April 18, 2023 Special Meeting and Work Session Meeting of the Board

001foreign everybody I would like to call to order this special meeting of the methactin board of school directors on April 18 2023 please rise for the pledge the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting and there is an executive session announcement there was an executive session of the board held this evening in the Arcola Intermediate School just prior to this meeting for the purposes of presenting the state mandated act 44 safety report to the board of school directors by way of attendance all eight sitting board members are in attendance and now it is time for the school board director vacancy process Dr Zerby thank you madam president uh this evening uh there are two meetings uh the first is a special meeting as as

002Madam president had mentioned to appoint an individual to a vacant seat on the board of school directors for the school district and the board of school directors April 2023 work session there is one action item on the agenda for this special meeting the appointment and no action items scheduled for the work session given that there are no laws directing uh the exact process by which an appointment to a school board shall be conducted the board has taken consistent and reasonable measures to appoint candidates by announcing the vacancies seeking interested applicants learning their position point of view on General matters of importance and holding public interviews with the top three applicants therefore this evening uh that process is a reasonable process to conclude that the board is going above and beyond uh to select the best

003person from among the available applicants that process include on March 28th uh the board took action on the resignation of of the uh of the school board member Ms Rocco on April 6 there was an applicant application deadline where we had a number of applicants apply for the position on April 13th the board selected the top three candidates from the available applicant pool and this evening April 18th is a special meeting where we hold uh interviews and the board has the opportunity to appoint an individual to fill the vacancy candidates will pick an order for the interview with candidates number two and candidates number three being relocated to the back room awaiting their turn once can a candidates completes the interview they will return to the audience each candidate will be asked the same eight

004questions with the first question as a self-introduction and question eight or the last question a closing statement both of these will have one minute time limits and the six other prepared questions we'll have two minute time limit the board will hear all three candidates then they will hear a public comment on the one agenda item listed on this on the agenda for the special meeting then the board president will take nominations for appointment and then take roll call with each sitting member voting for their appointed uh candidates the candidate with five votes will be the appointed member with that I'm going to go go in and meet the three candidates this evening those candidates include Kathy Cleary Katie etoure and Esther Smith Howell and we're going to go pick the order pictures oh yeah I'm

005so short that's all right [Music] there what's that song members of the board at your seat you should have three sheets for your individual use you can choose to use them you can choose not to use them it's basically the list of the questions with a simple uh likert scale of one through five so this evening we have our first candidate we have Kathy Cleary Kathy you you were asked to take one minute to introduce yourself to the methactin community and the school board you may be and just just and before before you begin I want you to be aware that there is a timer over here Mr Baker our business manager will be uh keeping the time and he will notify me with five seconds remaining in any a lot of time okay so

006you have one minute we may begin uh good evening everyone thanks for inviting me here um I am uh my husband and I are residents from Lower Providence for approximately the last 22 years we've raised two boys in the district my son my old my eldest son Aiden graduated from the high school last year he's now at Michigan State University studying criminal justice and I have a younger son jack who's a senior and hopefully will graduate at the at the end of the year and he'll be at the Ohio State University studying Sports industry management next year um when my kids were in elementary school at Arrowhead I served as their home and School treasurer and I was also their liaison to the reformed myth actin coordinating Council back in the day and then by

007the time they were graduating from elementary school that's my time thank you sorry about that the next prepared question and this allows a two-minute response the question is why are you interested in serving on the board sure so I can kind of pick up where I where I just left off so um when the kids were leaving Elementary School between going back to work full-time and their crazy Sports schedules I had no time to volunteer and so I'm now in this position where I have more free time than I know what to do with and I can use that time to devote to the things that I'm interested in and those are both community service and anything educational based so this is really a good time for me I believe that education is an investment

008in these kids and it's one that pays dividends not only to the individual but to the community as a whole right so I just think it's extremely important and this position allows the person that you select to obviously um to help shape that investment and I just think that's fantastic um so in addition to that just playing an active role in you know what's going on in this district and you know the agenda items that you have to complete you know by the end of the year since this is such a short term um position and um anything that I can do to help you know the highest these kids achieve the highest level of academic success in the district is what I'm interested in thank you thank you the third question what do you

009perceive to be the responsibilities of a school board director sure at a high level um you know it's to administer the um the uh the school system in the district and to um uh do whatever's in the best interest of these kids first and foremost but beyond you know that being the high level um thought process there's the planning whether that is your short term your long-term um planning your finances your budget um your uh enrollment projections You're Building usage to setting policy um whether uh that's in response to differing needs or curriculum to effectively communicating those um policies and decisions to all the various stakeholders and then finally to I think monitoring um and evaluating on a continuing basis what you're doing and whether it's effective thank you question number four what qualities skills

