001thank you good evening everybody I'd like to call to order the April 25th 2023 regular board meeting of the methactan board of school directors to order to introduce the Pledge of Allegiance Dr Zerby thank you madam president this evening we have Eagleville student Hudson gambali to help us lead the Pledge of Allegiance please rise and join Hudson hi my name is please stand I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible for liberty and justice for all thank you Hudson and next we have Emery Frazier to give us her thoughts on Eagleville Elementary School Emery hi my name is Emory Frazier I'm in Mrs Holmes and Mrs Hart's class of Eagleville Elementary there are so many cool things to
002love about being a girl these are some of my favorites the first vegan are the assemblies I think they're fun and informed they're also a great idea my second favorite are the cool websites we get to go on I think they're a new fun and awesome way of learning my third favorite are the fun activities and crafts we get to do with school I think they're a nice little break to do after learning something new again there are so many things to love about you evil can help you shoot through life skills join me in around Applause for Emory and Hudson They will receive two Junior School Board director certificates from the board of school directors thank you so much Madam president Dr serebi the public is here by advise of the audio and video
003recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting and um there's an executive session announcement the board met in an executive session immediately prior to tonight's meeting here at Arcola Intermediate School for the purpose of discussing matters involving the continued employment of two administrative employees of the district by way of attendance we have all board members present this evening now it's time for recognition of guests and scheduled speakers Dr zarvey thank you madam president this evening it gives me great honor and privilege to introduce principal of Eagleville Elementary School Dr Kelly harmer Dr Kelly harmer not only is a student of mathacton school district but also a former student of Eagleville Elementary and is here this evening to help us recognize some outstanding individuals at Eagleville Elementary School Dr harmer thank you Dr Zerby thank
004you school board members it is my honor tonight to recognize these wonderful Educators and our one parent volunteer for all they do for Eagleville Elementary and we're very proud of them I'd like to start with Karen Andrus Karen is a third grade instructional assistant but you also find her pitching in during breakfast Duty recess coverage and dismissal Karen possesses the natural ability to connect with our students and assist them along their educational Journey the students respond to Karen because they know she takes a genuine interest in their academic and social growth Karen is a true team player and always willing to pitch in when needed thank you Karen [Applause] next we have Mary Kate fenstermacher Mary Kate supports special education students in first and second grade classrooms the 2022-2023 school year brought both change and
005challenge but Mary Kate was up to meeting the challenge head first Mary Kate is a true advocate for her students and works cooperatively with regular education teachers to ensure success Mary Kate is well respected by her peers in the ingaville community because of her passionate belief that all children can succeed the students at Eagleville are lucky to have Mary Kate fence to mocker thank you thank you next we have Brooke Huebner Brooke hebner is our champion of literacy at igabel Brook provides our students with Incredible selection of books but more importantly teaches the students the joy of Discovery in a great book the students are also exposed to stem activities throughout the year including robotics encoding Burke also partners with authors and has organized many author visits work runs our Eagleville PA Club each year
006and provides the tools and Technology necessary for our students to create fantastic morning announcements Eagleville students are fortunate to have Brooke as their librarian thank you Brooke [Applause] Lucy Lopez Lucy joined the Eagleville front office team at the beginning of the 22 2022-2023 School Year Lucy immediately made an impact with her organizational skills community outreach and high level student Rapport we have yet to find a test that Lucy will not complete with Incredible thoughtfulness and attention to detail most importantly the Eagleville students know that Lucy cares for them and is always willing to help thank you Lucy [Applause] next we have Melanie Cotter Melody works as an instructional assistant in our readings department at Eagleville but more importantly she helps to build better readers each and every day Melanie possesses an incredible amount of literacy
007knowledge and resources that make her invaluable to our literacy efforts the students respond to Melanie's easy-going instructional style but more importantly they know she cares about their interests countless students have benefited from working with Melanie and Eagleville over the years and she has made an incredible impact thank you Mel foreign next we have Mr Russ Landis Russ Landis possesses the gift to reach grow and expand the fourth grade Minds that walk through the door each day his classroom exudes warmth and a love of learning Russ presents creative collaborative and challenging learning activity for his students Russ values respect and as soon as he teaches each year take this lead when they interact respectfully with their classmates the mark of a great teacher is the ability to nurture inquisitive investigative and inspiring Learners Russ demonstrates demonstrates
008this daily in his fourth grade classroom thank you Russ [Applause] and finally I'd like to call up Chrissy siriani Chrissy led the charge to start a readathon fundraise fundraiser at Eagleville the purpose of the fundraiser was to help our Eagleville home and school fund exciting opportunities for our students with an incredible amount of hard work and dedication the readathon launched during the fall of the 2020 2021-2022 school year and wow did it exceed expectations in the first year close to twenty thousand dollars was raised by by our students by reading and recording their minutes this Year Chrissy again led the charge in the fall and funds raised exceeded sixteen thousand dollars Eagleville students were aspired to read to help their school talk about a win-win Eagle would like to recognize Chrissy for her hard work
009and dedication in making the readathon so successful thank you Chris and those are Eagleville Award of Excellence recipients thank you mm-hmm [Applause] ings while everyone gets back to their seats and maybe escapes I just wanted to share a very quick story thank you to all the Eagleville staff my two of my three children did go to Eagleville for a year so I don't know many of you but I have to tell a feel-good story about Mr Landis I hope it doesn't embarrass him about four or five years ago a family what their youngest is now at Arcola told me this story and I have to share it they had gone to Italy the summer before fourth grade and for those of us who are know Italy there's churches about every few feet so this young
010man stopped into every Church and prayed at the altar that Mr Landis was his fourth grade teacher and I think the general the young man is in eighth grade now but I believe that you were his teacher so you you were wished for in Italy but I'm sure there's many wishes for lots of Eagleville staff but thank you for all that you do thank you Eagleville staff um you if you'd like uh you're welcome to stay if you'd like to go home to your families you can certainly do that as well have a great evening we appreciate everything you do for us next on on the agenda I have a pretty important announcement to make and why I say pretty important I mean really important because there's there's nothing that gives us a great uh
011Pride then to recognize our students and this evening uh we have a North monco technical career center student that we want to provide recognition to so we ask that Missy Emerson please come forward Missy come on down and I'm going to read this and I'm going to join you in just a second okay so if you could you can you can face the audience [Laughter] so Misty congratulations to methactone high school sophomore Missy Emerson for her incredible achievement at the skillsusa Pennsylvania leadership and skill conference earlier this month Missy Misty uh teamed I'm sorry Misty's team earned second place in the American Spirit competition at the conference in Hershey her two teammates were from North monk was other sending schools Misty is studying protective services at North monco we look forward to her continued success
012Misty I have a certificate for you madam president foreign [Applause] thank you congratulations [Applause] next on the agenda we have the Strategic Plan update so I'll ask the administrative team to join me at the podium and we'll ask our technician to get the presentation up on the screen uh we'll go through the presentation and then at the end if there's any questions for members of the board you can certainly ask them again we're not proposing anything here this evening this is really just a summary update uh as as uh to give you a perspective of what occurred oh so good evening and welcome to the annual April update of our strategic plan based on the Mission Vision and core values of the methactone school district we established five A Five-Year Plan that is student focused
013and Community centered having leveraged the five tenets of the whole child healthy safe engaged supported and challenged to ensure an exceptional methactin School District experience for all our goal uh uh progress will be updated in the fall following the customary release of the annual reports by the three ranking agencies but before we get into our progress let's take a look at how our former strategic plans and accomplish have created accomplishments from those efforts we can be proud of what we've accomplished so here are just a few of those items and I'm certainly not going to read the entire list but full day kindergarten a huge accomplishment we Leverage The Master facilities plan to address over 58 million dollars in District facilities needs we strengthen the district's physical behavioral and technological Safety and Security posture we've
014completed internal interoperability targets to leverage systems access and data we implemented the strong hiring process we established a district Communications plan wrecking recognize Communications or reorganize the Communications Department we established the Unified sports program we established unique District programs the hydroponic lab nafactin CSI unchartered learning uh Shark Tank entrepreneurship program we established the K-12 counselor and K-12 Dei climate counselor positions we established the district one-to-one Chromebook initiative we implemented mtss and we implemented stem teacher certification partnership with Wilkes University again on the list are just some of the outstanding things that our strategic plans have accomplished over the years to monitor the current progress as we established a visual monitoring tool that is located at the district website that's organized by year do it includes the strategies those assigned to the strategies the priority levels
015and the task progress on slide six overall this Five-Year Plan is is focused on eight core areas it has 73 strategies and over 486 tasks on slide seven uh to date we have completed 142 tasks and are making progress in each of the core Focus areas I want to thank my directors for their leadership my principals and assistant principals and supervisors for their work and support in accomplishing all that we have done to date and certainly we want to thank the support of our school board our teachers our support staff and our school community tonight's presentation is simply an abbreviated summary of the work completed or started to date work has begun in each of our core areas and in in the most of the strategies uh with regards regardless of date a due date
