directly to Dr Regina or myself uh we want to make sure that you get the answers we need but but most certainly um if these are things that we want to discuss uh discuss um yeah you probably should talk to

197the education chair as well so we want to make sure we do that okay yes and Miss chandice on education committee and I I do I do appreciate you bringing these up I know there's been um some discussions or items that have come up I know Dr Regina and the team do have some things that we're looking into working on um we've recently implemented a safe to say I mean and I know that was brought up last week I don't know if you want to elaborate on a little bit on some of the things that we're doing but I do think this is certainly something that we can bring back to a committee to have some discussions on and just really kind of provide exactly how we are supporting our students and family and what

198programs we have in play I know Dr graan um discussed some of those so I think there's a lot of things that they're looking into bring into K to 12 level and even I think the councilors at the Ed committee last week maybe two weeks ago mentioned a lot of programs that we have within the building so um we can have these discussions I think it's good for us to keep looking at this because it's becoming a problem so thank you real real quick but I I just want to clarify I have those three questions but the my biggest concern is um and i' I've had this conversation with with some of the people at this table there is this Gap where something takes place and it's not in methus jurisdiction and the police can't

199really help and the parents don't know what to do do so I don't know what the answer is there but I think we need to talk about it and figure out what the adults in the community are going to do when that happens because they're still our students whether they're at school or at home or in between oh thank you and I appreciate you for bringing it up I took I took notes for it so I will also now ask for any comments Mr wins real quick three things one I'd like to thank uh Mr Kenwood for moving the backpack to our co-al for a better facility uh to service that program um number two I I know we don't have a communication uh that Miss Miss Kelly has left but I I we definitely

200I know that this I is going to Boomerang back but we definitely hear the comments related to senior citizens it's a it's a problem with the funding process right um but we also are responsible for doing the right thing for this school district so we have to balance those things but the one thing I can point out is as Miss Austin has pointed out several times is we do have depending on your income that follow a state program to be able to refund some of your taxes related to that so my suggestion would be see if we could work with the Lower Providence with their weekly news or monthly news newsletter or by whatever that thing comes out and if they could get that blurb in there because it affects all their all and then

201also I assume there's something similar for war sester um but I I imagine I'll be accused of something for bringing that up the last one surprise Simon's heart is October 14th um like to highlight uh the importance it is an inservice day and it's also so students will be home so they can get an appointment I assume we still have appointments um it's doesn't take that long and potentially could identify something that you're not aware of so uh I believe that's also on our website for more information I know it's been posted on living in Lower Providence and such that's it thanks yeah and I believe there's also communication from the building principles about it so hopefully everyone is aware but it is on the website I think you do have to pre-register for it

202it I don't know if anyone know if there's a timeline on it or is it just what do you happen to know I believe until the spots fill up okay perfect and that's just a great opportunity um so I do encourage anyone to participate in um the heart screening can I just share one other thing just because I was looking about the Simon's heart screening um and someone can correct me WR I think it's for ages 14 and up correct I was excited about it and I don't have a 14-year-old yet so I feel like that would be something people might be like oh thanks so thanks Katie I'm not 100% sure I thought it was a little younger than that but um we'll double check you have more information that deser have some I

203think it's 14 to 25 242 14 to 25 and I think they under 18 have to be accompanied by a parent okay so then with that I will move to Courtesy of the floor the board of school directors will now provide an opportunity for residents to make comment on matters that are or may come before the board the board ask that you keep your comments in three minutes or less the board of school directors may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of the comments you you also have the opportunity to submit questions via email to information aac.org Jim mik War sester regarding senior citizens Paul it's not a funding problem it's your spending problem okay you could never have enough money it's a spending problem um what's the reason we're not voting on

204109 I kind of missed that if you could tell us why we're not voting on the 9th um appreciate it um so I understand it you're going to war sester to get approval for a project that hasn't been approved is that is that what I heard you're going to war sester to get the approvals before you approve a project we even know um I don't know about that Dave um enrollment we need an enrollment projection has anybody compared the projected enrollment for this year to the actual they've underestimated did by like at least a hundred and then you're going to use the same people to do another one I don't know what you're doing but it's not good regarding the website Dave you don't update your website I went there a couple days ago looking

205for the questions that I asked you under Q&A they're not there I couldn't find any of the questions that we asked in the public forum right then the master plan was fia's Master Plan until I told you about it then you put the new plan up so you know I think um I think you're I think you got some problems I actually had to do three right to no requests for the presentations given at each of the public forums because they weren't on the website but once I did my right to know request they got put on the website so there's some problems now I just discovered you know Dave we asked you about referendum and you gave us two two ways to go to referendum there's a third way I don't know whether you

206knew that it's called the exceeding the ACT 34 pupil cost way right and you exceed it by 100% because when you do the calculation the minimum or the maximum is 70 million bucks and you're at a buck 60 or 160 million so you didn't tell us about that one okay but I would look into that because I'm certainly going to make sure I look into to it um as far as the um right to know concern you know you guys kill me you know we get what under a hundred grand where were you folks when you were spending a million dollar a year on right to know where was the concern you now you're worried about 100 Grand a million bucks right Dave and that's because of you because you hard sweet Stevens you you

207let them handle the right to know process and it was an absolute disaster right and now you're in charge of this $425 million project that's why I say you should go thank you [Music] John Andrews Lower Providence the new high school referendum issue as you know an act 34 hearing is required prior to to go ahead on a new school as was done for Arrowhead and would required for a new high school or referendum act 34 still has teeth even though it currently lacks a state funding subsidy what you may not know is another act 34 hoop to go through it requires a referendum when the maximum building construction cost exceeds the aggregate building expenditure standard or AB B for this new high school the maximum building construction cost is not 200 million but a