010and experience would you bring to the board of school directors um sure um so my background is an environmental attorney I've been doing that for 27 years I approximately I work in the insurance industry so I spend my day helping and negotiating with clients and Underwriters and various stakeholders on pollution risks so while that's not directly impactful for the board obviously I think the skills either that I just naturally have or have learned over the 27 years are my job is based in research there is I am continually having to research topics that I know nothing about because everybody else in the room is smarter than me you know I'm there's the engineer there's the scientist and then there's me so I'm continually researching and I am by Nature very curious and what I mean

011by that is I'm not afraid to say I don't understand you know what you're talking about and ask somebody who is much smarter than me to dumb it down because if I can't explain it to one of you then I can't explain it and I don't understand it period so I think that's an important quality I'm an active listener I think that I'm pretty logical um pretty uh thorough and analytical and I think those are skills that are important um I'm certainly collaborative in my daily job I have to work with so many different people to try to get to a result and importantly from my perspective and I think the board's perspective you need to be able to um uh to be transparent in the reasons why you're making the decisions that you're making

012and being able to explain those you know Based on data and facts and and research and then finally since I have seven seconds left I think um uh I'm not a procrastinator meaning if you give me something to do I tackle the hard stuff first and leave the easy stuff so thank you very much question number five if you were faced with a tough issue as a School director such as raising taxes or cutting programs what kind of data would you need to help you make your decision so um yeah I I saw this question that you had asked this question before I think this is a tough one and I don't mean it to be a cop-out but I think that it's really dependent on the issue that you're faced with but from a

013I guess a broad brush um the things that I would be looking for would be data whether that's financial data or other data um uh if the issue requires a consultant if it requires professional and academic opinions uh most issues require um you know debate and input from whether that's teachers whether that's the CUNY members other stakeholders and just uh really getting as much data that you can with respect to the problem to be able to to understand it thank you question number six what are the strengths of our school district I think we have many um we've got really caring and involved parents we've got um certainly passionate and generous Community we've got I think an Administration and a staff that uh really cares about this District um but hands down number one and

014you probably hear this all the time is the teachers and because I have time I'm going to give this really quick story um hopefully you guys know or all of you know Mr Al Zamora he is a history teacher at the high school he's also the Freshman boys basketball coach and my youngest son is completely obsessed with basketball and played on the freshman team and then by the time he got to um sophomore year he was cut from the JV team and you know like we're not a tall family right so it's sort of obvious but devastated and that's not an over-exaggeration and Mr Elsa Mora went out of his way without us knowing to approach my kid and to really befriend him and Mentor him um uh Allison Moore Mr azamora invited him to

015be the assistant coach on the boys basketball team for the freshmen that year and he's coached with him ever since and they coached together outside of school for all of Mr alzamora's Sons travel teams and now Jack coaches Rec teams in the district they went to France together on the school trip he got him into unified track just amazing and Jack's essay for college was all about Mr alzamora and it was the theme was you know one door closes another door opens and you just have to be willing to walk through it and when I read the essay I was just so um touched like I'm starting to get all jerked up um just he just went so above and beyond and I'm that's just one story of many thank you question number seven what

016are the biggest challenges facing public education today uh yeah again there's many um in my opinion whether you think about funding or you think about um uh ketchup for kids post covet or you think about technology or you think about the impact of social media but I'm more these days concentrated on really two issues and I think one is folks inability to communicate with each other when it comes to the influence of you know political ideology doesn't matter to me whether you're on the left or on the right it's it's that inability to communicate and and just vitriol that that people speak with so and what's that doing to our kids is where I'm going with this um you know kids learn from watching us and um so that's a I think that's a huge

017challenge um the other challenge for me personally is really a newer one that I've been thinking about a lot um is gun violence and school safety so you probably don't recall because there's been so many mass shootings this year but my oldest son uh was at Michigan State University when there was a mass shooting in February and I got to tell you as a parent like it's everybody's worst nightmare um and to get that phone call in the evening um you know we're Sheltering in place we're hiding and he and of of the three children or young adults who were killed one of them was my son's friend and so just really had a big impact on our family and um you never ever think it's gonna happen like I'm sure none of us think

018it's ever going to happen here and then and then it does and it's just such had such an impact a profound impact on me this year because like seeing the kids seeing the students seeing that East Lansing Community just be so devastated so what I like is I've seen in your plans Dr Zerby that you you know making tweaks and changes to or improvements to the school safety plan um so anything that I can do to be part of that I'd like to thank you Ms Clary this is the last question which is a closing statement you have one minute sure okay um so the one of the questions you didn't ask me was what I think the biggest challenge is and I think this is an appropriate place to sort of close with that