016my directors are here this evening to help me share some of the highlights of our good work on slide eight we have STEM Academy during our three meetings with the public focus groups more than about a year ago it was determined that a STEM Academy needed to be accessible to all students and that whatever we did needed a platform with which to build capacity of students from k through eight prior to their Endeavor in high school as such we discussed many examples within Pennsylvania and Across the Nation with respects to physical building as and stand-alone programs to integration of resources across the curriculum all different types of stem academies it was determined that using a problem pathway project approach with the immersion of of all students in the Fab Lab or more commonly known as
017fabrication laboratory where students can take and utilize Theory and apply processes to produce real products that address real world problems we have engaged edufab a national firm with credited of helping major universities organizations and schools with establishing Fab Lab makerspaces we have engaged the methactin Education Foundation and will be seeking approval in May by the board to proceed forward with the development of the curriculum acquiring equipment and addressing staff needs in order to start bringing the fabrication stem maker space at the high school to the students in the second semester of next school year in terms of slide nine you can see that we imagine a stem program that engages all students in real world problems along with having the reach across the entire planet of knowledge and ex experience of Fab labs in other
018schools universities and other countries along with a localized set of tools and supporting staff and community members to produce real world Solutions pretty exciting stuff many opportunities lie ahead thank you Douglas Irby continuing on for strategy 2B we're going to grow professionally learning and understanding of udl Universal Design for Learning and the framework for best practice as it applies to differentiated instruction this year we focused on establishing a Common Language and terms for our staff we focused on instructional best practices in the application of Universal Design for Learning we continue to set expectations for udl for all our students and staff and we will revisit the framework and the application of UGL as we continue with the strategy over the next several years next slide under strategy 2J we implemented a math coaching model we
019found a math coaching model this year to support student achievement and focus on teacher learning and efficacy we established the job description on those three math coaches we hired them we connected them with the mciu through the jobalite group we also created a math instructional framework K-12 We are continuing we continue to Pilot the math textbooks and most recently we got board approval to adopt those resources for implementation of the 2324 school year and we will continue to build efficacy of textbook and curriculum implication for best practices and these strategies will continue thank you Dr Walsh and good evening everyone in strategy 2C we're looking and working towards ensuring digital citizenship skill Development Across The District thus far we have conducted resource audit put together our representative committee and begun to analyze those audit findings
020overall at this point the overarching theme coming out of the audit is the need for a better understanding of digital citizenship itself and what we are already doing within the district therefore our first step has been able has been to establish a calendar of communications beginning in the 23-24 school year these communications will highlight the principles of digital citizenship while also calling attention to the specifics of what we are already working on in each School building and we will be continuing with this strategy through next school year and Beyond foreign staff awareness and knowledge of inclusive practices diversity Equity School culture and climate to support understanding and acceptance we did this through increasing staff Professional Knowledge and awareness by offering various sessions of professional development by guest speakers people within our own District that provided
021those trainings to our staff in addition it focused a lot on the work of our K-12 Dei and climate counselor Alexis Washington on a monthly basis she is meeting with our principals our school counselors and our building Liaisons on a bi-weekly basis she's meeting with our home and school visitor to talk about the needs of our families and our students additionally she's working with our ELD department chair and she has also been working with the mciu on matters of Dei and SEL in their community group and she recently joined the Pennsylvania educator diversity Consortium and lastly she is collaborating with our HR department on how to onboard our staff and provide training and resources for new hires the next strategy I would like to talk about is 3B we're continuing our implementation of inclusive practices
022to better support the academic social and emotional needs of all of our students in grades K to 12. this school year we focused on inclusive practices in grades K to four to ensure that students with disabilities would be included in the least restrictive environment as required by law this work included providing training as Dr Walsh spoke about a few minutes ago on Universal Design for Learning and best practices for instruction it was to make sure that we had the behavioral and mental health supports in place to support our staff and our students it allowed us to do Service Coordination and role definitions there are a lot of individuals involved in this work and people are are from different agencies and it was just making sure everybody knew who each individual was it's also about providing
023that knowledge to staff adjusting some mindsets and having an understanding of how inclusive practices Works within a school setting it's that sense of belonging that we're striving to achieve both through this work and our work on school climate we made sure that we got feedback from staff and made adjustments as necessary along the way and that will continue to happen as we move forward we made sure that we provided our staff with some Legal Information sessions and then there was also professional development for our staff from outside individuals from the mciu pts and Springfield psychological and we'll be continuing to work on this strategy for next year the next strategy I will discuss is strategy 3G develop and implemental trauma-informed care plan as you're aware we engaged a third party consultant with Tom Stecker and
024associates they worked with me to help develop a comprehensive trauma-informed care plan aligned to the pccd pccd's model and we submitted that to the state for approval based on that work that was outlined in the plan we organized the school connection teams that I spoke about last week each school and the district office had a team we provided six full days of interactive sessions on topics related to Social and emotional skills School climate School culture we held student voice days at Arcola in the high school we provided a community day for parents Guardians and community members also with this work we did do a staff survey and analyze the results together by building to talk about what we needed to do in each building moving forward and again as I said under inclusive practices it's
025really about that sense of belonging how do we improve that how do we engage our students to get their feedback about how they feel about belonging here in methactin and then we also are discussing the needs for future resources time to provide do all this work and the leadership to carry the work forward and then the last strategy I will discuss with you is strategy 3F which is to conduct a K-12 school counselor program review to ensure our resources programming and outcomes are effectively and efficiently aligned to best practices in school counselor we did Engage The Chester County Intermediate Unit as our third party consultant they worked with us to conduct focus group sessions with administrators professional staff parents students community members to try to get and they had a a rather large focus group
026session with our school counselors specifically the cciu also reviewed our District's 339 plan our counseling curriculum and all of the job descriptions associated with our school counseling positions they're analyzing the tasks and responsibilities of our schools counselors and also looking if we have the appropriate Staffing levels and we anticipate their recommendations by the beginning of May 2023. good evening I will be sharing with you some of the strides we've made related to communication strategies within the Strategic plan the focus of strategy 4A is to communicate Prestige process and policy information to all of our constituents our students parents staff and community so as a quick refresher Prestige is defined as our points of Pride the things we do well and What Makes Us exceptional process is the operational part of our work the teaching the
027learning and curriculum policy is the governing roles of our school district so as you can see listed there we've conducted an analytics review of our existing Communications platforms to better understand whether our Communications are reaching Target the Target audiences and how we can best leverage those tools for increased engagement we've conducted research to compile a list of school website providers to review and demo their products to ensure that the recommended vendor will meet the needs of our stakeholders our students parents staff community and perspective families we've organized our current media into these categories we've expanded the s'more newsletter reach for all of our building principles by taking simple steps to create a calendar for these scheduled Communications to be shared in the fall we were proud to distribute the district's annual report to provide an
028overview of the district's Prestige process and policy for the previous school year and we'll continue this strategy going forward the focus of strategy e increased parent is to increase parent volunteers by 25 percent in three years since this strategy was announced we have done tremendous work toward making it a reality we've transitioned from volunteers submitting paper clearances in person to volunteers uploading their documents into an online application the recent changes to the volunteer policy has drastically improved the time it takes to manage our volunteer database and for volunteers to complete the volunteer process the approval process we've also updated the volunteer section of the website to make all of the volunteer policy information easy to understand as well as to find the various types of opportunities that are available in our schools in addition we've
029successfully integrated the volunteer process with the visitor entry system through the implementation of the Raptor technology system in all of our buildings and we'll continue this strategy our next strategy for G focuses on engaging a marketing or communications consultant to conduct a Communications audit now this work is underway right now we've engaged with the cciu to seek an understanding of our existing methods and systems and for them to provide a recommendation on how we can not only improve our Communications for our stakeholders but to use and present our Communications in a way that better positions with Acton School District in this competitive Public School space the outcome of the audit should create a snapshot of current perceptions about our schools and District as well as identify gaps in the district Communications strategy in order for