208lower figure of 158 million that excludes items such as the district admin Administration Suite Cy preparation and soft costs in this instance the Abes is about 78 million based upon current pupil cost limits FTE figures for various rooms and a standard methodology by pde thus this construction cost of 158 million is greater than the Abes cost of 78 million and a referendum will be required according to pde No Such re ref referendum was ever attempted as adjustments were made to avoid the requirement most referendums have failed school districts have utilized smart workarounds here I don't see a way to avoid a referendum instead consider a renovation and engage an architect to lead it if the re renovation requires a referendum it can pass as I've said earlier shrer tried and its concept has failed largely

209due to site difficulties six months months were lost drop the new high school concept and pursue renovation as suggested in multiple facility assessments by professionals and uh if you should uh hold to the uh presentation that was mailed out last week on uh discussion and feedback at this meeting I do have questions should that happen thank you thank you and I'll just perfect good evening it's been a long evening so I promise I'll be make it quick I'm Janine Derby resident of Lower Providence Township I'm the parent of four children two mith Acton High School alums and two current 10th and 11th graders I didn't want to be here tonight but thought it was important to be here sooner than later thank you for sharing and choosing the new year year theme of belonging I'm

210here tonight because I am angry and I am fustrated this is not about me but about our students our students are hurting let's focus wholeheartedly on our students Wellness instead of a building of a new school when will the school C culture cultural climate change in the methacton school district when would marginalized disenfranchised students feel like they belong let me ask the question differently if you don't know what those words mean what are you going to do to stop racism against black and brown students what are you going to do to stop discrimination against Muslim Students what are you going to do to stop harassment against lgbtq plus students what are you going to do to stop bullying and threats against students with disabilities when will you stop offending Native American students with the use

211of Native American imagery I could continue but I'm I'm I'll stop here with the the questions but I I think you need to think long and hard about these answers to these questions personally all of my children have been targeted and racially discriminated against by fellow methacton students who don't look like them for one of my kids I have spent thousands of dollars to keep them alive due to severe depression caused by the racial trauma caused here in the mton school district from teachers and students why do we stay my family and I have a right to live here and my kids deserve and have a right to an excellent public school education I'm sharing some of my personal stories but I've heard many stories from other methacton parents and students who have experienced racism

212discrimination harassment and bullying the majority may not care or you may think your kid is good and I love it and they love it here but you know what it's a horrible feeling to see your kid and other students being dehumanized feeling less than and wanting not to live when kids and students are traumatized during their school years it becomes a lifetime of emotional and mental health problems kids always remember how you make them feel can I ask you to wrap up please you let's do right by the students here in the district this is a new school year and I'm asking you to take immediate action or make change es to help prevent long-term mental health issues and enhance all students School experiences please do something now I'm pleading with you all thank you

213our students are hurting thank you for listening thank you have a good night brianw low Providence few things on a variety of topics first as you consider building projects keep in mind that Arrowhead opened it was 70% utilized and our Cola is still 60% utilized this should be not new information to you regarding presentations if they're available put them on the website there's no reason to wait till after the meeting that pfm presentation was presented to finest committee I understand why not just put it on the website so we can see it and follow along as it's being presented regarding the district's cash balances so could you clarify this timing issue is it the tax collector is holding on to the money longer for some reason or is his collection rate slowing down because people

214can't afford the higher tax in the district or some other reason um we're approaching 3 months since the end of the last fiscal year any information on on the financial or operating results of the district Surplus deficit how much is Surplus if you could give me a sense of what that number is and saying that the audit isn't really done is misinformation you should know that number the book should be closed by now and you should know if there's any audit adjustments coming um if you could collaborate something in the finance committee me meeting minutes there was a statement that said last year's legal cost came in at 498,000 versus a budget of 632 which is about 20% below budget since you base this year's Budget on last year's budget does that mean that the

215budgeted legal expense are probably overstated for this year as well and any sense of how much that might be um three minutes is a short period of time to be able to get a lot of comments across many speakers tonight wenter over that three minute limit as you had to ask them to please wrap up so with a high school project coming and spending potentially 220 million or 425 million can we get more time to talk about this increase it for like five minutes if that's not possible I would like to request to have me personally added to the list of guests and scheduled speak speakers at your October 22nd Work session for up to 30 minutes to provide comments on the high school project and give me the ability to yield some of my

216time to others who may have significant concerns on this project if Dr Zerby or Miss puru if you get back to me the email let me know if that'd be possible within the next week so I can prepare properly that would be great thank you thank you and um with that maybe I'll check if any any of the board members have any comments regarding um our responses to share okay and then with that I may I have a motion to I'm Sorry Miss still yeah I just would like to thank you for everyone in your comments I just would like to respond um to some comments that were made about belonging and just that you know I think some I'm looking forward to some further conversations especially in our committees because I think there are

217many different groups of people who are experiencing a lot of pain in our community and I think more conversation and movement and action to help support all those communities would be really will be beneficial so I'm looking forward to those conversations in committee to start moving things forward perfect Miss still also you sit on the Ed committee so please hold us accountable for it and we will um continue to have those conversations I will check for any comments any final feedback and then with that may I have a motion to adjourn the meeting all right second and uh meeting adjourn thank you all have a good night