019um I I thought a lot about this before I applied because it's such a short window and I don't just want to sit and feel um you know a dead spot for you I think it's really important I think it's a challenge for you for all of the three of us and for the community that it's a short position right and you want to hit the ground running and you don't want to be a hindrance to you guys and in getting done what you need to get done so I have spent a great deal of time and more so since Dr zurby called the other day but I have reviewed all of the board's policies I really like policy so I've reviewed all of that stuff I've looked at the last year and a half

020of school board meetings I've reviewed all your presentations that have been made to you I you know listened in to Dr zerby's Town Hall um I'm trying to do everything I can online to be able to hit the ground running for you guys and I know I'm out of time can I just say one more thing no okay well thank you I want to say thank you for interviewing uh for the position of the vacant uh School Board director uh post here at the school district uh one thing I I didn't mention is what township you're in if you just mentioned that I'd appreciate that Lower Providence hello Providence thank you very much and with that we ask you so kindly uh to return to the audience and then Mr Regina if you could escort

021in applicant number two Katie atori uh what township are you do you live in Providence okay thank you um so so this evening uh we're going to ask you eight questions the first one's going to be a one minute introduction the last question is going to be uh one minute uh closing statement and uh two minute uh responses for the six questions in between okay yes so the first question uh please introduce yourself to the board and to the mathacton school Community yes good evening Dr Zerby and school board members thank you for your consideration and time this evening and for the opportunity to present to you my background and experience my name is Katie etor my husband and I moved to Lower Providence 12 years ago and I have been a parent of a

022mafactment student for the past nine years I have an educational background in Psychology and criminal justice I'm in the midst of pursuing my doctorate because I am passionate about education and believe in its value my professional expertise for the past 18 years lies within the Juvenile Justice System where I serve as a juvenile probation officer and currently work with at-risk youth who are in need of Community Based and out of home Residential Services through these experiences I'm well versed with the educational system to include iaps alternative education placements and school safety I look forward to answering questions for you this evening thank you question number two why are you interested in serving on the board of school directors mentioned my husband and I moved to Lower Providence 12 years ago and one of the driving

023factors of moving here was the reputation of Acton School District as a parent I am familiar with regular education and special education opportunities that our District offers I see the benefits that our district has to offer our Stu our children and students and want to ensure that all families understand how to navigate through the process and procedures if they are not familiar with the school system I want our children professionals and Community to feel that our school system is beneficial supportive inclusive and innovative the opinions of our community and professionals should be heard as a recent cancer survivor I want to ensure that our children have access to counseling services and resources to assist them during any difficult time that they may ensue during their educational Journey here our mathaction community is very strong with

024many who have invested not only in their own children but others children as well listening to our community professionals thoughts critiques and input will strengthen the goal of providing education and skills so that students are well equipped for Success not only in the classroom but after graduation to their PR and that our professionals feel supported and heard thank you question number three what do you perceive to be the responsibilities of a school board director I perceive the responsibilities of the board to be the Forefront the governing body of the district the board should support the vision of the district as outlined by the district professionals and Community when identified goals of the district are reviewed and solutions proposed the board should make a sound decision that will benefit the district as a whole the board

025should serve and advocate for mifactin as an entire entity including our children being educated and our professionals at every level being supported while providing the educational experience for our students thank you question number four what qualities skills and experience would you bring to the board of school directors educationally I have mentioned I have a degree in Psychology as well as a degree in criminal justice and pursuing my doctorate I worked as a juvenile probation officer for many years and currently continue to work with at-risk youth within my current role I personally cover Montgomery County which is inclusive of mathaction school district this allows me a very unique opportunity to be aware of the environment in the schools from alternative perspective additionally I have children both within the methactone district as well as a private school

026sector which can provide a valuable insight about alternative curriculum as well as what is being utilized as other influences of school offerings that is affecting and impacting education I have a keen interest in working with youth and in research pulling from both my educational professional and parental background and experience this would allow me to understand the climate of mcfacton's education and how policies can directly or indirectly impact students families and the professionals qualities that I possess are that I am compassionate I am driven well organized hard-working trustworthy experienced in public speaking and passionate about success for everyone skills that I possess or knowledge of the Criminal Justice System knowledge of the public and private school sectors statistics and research marketing writing knowledge about alternative school and Vocational School options and I have many Community connections

027within the district thank you question number five if you were faced with a tough issue as a School director such as raising taxes or cutting programs what kind of data would you need to help you make your decision as I mentioned I am researching data driven I thrive on research and so for me in order to make an executive decision would be first and foremost understanding the background of the issue then researching the matter talking to those who would be invested in the decision as well and determining that I have a well-rounded educated decision prior to voicing what my opinion would be thank you question number six what are the strengths of our school district the strengths of the fact in lie within our districts professionals and our community mefacton's professionals are outstanding and want