030us to be successful in this work we have to have a plan for how we want to reach our goals and we'll do that by using Baseline research to evaluate our progress and also develop a framework for adding to our Communications plan and we're continuing with the strategy strategy 5A a process that began prior to the pandemic the completion of the parent booster handbook that includes the items listed is indicative of the importance our parents play in the success of our students and programs this manual was a long time coming and is designed to bring Clarity to what the district provides in terms of its resources to the teams and what and how booster groups can contribute to them in terms of strategy 5e on slide 21 while we started Unified sports under our old
031strategic plan we are seeking to expand it under this one to date we are proud to recognize the implementation this past winter of unified bocce in our first year I can say that we were not only the best dressed and equipped team but we found ourselves in intra-district play so very proud of our students our athletes our coaches and our volunteers and the on the same slide 21 is strategy 5i similar to the work we presented on our food service program we have I have directed the athletic director Mr smink to begin exploring what needs to happen in order for us to become a better Athletics and activities program so that we can be best support today's student athletes as well as those in the future to ensure that our student athletes our parents and
032school Community get the very best of our efforts slide 22 strategy 6B in November of 2022 the board approved the raising of the former Audubon Elementary School with a current trajectory of June and July of I have been tasked with determining the future educational use of this property today we have considered um an ecological Center an athletic track and field and moving our District transportation uh to this location all of these have potential benefits but are limited in long-term scope and viability given the anticipated cost benefit uh relationship of these ideas it is likely that the board will need to consider sitting on the property without plans for an immediate future use or considering selling the property altogether in addition we have continued to partner with the mciu to have provi actually to have and
033provide space in our buildings for preschool accounts programs and other specialized mciu programs this not only helps our students but also provides Financial benefits to the district good evening tonight I'll be talking about strategy 6A which is the Improvement of the Aesthetics of all school buildings as well as 7B which is the update of the 10-year master plan back in 2016 the master facilities plan was created in 2018 the summer of 2018 work began for the first time on this uh some of the items that we've done over the next five years include the renovation of the Eagleville Elementary School a new Arrowhead which was walk through last week which was great to see the community out there and enjoying it we had the fire alarm and canopy and pads product at the high school
034here in Arcola Auditorium we had the remediation of the ceiling and the remodeling of and the HVAC system redone throughout the district we've done various roofs and the high school egress and security project and one of the other things that we did to help improve security throughout the district is it put cameras in all district buildings and then finally we had the fuel tank repair that was done at the transportation center putting in a regular and diesel fuel above ground so that we can leverage the regular fuel also versus go out and buy that throughout the different gas stations throughout the community we're currently working through this strategy which will include revising a mess or plan with the new information that we're gathering for the facilities assessment condition reports next we have strategy 6E which
035to consider alternative energy sources and sustainability we've Incorporated Alternative Energy options in the future Transportation contracts that was added this year which will have the future of putting in electric vans and looking down the road to hopefully someday get to the point where we can put in electric buses we're developing long cram long-range vehicle utilization transition we also had our first sustainability task force held in held an introductory meeting developing the transfer structure meeting the schedule for next school year and researching individual members to gain perspective and next steps we have five different next steps including an energy audit a waste and recycling audit sustainability education of the curriculum and best practices we're continuing with this strategy also thank you Mr Bricker good evening everyone the next strategy is 6D focusing on safety we're looking
036at increasing campus Safety and Security in all buildings first we completed physical and behavioral risk vulnerability assessments we implemented a building access protocol to support the 24 7 secure door policy we have in the district we've increased the exterior camera coverage on multiple campuses we've upgraded the visitor screening system moving all schools now to the Raptor system we've updated the emergency parent Guardian texting notification service this increased our parent Guardian participation texting notification program from approximately 300 families to 3261 families we've implemented a reunification protocol with training to all of our ERT teams that's emergency response teams Lower Providence Police Department State Police Montgomery County Emergency Operations Center and our Consultants at Cardinal Point approximately 150 people went through the training this February and finally we're always seeking to add to our state and federal
037grant opportunities and we're specifically looking at the stop Grant at this moment in time to help support multiple safety efforts the district's working through thank you the next slide still focusing on increased campus Safety and Security in all buildings we've increased our Communications and access to trainings for our ERT teams members both all both Lieutenant Valdez and myself will run trainings and scenario discussions for each of our ERT teams which they can ask questions and learn from during those trainings we have increased our SEL Focus for students and staff as part of our district safety team through the behavioral assessment risk and vulnerability report and the input that we've received from students on our student voice days we've developed a communication protocol that defines four separate emergency operation communication groups in the district with backups
038for each team and a process for communicating timing frequency content and closure we provide a notice to families on safety protocols and responses on March 2023 through the community conversations from Dr zervi and upgraded our safety webpage to assist families with any questions they may have on the subject we've held mandatory act 55 trainings on emergency preparedness and standard response protocol for all different types of emergencies that could be faced in the district and finally we have held our act 44 annual safety meeting with the board of school directors last month with an additional meeting scheduled in the next month for review and I believe at this point I'm turning it over back over to Mr Bricker thank you Mr Regina strategy 7A is the increased transparency in the annual budgeting process so one of
039the things that we did is we've increased our monthly standard reports that we provide to the finance committee some of these reports include the legal fees where we break down all the different legal fees we have the charter school reports that we print out that gives everyone a breakdown of where our Charter School expenses are coming from and where the enrollments are in those schools we also have added in a substitute teacher a cost expense so that you can track this substitute teacher expenses associated with primary and secondary education and most recently we added in a grant tracking so that you can see where we spent our funds specifically now spending the funds on the srs3 items we also are in the process of developing an annual budget book that will go out each July
040we're always trying to improve our forecasting model to guide future budgeting determinations and we're in the process of developing a policy associated with addressing the capital reserve needs of the school district this will help with eliminating and or reducing I should say our debt service needs in the school district as we take on projects that should be taking care of normal maintenance versus borrowing for them and we're continuing with this strategy at this point in time next we have strategy 7i which is to implement planned effort to recapture Charter virtual private and parochial school students so far we've established a Target summary approach we developed and distributed a survey to the Charter Schools we're currently in the process of developing a direct personal approach to reach out to these students and their families to understand
041why they made the choices that they did and then we're going to look to try and schedule an in-person information session so that we can understand and meet with them face to face to get a better understanding of what we could do to improve our services to help them return back to methact and we're currently continuing with this strategy I first over to Dr sorgini thank you Mr Bricker efforts have been underway in the Human Resources office on several fronts the first of which has been an augmentation to our onboarding process in collaboration with our mespa support staff leadership we have ensured better communication with and assistance for our new employees additionally we have introduced the use of an electronic employee data sheet as well as the Frontline Central module to immediately begin the electronic
042onboarding process with new employees once they are approved by the board the use of this system will be expanded in the 2324 school year for use with all employees with contracts and documents we are nearing the end of the First full year of our teacher apprenticeship program with dedicated mathactin teachers in Gwen and Mercy University students our first tab student teacher will actually be student teaching next school year at Worcester and as we continue that elementary and secondary certification program Dr Walsh and I actually met recently with the uh chair of the school of education at her sinus College to create a second partnership with her sinus for secondary certified teachers and the goal is to begin that program in the second half of the 23-24 school year as a point of Pride last week
043Dr Walsh and I met with the graduating May graduates of the education program at gwended Mercy and we found out that one of our tap students presented at accepted students day and she told the incoming students and their parents about the benefits of being in the Gwynedd education program because of the partnership that they have with methactan finally over the course of the last year we have amended both the mea and the mespa contracts to include competitive starting salaries as well as highly competitive salaries at all levels of the salary Matrix these changes bettered our hiring and also our our retention efforts combined with changes to our STS and Casual compensation rates we are now in a much more strategic situation to con ensure the continued uh employment of superior staff on behalf of our
044students and now I believe I'm turning it over to Mr Regina again next we'll be looking in the experience category specific the strategy 8A increasing staff workplace Satisfaction by 25 through the focus of Staff Wellness uh specific this strategy we've distributed the fall and spring climate surveys to students staff parents and community members additionally we have conducted a School connections team survey with our Consultants from Tom Stecker and Associates to gain a better understanding of the sense of belonging data that we collected from our own District surveys we've developed and implemented strategic actions in response to the wellness committee's prioritized list of wellness and climate requests from our employees and we have formed a district committee excuse me District employee council to guide and support our efforts with respect to climate vision and wellness and