028to see the success of their students they work diligently to ensure class materials are taught in an engaging manner they are passionate about making connections in and out of the classroom with their students and Families our community members want the district and their children to be the Forefront of the education and are willing to be engaged members of our entire student body to ensure their success additional specific strengths of the district are the number of available resources to students including but certainly not limited to special Educational Services gifted Educational Services counseling programs vocational opportunities Athletics the art and music programs Library services and student clubs to name a few thank you question number seven what are the biggest challenges facing public education today some of the biggest challenges facing public education today in my opinion

029are student to teacher ratio the number of alternative educational institutions families can choose from State funding technology student mental health professionals mental health and dietary plans with Acton certainly has the capacity to effectively address these challenges of Technology mental health and our students of our students and professionals and our food offerings while the use of technology is greatly beneficial providing additional education around the proper use of Technology Outlets to our students in order for them to understand the potential consequences of improper use outside of the classroom and how that can affect them their families the school the district and our community with regards to mental health our district can more effectively utilize our already existing internal resources through our school counselors and programs at all of our academic Levels by increasing these discussions and awareness

030certainly the accessibility to these resources will assist students and their families to feel like they are supportive and lastly Food Service options that are offered at the school levels there's an area for an improvement personally my husband is a district chef at a private school has taught me a valuable perspective on healthy choices that children professionals and families are excited about and has proven how a well-life service program provides extreme value to a school and provides a positive experience thank you this last question is the closing statement you have one minute thank you I thank you again for the opportunity to allow me to express my interest in the school board and provide you my thoughts and my experience and expertise and how that can assist in the board certainly I have a lot of

031experience in working in criminal justice and in personally it's an experience that I think would be an alternative and interesting perspective to bring to the board I want to utilize my skills abilities education and professional professional expertise to serve our students families and professionals I look forward to my facton continuing to strive through our professionals and children so that we develop our students to be well educated young adults who will contribute to our community and our society thank you Katie do I saying that correctly I'm sorry um we appreciate your your application and your interview here with us this evening you you're welcome to take a seat in the audience foreign our third applicant is Esther Smith Howell Miss Howell uh you are from what township Lower Providence thank you very much um again we

032have eight questions the first one being in an introduction of yourself you have one minute to do that and the last question being a closing statement of one minute and then six questions uh with two minute uh time limits with that please introduce yourself uh good evening thank you so much for this opportunity my name is Dr Esther Smith Howell and um I think that after you listen to the answers to my questions tonight or the answers to my answers to your questions you will understand why I'm uniquely qualified to be a member of the board I have a lot to offer I have fresh ideas the ability to create cross-sector Partnerships uh broad professional and personal experiences research experience and the passion of being a mother so I appreciate this opportunity and I feel

033like it's my responsibility to offer the talents and the experience and the training that I have received over the last 20 years of college education to the community that I reside in because this community is helping me to raise my son so thank you thank you question number two why are you interested in serving on the board of school directors I mean I'm interested to serve on the on the board because I love education I have been in public school in the public school system or received public school education K through PhD I'm a lifelong learner I want my education to be impactful to others because I understand education truly is the the great equalizer and you'll learn later that how it has been an equalizer for me most I'm most interested to be on

034the board because I want to integrate a diverse perspective my perspective is diverse because I have gained not just education but I have experiences across several sectors Healthcare sector education um I'm a mother and so the educational policies that governed my education as I grew up really allowed me as a person who grew up um I was adopted my biological mother passed away my father was lived with issues with substance abuse and alcoholism and so I literally came from nothing but it was the education that I received that allowed me to become something and so I feel that it is my responsibility to help make a difference in the lives of other students who may come from similar backgrounds as me I excuse me I feel like Equitable outcomes for all students come from diverse

035thinking and that diverse thinking comes from diverse training diverse experiences as well as personal and professional experiences my experiences as a mother an African-American woman a registered nurse a college professor a business scientist make me uniquely qualified and that is why I want to serve on the board thank you question number three what do you perceive to be the responsibilities of the board School directors I understand the responsibilities of the board um also work together to make informed decisions regarding policies that are number one within budget number two create a positive and enriching environment for students as well as Educators number three include community-based perspectives collab collaborations and Partnerships and number four proactively integrate creative research to ensure that schools within the district provide Cutting Edge yet well-rounded educational experiences for students and my thinking