045we're currently discussing the need for future resources and Leadership with this work in the future and next I believe I turn this over to Miss Kelly thank you so next we are focusing on strategy 8D which focuses on improving central office communication to staff and families as you can see there is a list of items there and I'll touch on a few of them we're improving our Communications by publishing an alumni Spotlight newsletter which was started in August of 2021 the school board notes newsletter and Community conversations newsletter each of those are published each month each week the Athletics office publishes a newsletter that features Athletics happenings highlights and schedules from the high school level specific to internal Communications for staff Dr zurby shares a good morning effect and letter each week that includes various
046topics on instructional and operational matters and District events as well as an inspirational quote of the day another way we're improving our Communications is by hosting a community Town Hall meetings with the superintendent via an interactive online webinar to allow the public to join the meeting from wherever they are and participate in Live question and answer sessions during the event we've also improved the number of parents who have opted into receiving text messages in an emergency from the district and we did this by asking parents to verify their contact information in power school and engaging with our building level office staff to provide Outreach to families for that extra support we're continuing with the strategy going to turn it over to Mr Regina thank you Miss Kelly finally in the last experience slide as many
047of you know we have established the office of diversity equity and inclusion and we have the pleasure both myself and Dr angstead with meeting with Miss Washington each week on creating a number of initiatives and work that we do in that office we speak specifically about professional development and training opportunities for staff and students we review Concepts shared across a number of districts in both the county and the Commonwealth and we're also able to discuss current and external matters that may apply to the district the three major areas of concentration that we've been focused on for school climate specifically have been both with our social and emotional learning our trauma-informed Care Mental Health and our bullying prevention the K-12 Dei climate counselor Miss Washington is also a member of our safety executive team and looks
048at things on that team through the behavioral safety lens she also assists our Title IX office and provides support to the claimant when requested our K-12 the EI climate Consular counselor and Skyview principal have been part of professional development and training specific to responsive classrooms and have engaged in discussions with our curriculum department on best practices and classroom implementation we have also expanded our student engagement and feedback in this area as well performing student Advisory Group creating multi-cultural student Leadership Academy and creating a student athlete Leadership Academy all at the high school we've established regular meetings with the K-12 Dei climate counselor and the Arcola Arcola kinase Club High School Multicultural awareness Club Unified sports and best buddies Club we've also held assemblies for students and staff on positive School climate with Ed Garrity at
049both the high school and Arcola this January and finally we have formed a tracking and monitoring process for our Dei and title incidents that occur in the district and finally I'm going to turn this over to Dr Zerby in summary you can see that we are making a substantial progress in each of these important core areas we appreciate the support of the school board our students parents staff and community in assisting us guiding us and supporting us as we work to ensure an exceptional Moncton School District experience for all thank you are there any questions from members of the board seeing no questions yes Mr Drummond um and I guess this would be just I have actually two questions one is um under safety and I wasn't sure if our collaboration with bus Patrol counted
050as something that would go under some of the points you discussed or if that would yeah I think it absolutely would it's not something that we mentioned but I think that's a great point it's something we could add thank you Ms Drummond and then I had a question about the Unified sports I don't know what slide it's on but the Unified sports you said we have the track and the bocce and then we were looking at Esports are we also looking at the next official unified sport which I think might be soccer I believe we have to it by the unified rules we have to wait two years uh separating the implementation so we certainly will when when it comes to that but I think it's important to recognize that the uh the the initial
051look into Esports while it's not an a sanctioned uh unified sport it actually is one of those sports that that uh brings together students similarly uh in a similar way to as Unified sports and we think that that's a an outstanding opportunity to engage students that haven't been engaged in other clubs or other athletic opportunities here in the district and uh I want to thank uh Mr branick and uh Mr smink for leading that charge great I just wanted to make sure it wasn't in place of that it was in addition to thank you yes Miss Perdue thank you um to the staff for the presentation I was very happy to hear some of the things that we've done and how we're going to continue with some of the work I did have a quick
052question in reference to some of the um strategic plans that have metrics in reference to increasing 25 percent like when I look at volunteer I know we changed our volunteer process and I I was just curious to see where we are in that Target like after the process was changed we see an increase in the number of volunteers we we we were focused on the change in the process the actual organization and processing was our number one priority before we thought that any additional uh Improvement could occur uh generally speaking uh the complaints about our volunteer process was that it was very cumbersome um it didn't offer an online component and those are the first things we felt regardless of the the measurements uh from from uh from point A to point B uh we
053we need to take care of now it's up to us over the next several years to measure whether or not that has any impact and and our communication on on encouragement of volunteerism within the district has any impact in changing those metrics so I don't have any specific metrics for you on that tonight but certainly after those changes we'll be looking to monitor to see if that impact has occurred but have we received any feedback from those that I know I haven't gone through the process just because my our exercise throughout today but I'm just wondering what feedback we've received if any yeah I think we've received a lot of positive feedback we've also received some uh I'll call them concerns because this is a new process and it's a learning process not only for
054us but also for our volunteers so like any online application process you know you know that you have to read carefully you have to go through through certain steps but a lot of our uh a lot of our volunteers have been gracious to communicate with uh Ms Kelly and our and our office to give us advice on how to make modifications and make changes and we've been making those so that we can make it easier and more intuitive for our end users so we look forward to continuing to get any feedback both positive and negative so that we can continue to make things better I did have a quick one also on a safety and reference so I think Mr Regina mentioned the increase of stereo camera cap coverage on campuses and I believe you
055indicated on some of our campuses so is that also when we say we're continuing with the strategies that's something that we're looking to have coverage at all our campuses yeah we currently do have coverage on all the campuses but we've enhanced some of our camera system and then added additional cameras to our system to provide additional coverage in certain areas that might have been blind spots in the in the past okay thank you and I did just have one for Dr anstadt in reference so I think you mentioned in reference to um the trauma informed care plan um discuss the need for future resources and I'm just wondering if you can elaborate on what resources um so we plan to continue our work next year with Tom Stecker and Associates and next year instead of
056meeting as a whole group we will be working within individual buildings and there's a lot of activities planned a lot of training a lot of sessions more student voice days and we're looking to see if there's some way we could get someone to help support that effort this year Alexis Washington was kind of my right hand and left hand and helped to coordinate a lot of those efforts but as we continue to move this along we feel there could be a role there for someone to take that on to help drive this for the district okay so it's more on the leadership role yeah okay perfect thank you sure Ms Reese um most most of us sitting here know a lot or know a lot of this but um it's nice to see it all
057together one of the new things I just had a very quick comment and question about um I knew about the the success of the Gwen and mercy but it was nice to hear you know some anecdotal success and with this new um pursuing the partnership with their sinus um I guess it's a two-fold question one is that looking good and two when you say secondary Ed I know a math teacher I know I know a foreign do they I know they have math or they did do they have math foreign language science is it because those are the three that I know are hot so I just kind of wanted a little more detail about that they actually do uh when Dr Walsh and I met with the representative from the University we were very
058excited to hear the number of secondary programs we have we're very excited about our Gwynedd program but it's primarily focused on Elementary certifications and K-12 special ed certs uh there aren't a lot of secondary programs in our area so to be able to partner with our local college that really is right next door we're very excited about that um and not to like So when you say we're excited to partner it's looking like it's going to happen yes okay yeah it looks like second semester of 23 24. and just to reiterate I can't ex I can't say that's wonderful for those unaware I've been like keeping an eye on this because you know as we know we're teachers are going to be given an incentive in their taxes like new graduates I mean everybody is
059doing everything that they possibly can to help with the future teacher shortage that we're all going to see um and I don't know who is going to the legislative breakfast this Friday I know what myself Liz I don't know if any of you but I know that that will be a Hot Topic so I'm I'm glad to see we're continuing that thank you so much thank you any other questions Ms Drummond I was I just want to maybe follow up on Miss Perdue produce comments about the volunteerism and that would be to also measure not only how many additional volunteers we have getting clearances through our system but how many additional volunteers our new policy and and the bifurcation that we made to develop categories of volunteers how that brings more volunteerism into our schools
060so now we can have you know as a community member from shannondell come in and read a story which previously we weren't able to do so I would just be interested in finding a way to track that as well um as so we can see that additional participation and and get those numbers and we can see how our policy is is doing thank you any other comments see no other comments thank you so much for your support and uh we'll take my position back at the table okay [Music] so Mr bicker will be giving a summary update of the April 2000 uh 22 I'm sorry April 2023 presentation that he had to the board of school directors at the finance committee here in April and then adding some additional uh Clarity around uh you know
061the process by which we develop uh the budget and if members of the board have any questions about that after after the presentation we certainly can open up the discussion Mr Bricker thank you Dr Zerby the first thing we want to do is go over the budgeting process as a refresher as to how we go through this process the first thing we do in September Is We establish a budget timeline a lot of that is driven by pde and election years and when the dates can work within the calendar and that that backsets how we get into our budget timeline we set budgetary Direction we've got all our information together we take out our budget templates and we send all the information out to the directors and the building principles so they can start creating
062their building and Department budgets in this they also put their Staffing requests in any capital projects that they'd like us to consider and all that information is gathered put into my my by my group we organize it and then we set up meetings to review these with the building principles and the department heads so we review the Staffing the program needs we were all the requests that they put in all the financial requests that they put in we make modifications reductions changes additions based on the Strategic goals and the limitations set by the Act 1 index we then present this to the budget committee to the finance committee I'm sorry and then we present it to the deplulinary budget to the school board in January part of the budgeting process includes salary and benefits it
063is 68.51 of our budget basically it is the largest area of our budget to budget these items it's we take the current person in a position and move them forward to determine the position is still required so an example we have a teacher that's on step five Masters plus thirty they'll receive a half a step per the contract this is actually in the contract right now this is a natural example where the person will be moved to step five and a half Masters plus 30. so what you'll see is the salary increases that's based on the contract teasers actually goes down percentage-wise up because the percent of the salary social security was flat and we assume that at the time whatever medical plans the person had in this case the person that had had open
064Choice One family they had prescription 15 25 40 family dental vision family and we also provide life insurance so those costs are the ones that come straight down you'll notice that the dental Envision we've been able to keep flat recently so that's been very positive to our outcome with regards to the benefits but this is a very straightforward process the compute the system fists has all this information in and we move it straight over and then we do a step five uh bachelor's Plus 15. I could be wrong Bachelor plus 15 for any vacant position and or if it's a mess book a Teamster or other open position right in the contract tells us what their salaries are and we've moved straight across all this information is based on the needs of the district and
065the existing staff another area that we go over is our operational budgets this is your building principal budgets this is your department budgets these are the expenditures that account for about 21.66 percent of the budget an example here true this actually is how we set our budget for the transportation calculations we take the number of routes that we anticipate in this case 94 180 run days the new price that will be in the contract is 326.7 that gives us a total cost there's actually notes that explain how all this stuff's done I won't bore everyone with all the numbers that I enjoy but I'm sure no one else really does that much we include third-party routes that we have to make some assumptions on homeless we have fuel prices we lock in fuel and all
066that information then comes down to how it calls for the fuel and then the rest of the information that comes in this year we added in the fifteen thousand dollars for the high school Carlson card which is an option at this point in time and we'll consider as we move forward the last area that we do primarily is our debt service in this case I'm giving you an example on our debt transfers that service transfers that we do in this right from the pfm they provide us a book this is our debt book this is a schedule of all principal and interest payments this ties into depending on how much we budget for the principal and interest payment so this year we budgeted 7.3 million dollars worth of uh principal payments and about three million
067dollars worth of interest payments for this coming year we're going to budget 2.4 million dollars worth of principal payments and about 2.6 million dollars of interest payments again straight out of the debt book it's just a principal and interest payments we own on our bond so all that information is pretty straightforward so most of the information we do is either straightforward information as you see in the salary and the benefits or The Debt Service which combined account for 75 78 of our budget then you have the information that's being put in by the Departments and the principals and that's the remaining part of our budget so in summary the budget process the zero-based budgeting as we determine the needs of the district based on this year's needs not by a flat increase all the costs
068are either based on known increases such as salary benefits Debt Service or other expenses that are estimated based on updated cost or known increases such as a transportation costs the budget is based on the knowledge of what is needed nearly 12 months prior to a given year in April now that we've gone through how we do the budgeting process we're going to give you an update now of where we are in April so with regards to revenue the first area we're going to look at is the local Revenue local Revenue increase decreased by about ten thousand dollars we had assessments increase to 1.7 million dollars we had the millage rate increase to 3.26 percent local real estate taxes increased by 20.9 thousand dollars we made some adjustments on our interest income based on the dollar
069values that we have out there and ex and the rates that we're experiencing we also had funds from other leas that came in then we had the constant Social Security and retirement as our staffing changes as Dr sergini will present tonight the different Staffing changes they're Incorporated in every budget update that we do so that we have the most up-to-dated information when we're making these budget changes so that impacts the Social Security and retirement and then with this time we had some adjustments with title based on some information we get we should get the actual title information in May provided that all this stuff from the federal government gets completed by that point in time in our staffing review in April we updated we moved one teacher from Arrowhead to Eagleville there was no increase
070in staff in that area we did remove the communication and athletic office staff from the presentation that was done at the finance committee based on the finance committee's recommendation so that changes will be incorporated in the slides that you'll see coming forward from this the next slide shows the expenditures as I said we had the salaries and the benefits and this is again is our main area the Staffing update you know was 300 and 237 thousand dollars that's from the positions that we removed as I just mentioned that impacts the retirement social security medical prescription dental and Eye Care information we also when you get into the operating funds have the title four which again are the changes that I mentioned on the other one which is just balancing out the information and a movement
071of it from one category to another category we did increase our average sizing cost by twelve thousand dollars we've been putting out a lot of rfps recently and we've had a lot of cost increase with the publication so it's prudent to make that decision and then we updated our Charter School costs we had another regular Edge student come in that's why we had seventeen thousand dollars to that so it's just a straightforward information for that we had Supply cross increase of about nine thousand one hundred dollars and then from removing the communication person based on the finance committee we did put in a communication consultant that cost roughly 150 000 and that's going to be based on the information that we get back from the study that's being done all in all what does this
072mean we track our track changes right here Revenue as a whole you can see the changes went down overall the changes that we've made since the beginning of this 1.2 million dollars in local Revenue aggregate changes we've changed the state revenue by 346 thousand dollars in the federal revenue by only about eighteen hundred dollars salary and benefits changed over the time that we've been doing this from the preliminary budget 2.3 million dollars down and then you have the operating expenses that went up by about 165 000 and then as I said The Debt Service Changed by about 126 which is related the title I don't know why they include the fees from title in debt service but that's just a category that pde puts them in overall are now our budget stands at 125 million
073nine hundred seventy eight thousand eight hundred eight dollars and six cents that is for revenue and expenditures it is a balanced budget again the military is 3.26 percent at this point in time key items coming up keep moving some of these back because I'll be getting delays on them um from the people that I need to get them from we'll do the assessment updates every month the millage updates the Staffing changes and the charter school adjustments still continue all the way through the final budget in June this month we did get the third look medical RX and I did not have time to incorporate in it but we did yet that we just got our property Eno they're working on fine-tuning a couple questions that I have with regards to that we did get our
074updated workman's comp so that'll all be incorporated in and we're working on our lease and depending how the board votes tonight we have the Food Service management company with the on the nslp or not on the nslp so there are items that will be incorporated in May and that ends my presentation so before we take a question so Mr Bricker I just want to make sure that all the board members especially those new new to the board understand really what's happening in the next few months so we have a date in June where we will bring forward for your consideration the final 2023-204 24 budget but generally speaking it is in the May time frame by which we prepare the proposed of final budget and in that in that we will certainly be going before
075the the finance committee and certainly becoming before the board for your your vote on the proposed final budget so when we move that forward that'll go then to June for your final determination of the budget things can change between banjo but generally speaking uh we have used up until uh May uh and April all of our uh Revenue resources uh for that prediction so what that said are there any questions from Mr Bricker or any comments from the finance chair with respects to the current budget status now I I thanks for putting those slides together to talk about the process a little bit more because there's been questions about that in the community um the one thing I would I think you can give an also an example there's things I think just to be