036on what a board member what are the responsibilities of a board member come as Guided by my previous experience as a board member on the White Horse Village I was I was a board member on White Horse Village which is a Continuing Care retirement community in this in in the surrounding area I worked with a team of experts and residents to make decisions that directly impacted residents in the broader community I served as chair of the risk and compliance committee during covet chair I used prospective data to monitor health risks of residents inform covet policies to protect residences health and this was critically important because the individuals that lived at White Horse were older individuals and those were the individuals that were most hardly hit by by covet it was my job to ensure that

037Healthcare Staffing was appropriate to provide residents with high quality care but being resource responsible resources were scarce during covet and so it was critically important to balance care with resources and quality and so I bring an experience of working with a team of people um prior to being on this board I've been on a board before and so I bring that experience and that understanding I mean I was successful as a board member thank you question number four what qualities skills and experience would you bring to the board of school directors so as a researcher um it is my it is my job I do research at Merck I mean outcomes researcher it is my job to think innovatively it is my job to seek out information so that Merck can um create the best

038products get the right products to the right patients at the right time at the right price I bring the ability to create cross cross cross cross sector Partnerships at Merck I am co-lead of the diversity equity and inclusion scientific research and uh and real world evidence integration on the on Merck's Global diversity and inclusion business Consortium in this in this role I work to integrate research with not just uh not just internal partners and and stakeholders but external partners and stakeholders and so my thinking is um I understand that but back in school districts partners with the with local community colleges um and I'm thinking a local partnership with Merck to integrate aspects of programs that Merck could help graduates of uh the Matheson School District Merck has the 110 program as well as the

039skills first program almost 40 percent of Americans do not have a college for your education and so those students I know that the um 50 of students that graduate go on to work in their field but 50 don't and so I think that my thinking and my connections to the larger Community will help to integrate and and provide strategies to help those students who may not decide to go on to a four-year College in addition to Bringing research um I I will bring my my authentic self thank you the fifth question if you were faced with a tough issue as a School director such as raising taxes or cutting programs what kind of data would you need to help you make your decision so I am a mixed methods researcher I value quantitative and qualitative

040data I think that it is important to do perspective research collecting data from people I think that is important to look back at what has worked and what hasn't worked so that's retrospective data collection I also think that it's important to collect information from people so the quantitative data gives you the what but the qualitative gives the why and oftentimes it is the root cause of problems that we need to take into consideration and so if I had a tough choice to face and I faced tough choices every day at Merck I create research protocols and I have to balance the need the business need with the patient need and so I do my due diligence I go and I look at what's in the literature related to the topic I go and look at

041what is in what is in the business literature related to the topic and then I research vendors who are going to possibly help me to um to solve the problem through conduct actually conducting the work I manage the research they conduct the research but I'm a method I'm a methodological expert and so I understand the need to understand what they're doing manage what they're doing and ensure that what they're doing is high quality and then take that information and all the information I am trained in taking large amounts of information and synthesizing that information in order to come to a fiscally sound within budget solution to the problem so for me I would take in several types of information in order to come to a conclusion and share that information with my board members so

042that we as a as a team can work together to to make the decision thank you question number six what are the strengths of our school district so I I I chose this I chose to buy a house in the backing School District because um it boasts very strong academics it was important for me for my son to grow up in a school district that allowed him to thrive academically but also in a rich community the methaca school district is better than 90 of other districts in Pennsylvania the teachers are well trained and experienced School District offers a diverse direct array of extracurriculars one particular strength that I like as a nurse health is important and Central to my thinking I'm a patient advocate regardless of if I'm at the bedside or not the reach

043program that School District offers I think is Cutting Edge and I think it's a it really puts them in fact in school district out in front of other districts as a nurse public health is important to me mental health is important and so the reach program offers school-based intensive is a school-based intensive mental health program that has been created here which took vision and Leadership and so for me a strength is the reach program that provides much needed mental health care for students that is done in partnership with teachers guidance counselors and parents that's important the other strength that I was talking about before is mathacton's partnership with the north monco Technical Center and I think that that is an area where students get exposure to real life prior to graduating and they get a

044taste of you know what am I going to do with my life what where where am I going to go and I think that it's a strength that you know students get exposure to higher education prior to leaving High School thank you question number seven what are the biggest challenges facing public education today so the biggest the biggest challenge is facing public education are similar to that of other sectors Staffing shortages um budget budget cuts and mental health issues as a nurse and as an educator I have experienced both of those things I've experienced Staffing shortages I have had the very scary experience of having to take care of 44 patients by myself because there was nobody else there as an as a professor I experienced the frustration of not having um not being able

045to increase my class sizes because it was just me teaching a certain topic and so I feel like the the hardest part of being an educator is you have passion but you often don't you may not feel as appreciated because the pay is not there and there's frustration there you can't make ends meet sometimes and I'm certain that you know the teachers um high school middle school and Elementary School teachers felt the same frustration that I felt as a college professor and so I think that my experiences as a nurse and an educator facing those same challenges Staffing shortages shrinking budgets and and emotional and psychological burnout at times um are real for the teachers and in the methagne school district as well and so I feel like there are other challenges facing the students

046so the teachers have their challenges the students also have their challenges and that could be bullying I've heard stories while my son is only five years old I have neighbors with children who are older and they have experienced bullying they have experienced issues with social media all of these things are impact impacts uh your your mental health thank you this is the last question which is the candidates closing statement you have one minute so tonight I I wanted to Showcase that you know I bring a a wide array of talents experiences and um diverse perspective to would bring that to the board it sounds good in an interview but it's not just words for me it is who I am I invited my ten-year-old neighbor um Camille to come here tonight so she could hear

047um and see a young black woman who has accomplished quite a bit in her life I've mentored dozens of students over the course of my career I've mentored peers over the course of my career and a great person once said that the greatest among you is the person who serves others I am more than willing capable and and and excited to serve on the school board and I want to be an example for Camille and others just like her thank you very much that you that concludes the interview process and you're welcome to take a seat in the audience members of the board that concludes the interviews here for this evening for the vacancy of school board director director for menthackmon school district with that said I now turn the meeting back over to Madam

048president for public comment on action items foreign the board will now take comments on board action items there's only the one action item here tonight this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be decided upon as outlined on the agenda again this one matter um please keep your comments to three minutes or less and we may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of comments on board action items is there anyone for public comment on board action items this evening [Music] thank you Jim Malik worcestor the last candidate I enjoyed the talk on methodology and the methodological approach that would have been invaluable for you guys when you were doing the arrowhead project because she would have considered all the options meaning closing the school and then she would

049have looked into all the pros and cons of closing the school that's what you need somebody who knows methodology somebody who's going to look at all the facts and not ignore the ones they don't like I think that's perfect she her approach would also be of good or have been good for the Audubon project she would have considered leasing the building out unlike this board she would have gone through the pros the cons detailed it and discussed it or made sure it was discussed you guys never did that's what she would do and I agree with that approach that's the way things should be done up front she also mentioned diversity well yeah we do need diversity but we need diversity up front and I'm not talking about physical diversity I'm talking about diversity of

050ideas basically everybody up front is a yes person we need people up front who will look at things and actually have the courage to not say yes all the time so you know I thought that was very enlightening um your questions I don't know who picks these questions who writes them they're kind of ridiculous um number four number four is an easy question about what skills do you bring you need one skill for this board and that is to agree with this board so if you've got that you've got the most important skill uh five five is a moot there's no question about raising taxes or whether it is decision you raise taxes every year since you've been on the board right and then you're not going to cut programs because you've had Perpetual surpluses

051every year so there's no need to cut programs when you have perpetual surpluses and you raise taxes every year question six should have been about the weaknesses and deficiencies here and how they would do things to change them rather than patting everybody on the back saying ohmouth acting is a great place you want to take care of the problems the district is experiencing now and see what their solutions would be like the ranking going from 11 to 62. like 30 percent drop in test scores because of covet so those are my suggestions as to you know what your question should have been thanks thank you are there any other comment is there any other public comment on board action items this evening good evening Brian Earnshaw Lower Providence um I've not seen the resumes of

052the candidates they were not available to the public but I hope you give some consideration tonight to potentially a county that has experience in either preparing a budget reviewing a budget managing a budget or having um quality impact into the preparation of a budget um there's really only one candidate Ms clearight really felt spoke to anything with regard to fiscal matters so I think that's important to be considered and I think you should try to pick the candidate that's going to actually really consider input from the public um as you know and as I've stated many times before the budgeting process at the fact it needs help so hopefully one of these candidates can bring that help over the past six years I've communicated before 17 and a half million of budget surpluses none returned

053to taxpayers and based on Mr bricker's most recent forecast for March we're going to end up at the same place for this fiscal year at about 1.1 million of a surplus 2.2 million if you add back the unbudgeted salary changes and last year I provided the board with kind of a roadmap to get to a zero percent tax increase and then actually to get to a tax decrease I thought all these items that I suggested were reasonable conservative and provided little to no budget risk none of those chains were implemented now I know hindsight's 2020 but let's take a look at some of my recommendations and what you're forecasting for the current fiscal year I suggested removing two hundred thousand dollars of incremental legal fees that didn't happen the district's projecting a half million dollar

054savings on legal fees this is why you need budget help and why you need to pick a candidate has budget experience I saw your question where I was heading I recommended removing 300 increasing the budget for interest income by three hundred thousand dollars the gestures projecting a budget surplus and interest income of a million dollars three times what I recommended I suggested increasing the budget for interim real estate taxes by a hundred thousand the district's forecasting a budget surplus of over six hundred and fifty thousand six and a half times what I recommended all these changes that I recommended could have led to a tax decrease of one percent very easily achievable you're now projecting more of a surplus than I recommend that you cut the budget so in conclusion pick a candidate and get