076honest is there's things that we do not know or were going to happen 12 months in front so some of the areas of um and special ed if a student needs some type of evaluation we don't know that evaluation is going to occur but historically we've known we've spent money in certain areas around evaluations is that correct Mr Burger yeah that's correct so zero-based budgeting means that you set your budget based on the known information for that year you don't go and say we're going to give a blanket two percent increase across the board so zero-based budgeting doesn't mean I have a slip a piece of paper that says this is what each item is going to cost it is saying that based on the strategies and the goals of the school district this is
077what we need to meet those for next year and we take that as where we start from that year thank you and uh I do it did notice that the the debt uh is you have the 400 and I think it's 480 000 Less in debt already Incorporated for this coming year is that that's correct yeah um the other thing I just wanted to highlight here lost my train of thought here oh the the uh the employees can you um also clarify this was a question I think at the um special session last meeting at the courtesy of the floor related to the seven pcas can you explain that again one more time for the community so when we put the butter together there were seven pcas in it that we were actually supplementing with
078expenditures because of the search that the BCAAs needed at the time the preliminary budget was put together we did not know we were going to reallocate those pcas or whether we were going to need them or not so we met with people Services we reviewed the Staffing all the information we had HR to get together we had a meeting we went through that the determination was we are okay to remove those seven positions given the fact that we have the supplement supplementing of the outsourced pcas due to certification requirements and therefore these seven positions were no longer needed that's why we reduced them out of the budget in the future there was no corresponding offset or change or increase because it was already included in the preliminary budget as we made a determination as to
079how to best utilize and or the needs of those seven pcas so in all in in summary there was no double count of those seven pcas any other questions on the on the budget for members to my right members to my left thank you Mr Burger [Music] that ends our scheduled I guess and speakers here for this evening I'll turn the uh meeting back over to Madam president thank you Dr Zerby next we have our reports um the committee reports are attached um and we thank the foundation for their continued work they will report next month um we have our Dei report uh first Miss Washington good evening and thank you it's always a pleasure so April is celebrate diversity month in case no one knew that and the methactin high school Multicultural Club welcomed
080in the spring season and diversity month by hosting what they called their first annual holy event highlights of this event can be viewed online on the warrior news the student-led event was a great success and an amazing way to spend time Outdoors covered in spring colors the beginning of April was also autism acceptance day and month and across the district many staff members wore t-shirts to represent inclusion and later that month the high school best buddies club Holiday game of bingo one afternoon that did include prizes other campuses this month celebrated diversity month as in tea with tea and other snacks just to give staff time to build community together and I want to give a special thank you to our building Liaisons counselor school connection teams and building principles for all of their support
081in those efforts it's also a privilege to participate in the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit I continue to work on building relationships with our colleagues across the county and I'm happy that this upcoming weekend I will be joining the Norristown area school district for their third annual diversity day I appreciate their invitation that was extended to our neighbor and I look forward to working with them more in the future another partnership that is blooming is that we were fortunate to have 10 students from our high school black student union participate in BS Unity day at my former home of Westchester University students were presented with the opportunity to connect with other students at high schools across the Philadelphia area they met with an admissions representative spent the day on a college campus including a meal in
082the cafeteria and heard from a panel of current college students about college life and life outside of high school and a thank you to Dr gravanese for her support in helping to facilitate that trip Miss Denise Naylor who has our BSU sponsor and they're building liaison and Miss Roxanne Henning who's a high school counselor that joined us for that day and our students that also joined me at Westchester all right thank you very much any comments or questions I pushed the wrong button oh well okay um I don't want to put you on the spot but I wanted um to share with you I don't know if you watched last week's meeting I'm I you know it was very long so I'm not sure but a student brought up we had two students talking for
083quite a while and a student brought up how amazing it was to talk to all different people that she had never spoken before and I was like oh I was I was thinking to myself I was I wish Miss Washington was here and when you mentioned the programs and partners with other people like our neighbor Norristown and you said to work along the other Montgomery County districts I noticed and this is where I don't mean to put you on the spot I noticed several of our students wearing a black T-shirt and I believe it was Special Olympics and it said diversity inclusion and I think it was not just Unified sports but it could have been but then I noticed other students wearing that at the district where I work so I was just I
084assumed that that was kind of a Special Olympics County thing and I bring that up because I think there was some pushback you know um before you got here about Dei initiatives and it's amazing to see how many um initiatives across the county and across the district that the public schools are doing that so I'll have to get more information on that t-shirt or I'll bring it but it was nice to see students from all over um being involved in that um so if I I want to keep hearing these these uh examples of people understanding that it's it's a positive wonderful thing so thank you for everything you're doing and all the Outreach that you're having sure certainly anyone else any other questions or comments from the board all right thank you yes all
085right next we have the Intermediate Unit and North monco Miss Reese okay um we the IU met on March 29th and we meet tomorrow I'll be brief we conducted our normal business the biggest thing the biggest um uh discussion of our meeting was I had already shared about the purchase of the property on Morris Road in Lansdale which is wonderful because our IU just has so many incredible services so we in our main meeting we should be approving bids for the renovation of that building and then it'll be opening the construction of the renovations will start in June July and it'll be open in the 24 25 school year but the biggest part of that new building will be transition services and we had a phenomenal presentation um by one of the transition services staff
086members and for those unaware of the transition Services service the students from 14 to 21 years and I I think there was a quite a um it was quite an impactful presentation and I don't want to ruin all the good stuff that's going to happen but to know what the transition services at the IU already does and to know what they're going to be able to do at this uh Morris Road um uh facility it's really it was it's really wonderful so um and for those unaware of transition Services there are students that need a different type of education Beyond 18 years old and they help um these young people be successful out in the world um and it's it was really really good I wish I wish all of you could have seen it
087um and then I will oh and just a reminder that the mciu foundation that their main goal is to help children who would normally not be able to go to camp in the summer their golf outing is May 15th so if you're available you can look that up it's at Brookside um and then the tech center sorry it's on a different piece of paper we met on the 17th um and they just gave us a did again our normal business but one of the biggest things to share is they had over 600 applicants and it was wonderful to see misty here and to see Erica here who's also a North monco student um because I know when I started eight years ago on the North monco Joc one of our goals was to increase participation
088in that building and that's why you see the budget increase it's because more methactin students are using utilizing that phenomenal uh uh school so there were over 600 applicants that's across the five sending districts um 389 have already been placed there is a wait list of 163 they're constantly working with that wait list there will be some added um so that's the biggest update I don't know if you have anything else Mr Drummond I I don't just that they're still you know we're North monco is constantly evaluating how to provide this opportunity for more students they're evaluating their programs or evaluating the physical space um so Ms partovich is doing a great job um with that that's all I had thank you Miss Reese any questions about that all right um now we have our
089student board Representatives we have Lea Zhang and Erica sincere starting off with our sports team the lady Warrior softball team currently has a record of six to three their next game is tomorrow the 26th against pasta and Thursday the 27th against orange town both games are away the boys lacrosse team won against Phoenixville and also a tough Beth Alum team last week but after high school girls lacrosse added to that record last week recording both the win any loss the team record is now 7-3 full tennis sorry Boys Tennis beat both Springford and Phoenix well also in tennis the league singles tournament has begun baseball currently has one loss as they continue to move throughout the section the girls tennis team had a meeting over the weekend of 422 where one of the team members
090will be running at the Penn Relay carnival on Friday the 28th at Franklin Field we are wishing our athletes the best of luck to continue the National Honor Society is sponsoring a donation drive for the Mitzvah Circle through May 12th collecting gently used clothing as April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month wpg partnered with BSU and is having its annual clothesline project which is a movement that shares stories and promotes awareness of this issue in the community students can also visit the BSU calendar in the Breezeway to learn more about how to support and help others by viewing the Daily Facts the warrior performance group's hour-long annual Spring Showcase was on April 14th which included song dance and poetry that embodies activism and social issues on March 20th BSU sponsored the second installment of the weep
091along workshops with Albert W Jones the chief diversity equity and inclusion officer of the Commonwealth universities 37 students were in attendance at this two-hour long Workshop to learn and discuss diversity equity and inclusion and learn about the three colleges from April 2nd to 7th five students from the facton high school attended the Montgomery County OIC HBCU tour with a generous Grant from from the methactin Education Foundation some of the colleges they visited were Norfolk Hampton Howard Bennett Clark Elizabeth and jnc universities on March 30th the HOSA team participated in the annual Pennsylvania Jose State conference with one student Sarah McKillip placing fourth and qualifying for Jose's International leader conference which will be held in Dallas Texas on April 5th several MHS signs for team students competed with students from Pennsylvania New Jersey and Delaware and
092the Delaware Valley science fair six MHS students won category Awards and one student won two special Awards kids against crisis went to ecoville and did an art craft with students allowing them to express what they are thankful for and interact with high school students the annual MHS art show was held in the library on April 21st and 22nd where students showcase their Studio Arts Ceramics and graphic designs thank you thank you very much Leah and Erica for your reports next we have communications Miss Kelly good evening for the seventh year in a row with Acton school district has been honored with the best communities for music education designation by The NAMM foundation for our outstanding commitment to music education now in its 24th year the best communities for music education designation is awarded to districts
093that demonstrate outstanding achievement and efforts to provide music access and education to all students last Thursday hundreds of people turned out for the First Community walkthrough of the new Arrowhead Elementary School the event included a plaque unveiling and ribbon cutting arrowhead's fourth grade chorus also helped Mark the occasion with a performance of The Star-Spangled Banner and the Arrowhead School song we have posted videos and photos of the evening's activities on the district's website under points of pride this past weekend as Miss Leah mentioned it featured another successful art show with Acton high school you can still catch two more shows before the end of the school year Skyview will be holding their Art Exhibit and readers theater on May 17th from 5 30 to 7 30 pm and Arcola will be holding their Art Exhibit
094on May 18th from 6 30 to 8 30 pm and last but not least please do not forget to check out the post prom Community walkthrough on Friday it's from 6 30 to 8 30 at mathecton High School thank you very much thank you Miss Kelly and no rain everybody hope for no rain we'll all hope for that um okay um now we have the superintendent's report Dr Zerby thank you madam president I have no update on the Audubon Elementary School uh for this evening and enlisted uh on items three four and five the personal matters uh that uh for transfer for your uh review but I do have an update for facilities assessment so please note that as a result of the late evening presentation on facilities last Tuesday and the limited time we
095had to ask questions on this high level presentation and the lack of complete explanations and the fact that the final versions of the report have not been provided to me for review I had the motion to adopt the plans or move until such time I can provide a confirmation that the reports are ready for the board approval and that a presentation come before the property Committee of the board and then to the board itself prior to final adoption that ends my report thank you Dr Zerby um all right now it's time for public comment on board action items an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be decided upon as outlined on the agenda the board asks that you keep your comments to three minutes or less and please state your name
096and municipality anyone for public comment on board action items this evening all right seeing none um we will move on to the agenda uh may I have a motion to approve the March 21st work session in March 28th regular meeting minutes as attached Miss Reese may I have a second Miss Perdue any comments or questions from the board all in favor any opposed carries 9-0 thank you I'm sorry I need to abstain from that vote because I wasn't present oh okay thank you sure um so uh eight zero one thank you next is fiscal items Mr Bricker thank you madam president tonight for your approval or the finance items as presented last week with the following changes under 9f or two additional items for per the presentation last week to take the high school off
097the national school lunch program and create a cafe at a cost not to exceed forty thousand dollars okay may I have a motion to approve all fiscal items as presented Mr Winters may I have a second Mr McGinnis thank you any comments or questions from the board Ms Reese um just one um there was so much buzz after the presentation on the food last week a lot of Buzz and uh everybody wanted to see my little pictures of the calf of the grab and go and I explained it was a mock-up um and uh when I when I shared those little pictures um it came to my attention about the cost of some of those things in the grab and go and so I was happy to see the cost not to exceed forty thousand
098dollars but I was curious is there a plan if it does exceed that like are we getting donations like commercial coffee latte makers are a lot more expensive than we think so that was my is my question yeah I think uh that's a fair question uh again this these are these are estimates and we we gave it a little bit more meaning that we gave ourselves some room but of course if we find ourselves not being able to implement it where we believe we need to we'll have to come back to the board for for consideration for an adjustment to that other questions I just had one uh Dr Zerby on the question I believe I asked about when then or it would it be time to have a presentation to evaluate for the following
099year renewal of the Aramark when when it when do we get a presentation to make it timely to reevaluate yeah so Mr Bricker and I had that conversation it makes it really challenging because in order to put the application together uh you almost have to have an evaluation done before January of each year so imagine we'll be starting a new uh Service uh similarly you know given given the approval here this evening we would only have you know a few months to say that that we'd have that evaluation but remember that evaluation and that that uh that process can occur uh every year for each of the next four years so I just want to make sure that um you know to get you greater Clarity on that evaluation you're going to need to give
100Mr book I know some time but we want to do that I also suggested about incorporating that process into our policy so I'll be speaking with Mr Regina regarding that that way we can make it a standing order so that we're not having a conversation in the future about moving from a sea uh Food Service program to an a we're going to how we're going to maintain the a is what we need to be I would still like to see that even if it's early I would like to know how it's going and in a timely way and and I also just because I feel like previously with this vendor with any you know I mean this is the vendor we had but previously this was we would bring it to the board for a
101vote to continue the contract and there was not a way by the time it was brought to our attention for a boat it was never early enough to reevaluate it so I just want to make sure that we are in a continual evaluation and reevaluation process of this vendor and how it's serving the contract I completely agree with you I just can't tell you when that'll be but what I want to do is I want to take that concept and integrate it into policy that would that it will require the administration to do that on an annual basis but I don't know when the time frame is yet I'm I'm talking off the cuff right now saying it's likely the the latest we could do it is probably January in order to say okay we
102have to put in another application out in the marketplace given my experience uh this this last time around but I I can't tell you one will have to be able to do it yeah I just wanted to reiterate I I agree with you Liz I think that's definitely something we should be doing the other thing is I do recall that we will be having monthly feedback on the on this new contract so we will have you know September October November December feedback that we could use to make a determination going forward so I think that I just want to make sure everybody's aware that that feedback in my opinion would be one of the primary things the board wants to see to be able to say yes let's move forward to extend this to another
103year right yes I mean I think there's a number of uh I call the elements uh for us to review I think Ms Drummond was talking about when is that going to when is that going to be coming before the board so that if we want to make a change we're not in a position we're in a position to make a change if we want to so I think you're correct in terms of there's a number of different data points that we're certainly going to be made available and then secondly we need to get that timeline and then we need to as I said integrate that into policy so that you know there is not uh by chance that we're that we're having an evaluation of Food Services yeah thank you okay anyone else on
104fiscal all right seeing no other comments all in favor any opposed nine zero thank you next we have Personnel Dr sorgini good evening and thank you madam president for your consideration this month we have the Personnel items as presented last week at the work session plus the following editions two supplemental contracts for registration support assistance this summer the addition of James Stone to the list of casual custodians and the addition of Madison Van Horn as a swim instructor in our community education program we'll we welcome James to methacton and we thank Madison for serving as a lifeguard also this week I am pleased to introduce to you Mr Robert Corcoran our recommended candidate for the position of principal of Eagleville Elementary School Mr Corcoran earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Penn State
105University a master of education in teaching and applied studies from Westchester University a K-12 administrative certificate from Cabrini College and he's currently in the doctoral program for educational leadership at Immaculata University Rob began his professional career in education as a teacher at both Saint Joseph and Saint Philip grade schools he then taught for six years right here at our very own Skyview Upper Elementary School Rob only left Skyview to begin his career in administration first serving as an assistant principal at Palmyra Area Middle School and then as principal of Pine Street Elementary School also in the Palmyra Area School District currently Rob is principal of Maple Glen Elementary School in Upper Dublin School District where he has served as principal for the past five years I'm pleased and proud to recommend to you Mr Robert
106Corcoran to be the next principal of Eagleville elementary school thank you all right thank you may I have a motion to approve all Personnel items as attached Miss Reese may I have a second Mr McGinnis any questions or comments from the board on personnel all right all in favor any opposed that carries 9-0 and now I can say welcome Dr Corcoran or Mr Corcoran sorry excuse me Madam president with your permission I'd like to present Mr Corcoran with a small token of our recognition of his new position here at Eagleville Elementary School and ask him just to say a brief couple words to the board yes thank you thank you congratulations thank you thank you good evening Miss Acton Board of school directors our student leaders on the board Dr Zerby Mr Regina our methactin
107leadership team and our community and all that are in attendance this evening it is my privilege and honor to be named as Eagleville Elementary School's next principle I couldn't be prouder for this opportunity and I stand before you to say that I'm humbled as well by this opportunity I taught in the fact and as you heard for for six years and now I have an opportunity to return home and Lead our students and work with our students our staff our families our colleagues and our community as Eagleville Elementary School's next instructional leader I'm excited about the Innovation that I've heard this evening the work that we are doing here at Eagleville elementary school and in the facton school district and the work that lies ahead in the coming years here in Eagleville and the facton
108couldn't be prouder for this opportunity and I thank you so very much and make everyone proud thank you thank you Mr Corcoran and welcome home thank you so much everyone okay all right moving on we have no items for curriculum and programs this month and next is policy oh we only have first rates for policy so we we don't have any changes or anything okay first policy stands um next we have other Dr Zerby thank you madam president under gifts and donations there's one uh gift and donation to prove the gender script from chandelle at VH Foundation at Eagleville Elementary School backpack program for two thousand dollars and then under transportation item 13c approve the following drivers as part of the transportation employee roster for 22-23 school year uh Kenneth uh go God boy uh