055somebody on this board that can help address Budget matters thank you thank you is there any other public comment on this board action item okay seeing them we will proceed what we'll do is so the motion reads to a point and insert the candidate name here to the unexpired methactone school district board director term ending first Monday of December 2023. with that Madam president I recommend that you take nominations from among the three candidates from members of the board to be considered uh in a roll call vote that will occur after you close the nominations so you would open open the nominations and then after the nominations are finished you could close the nominations and then uh take the Roll Call okay may I have nominations for a candidate to the unexpired methactan school board

056director term ending the first Monday in December 2023 Miss Perdue I nominate Esther Smith I will are there any other nominations Mr McGinnis I nominate Miss Kathy Cleary any further nominations Miss Graf I nominate Katie a tour okay so I guess I can safely close those nominations thank you um so now we'll take a roll call vote and we will um and each member of the board will uh State the name of the nomination how we're going to discuss first we're going to discuss it yeah but um is there any discussion on these nominees to the board Mr McGinnis um this is now what the third time we've had to do this um so I'll give the same speech primarily to the three that are here I want you to know you are at top

057of a very very deep applicant pool uh and I was incredibly impressed with some of the backgrounds as I am incredibly impressed with all of your backgrounds um Miss Graff and Mr rookstahl have gone through what you're going through and have stepped on abnormally to this position um it's not a fun job uh it's the worst paying part-time job you'll ever have and here you are tonight you know dedicating your time to your um your school district your your your kids in the district and everybody there so I just want to make sure that you know whatever the outcome there's only one that's the way it works right but I'm deeply indebted for everything that you've done and your willingness to raise your hand to help um for the two that don't make it please

058don't stop this District needs as much help as it can get from people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and jump in so I just want to say thank you very very much well said Mr McGinnis and I Echo that this is um this is a lot to volunteer for and to put your name in for um it's a lot of work and so we we thank you all for being here tonight no matter what happens this evening so thank you um more discussion MS cancro I also Echo that as well I want to just talk a little bit about um the candidates and understand like where everybody is as far as their background and seeing where they are you know I I think one of the things I like about um Kathy

059Cleary is I definitely like the attorney the environmental attorney background that we don't actually have on our board currently um and I think that is that would be definitely a key piece for me um I think it really allows that negotiation the research and the Kepler you know the collaboration has really stuck out to me I think that is something that we need so um to me I think that is a you know a big factor for me to think of uh Kathy Clary but I will say the other one that I am thinking about also is um sorry Katie a tour I apologize for the pronunciation I think your background is really has a lot of the needs of special education the benefits the reaching out to all the students that we're working with

060all students involved um so as an advocate uh I think that really struck out also so um for me I do think though I having that attorney background for me is something that we really really need on this board so with that I I would consider uh Kathy Clary okay more discussions Miss Purdue I do want to say thank you to um all the candidates as usual um even the applicants but I do want to commend the um those that were interviewed today I think they all showed and clearly um showed that they've invested into meth acting and serving methactin even in reference to some of the work that they've done recently after being notified um that they've made it this far in the progress to this I like the information shared in their willingness

061to serve the district I think is very important and they all highlighted that they're willing right they've started to do some of the work they're willing to serve the district and I I do feel like we are in a good place with all three candidates I um and when we're going back to the background because that that's that's where our decision is um leading to today I think we are looking for someone that when we think about will will represent this board knowing that they're looking at um decisions based on that's driven on data and and it was my wish or when I recommended assessment Howell just because I feel like she will provide some of that and just because I come not come from but I've worked with those in that field and I

062know that their daily work is really based on using data and science to make decision right and I feel like a lot of that is what um we need we do here research and when you think about the question as was asking a question how do you when you're faced with having to make a decision when you have to think about raising taxes or cutting programs and you need to look at the data entirely as a but also involves feedback from stakeholders whether that's the teachers the administration but also looking greatly at the impact that those decisions will have on you I feel like she shared that she had the experience with serving another board and I think that will come into um handy with her going forward so that was my um one of

063my factors from wanting to move her forward for the board's consideration thank you more Mr Winters yeah you guys don't make this easy do you um again thank you all I think you all have proven that you're interested for the right reasons of public education you're data driven uh I think you all have shown you know different strengths and weaknesses I just want to highlight the strengths of all of you um Mrs Smith Howe uh you've truly show that you're an Innovative thinker and your education and interest to serve is is clearly seen uh misatory um I think your strengths of giving an alter a view related to students at risk um and also you mentioned something that you know I had I believe that we get questioned about is our sort of understanding of