109Tony Knight and uh Monica Pope thank you may I have a motion to approve all items listed under other as presented Mr Rookstool and may I have a second Miss Cleary any comments or questions just want to say thank you to the shannondell foundation for their generous donation to our backpack program thank you for that anyone else all in favor any opposed that carries nine zero thank you next is dates for board members calendars I just wanted to call attention that May 17th is the correct date for the next work session but it is on a Wednesday because of election day being on Tuesday so it is Wednesday May 17th just wanted to let everybody I'm going to make another note uh for the May 8th property committee meeting that's normally at the methactone high
110school LGI it's actually going to be located at Eagleville elementary school and then for the uh June meeting we're going to go to Arrowhead Elementary School for the property committee meeting all right and we'll make notes and we'll update that on the uh on the school calendar as well as on the uh the website all right thank you um is does anyone have anything for old or new business Miss Reese super quick just because it's before our next meeting um I know I joked about the rain with the walk through but um I just wanted to wish all our Juniors and seniors a good time this Friday at the prom and everybody at the post prom and we could all maybe cross our fingers for the weather forecast to change but thank you in advance
111to all the volunteers I know many people in this room will be there um and then I don't want to steal any Education Foundation members but may for the first week of May teacher appreciation is before our next meeting as well so if anybody wants to share the love for the fact and Education Foundation you can um you can um uh get those certificates for for your child's uh teachers through the fact and Education Foundation and also you said this before but there is a legislative breakfast being held at the Montgomery County IU on Friday uh this Friday the 28th um so that you could probably still go if you wanted to maybe um no no you can't okay well then that's just for your information if you've already registered you're welcome if someone drops
112out and you want a replacement we can handle that then Andrea be there and well and we will provide the board with any pertinent notes on legislative updates Madam president I actually have some new business um and I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole but [Music] um I think we're in that because it's still always the way we've always done it and I'm talking about our work sessions uh and specifically I'm talking about the uh mandatory attendance of that crew over there on our work session and I realized last week was an outlier that it was a five-hour night um Dr sir Genie and I timed you Dr sir Janie spoke for 49 seconds uh not to be outdone um what there are other people that didn't speak at all um
113if we had any questions I think we can literally just ask them it's being recorded they could probably follow up for the next and have the answers ready for the voting meeting um it Harkens back to when we were going through covet and we were talking about stripping out any unnecessary items from people's plates and specifically at that time the teachers plates I think it's an amazing waste of really valuable resources over there and maybe we can put it on some sort of alternating schedule uh just food for thought I think we're very stuck in uh well they've always had to come therefore they come kind of mentality I don't want them wasting their time they're too good they're just too valuable to sit there for five hours and do nothing so Food For Thought
114I don't know got uh Madam president Madam vice president if you want to discuss it further Kyle I don't even know if we can change it I I just it was one of those things I was thinking about last Wednesday when I was a complete waste at work because I was up till midnight at one of these I'm sure they were equally as exhausted so uh maybe something we consider changing around just to help them out and it may even dovetail into our executive committee conversation uh that we can come up with some unique Alternatives moving forward thank you Mr McGinnis any other old new business from the board all right seeing none um we'll move on it's courtesy of the floor and opportunity for residents to make comments on matters that are or maybe
115before the board um the board of school directors may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion and you can submit questions via email to information.org oh okay I've said something you said something new well you're afraid I'm going to give you something you don't like Jim Malick worst sister uh I handed the che what I wanted you guys to see what I'm going to refer to all of a sudden now we don't pass things out to the board that's something new it's nothing about the books tonight Dave I'll let you know when that's coming you can hand these out to everybody um all's well at mcfacton talk your little list of accomplishments up front everything's great in the fact and according to Dr Zerby me personally I I had to take issue with that
116because um somebody showed me a video of an all-out brawl at one of your schools police were there or law enforcement I don't hear anything about it and along with that people are telling me that there's no discipline in your schools they're very concerned but you all you do is Pat yourself on the back um I was told allegedly seventh graders having sex in the bathroom with somebody videotaping it where's that where's where's that get addressed here oh no wait everything's great of a fact it's great then you always dispute the numbers which are you U.S Newsroom will report 10 when care took over and 62. but you want context the context for those numbers is when care took over they were 10 care took over went to 62. schooldigger went from 11 to 85
117in the same situation so they're not being made up or manipulated the way you guys do it you take the last three years because I have one of your little things where you're talking about how good your scores are yeah when you take that little snippet to make it look good I didn't hear one thing tonight about Core Curriculum math test scores anything else then oh Cafe food Bocce hey we got a Bocce team that's great how does that like just like a planetarium how does that affect test scores grades getting into college doesn't let's have a cafe you know maybe we'll do some lattes at the cafe yeah I still got I still got 30 seconds it's a real problem now what I gave Che to give you is a right to know appeal
118where they found that this District acted in bad faith against me during the appeal bad faith do you know how hard that is to get ask Kyle he's going to tell you so I would recommend reading this the last two pages of where the bad faith occurred and think about where you were back then and where you are now thanks good evening John Andrews law of Providence quite a few years ago I read when a school building is put up in in Pennsylvania it's expected that it's going to survive without Untold expense for 50 years and of course in Philadelphia there are some school buildings that are still going strong or weak at 100 years so last week we had our second presentation from Bureau of veritas on updated facility assessments one of our elementary
119schools at Woodland uh just for the purposes of discussion I would say if it were built 10 years ago the cost might have been 25 or 50 million for the actual building so then we we bring Veritas onto the scene and they say that in the next 20 years that building is going to need 80 million dollars of expense that doesn't hold any water with me at all I would think that maybe 10 or 20 million including uh let's say uh one re-roofing re-roofings are you know one or two million so uh and then I think another thing that I listened to a week ago was that uh the fire alarm systems need complete replacement every 15 years uh so in the case of the Woodland School it seems like Veritas somehow came up with
120a cost perhaps five times what uh smart facilities people would would need to keep the building well maintained and open so I was happy to see that there was no vote on accepting that uh package this evening and uh you know maybe it'll be ready for the board again oh you know maybe September or October there's a lot of work that needs to be done to uh I think to satisfy the public as to money well spent thank you thank you any other comments for Courtesy of the floor good evening Diane cloth Worcester Township I'm a graduate of meth Acton school district and I thank you I was well prepared for my college education my experience here prepared me for my professional life as a teacher and again I thank all of you for your
121service I come to you not particularly referring to a question regarding the school system itself but the tax situation if I could just relay a little story to you my mom died in May of 2022 um and as you know if you've lost your parents there are a lot of issues to deal with and lots of things to bills to pay Etc um and I thought we were doing a good job until we received a notice a late notice saying that we owed an extra 400 on Mom's uh school taxes because we were derelict in in paying that and I said but we never got we never got anything and and we requested that our mail be forwarded but you know things get screwed up and and who knows what happened um and so I
122spoke to Pat Graham and she said you got to pay it there's no way out of it I talked to your business office you got to pay it okay I accept responsibility maybe I screwed up so I paid it come March property tax time I was now wiser and I watched and that bill never came and so I I went to visit Pat Graham and she said yeah it's been returned to me twice I said what uh she said the post office does not forward um tax bills I said wait what she said yeah here's a stack I said you've got to be kidding me uh and I said maybe if somebody's on vacation I I can understand but I said this was a life-changing event and and I I can't believe that nobody has
123fixed this problem and so Pat pointed the finger at the school district school district pointed the finger at um the township and they both pointed the finger at the post office with which I totally agree um but this is a situation I still I I see your doc I see your document online regardless you still owe late fees if you know no matter what it's your responsibility I know that now I didn't know that before it happened and I just wonder how many people this happens to um and I asked how how does this change like how do you get the post office to actually forward um these tax bills they did forward the late notice of overdue taxes but they don't afford the actual tax bill which is mind-boggling uh it almost to me
124is is like collusion the federal government that the post office uh delays so you get an extra four hundred dollars that goes to the local government or the school and then the school and the local government say sorry we can't fix it it it's still it's just really confusing situation for me um and so I was told by Pat and by business office you got to push back and until somebody pushes back hard enough this is never going to change so I don't know how to push back they said come and talk to the school board which I'm doing um I don't know what else to do except maybe go to the the news media thank you yes thank you thank you for your comments anyone else for Courtesy of the floor tonight seeing none
125any other comments from board members and may I have a motion to adjourn Mr McGinnis may I have a second Miss Graf thank you very much this meeting is adjourned