064alternative schools and why students are going to alternative schools so I think that uh and you mentioned you know sort of your closing argument about being well educated and well-rounded and certainly something that uh I believe the current board supports all of that and Miss Clary uh you also you you dropped the uh Mr Allison Moore's name and I mean what a what a what a perfect thing to do everybody loves Mr alzamora but I agree that the attorney uh history is very appealing um you're you're short uh cramming of homework over the last week was really impressive but honestly the word that caught my interest early on was the word investment and I I feel like that's how I serve on the board as looking at the my role as an investment and understanding

065there's taxpayers and every but he doesn't want to pay more taxes but you have to balance that so I could completely um relate to that comment as well [Music] is there more input Miss Reese um I just um we don't have the background of any of the people here Dr Smith Howe uh Miss Cleary or Miss uh Tori we don't have anybody on here that has your background so all of you would be so beneficial on a personal note um I can't thank you enough because I it's been a little difficult one of you mentioned the viteral and to know that the three of you exist in our community who I never knew existed before thank you please no matter what happens I hope you um you continue to be invested um I have sat

066through four I actually this is the fourth time because I was around when we appointed Mr Earnshaw um plus Mr bookstool and Miss Graff um so I've done this a lot and this time I made sure I did all my numbers and my numbers literally come up as 32 33 34. um and probably I think there's a half point in there but uh you know to Mr earnshaw's point I'm a reading teacher um but uh I I don't I'm a lame duck as Mr McGinnis calls him I'm calls himself I'm almost finished my eight years and I have no regrets but um I did appreciate Miss clary's watching the last year or how many many meetings you sat through so you know what you're in for and I am a mother of three children here

067so I appreciate that you're all mothers um I will be honest um sorry they make fun of me for tearing up so miss Cleary you had me at that it has taken a huge toll on my family huge and so my decision might be based on on that so no matter what any of what you would be a pleasure it's graph yeah I I just want to Echo um looking at the candidates I just want to say we had a lot of really great candidates and the three of you you know it's so much of a compliment for you to be here tonight because I do think that there were a number of qualified candidates that didn't quite make the cut to be here so I just want to congratulate the three of you all

068for your you know even being here tonight um for me this is a it's a tough decision I mean I agree with I agree with the previous comments that each of you brings something that we could really use on the board and I think could be really helpful to build um some additional um experience on the board um I really like the commitment to diversity and education I really like to hear um the comments about mental health and that those issues are so significant in our schools and what's going on with our kids today and having somebody who understands those issues firsthand and can help us to sort of find ways to support our students is really important to me um you know and then finally I think I'd also like to say I think

069the attorney background is really helpful I think the way you think is a little different than the average person I think you put together things in a different way and I think that perspective can be really helpful to us I also think you know it shows a big commitment for you to spend the time and go back through all of that history to understand how the board got here and the decisions that were made over the past 18 months so I really do commend you for taking that time because it really does make a difference when you get to the board and I understand it's a really short duration but to be able to sort of jump in and and contribute quickly is going to be really helpful for us so I really appreciate that

070this day and through their hat in the ring to show that passion and dedication for our district is uh and so inspiring and as somebody who had to do you know that a year and a half ago it's stressful it's challenging to stand up there and to answer those questions in front of the board and in front of the the community um so I just respect everyone for doing that and for taking that time and for sharing that passion with us um and to the people that applied that didn't get selected to come in front of us I was equally impressed with across the board everyone that applied and just showed that there's a lot of people in our community that are passionate about what we're doing here and want to use their specific skills

071and experiences to help us I looked at that you know those resumes instead of if these people had applied a year and a half ago I probably wouldn't been sitting here because they they would have took my spot um but all three of the candidates showed great Passion they showed you know that research-based and analytic approach that we need to decision making here they all mentioned great Partnerships and building Partnerships within the community and with in other members of the board and so all of those things are so important and any of the people that get selected would be a great representation um for the community will be a great representative for the community I uh agree with what people are saying about having that attorney background that Miss Cleary has I think that that

072is is valuable that negotiation skill that ability to think about things with uh from a policy standpoint but I also feel that Dr Smith Howe offers us something that that we don't have and what that previous board experience with the um the research research methodology uh and you know real analytic approach to everything um and with that Healthcare background I would be um excited to to see that on the board as well um so that's kind of what I'm thinking uh and so I'm kind of between those two um but I think if my decision right now would be to support uh Dr Smith Howe because of that research background and that Healthcare background thank you and I will just Echo everyone and say I mean this this application cycle was I mean it was

073an embarrassment of riches here um it was really an amazing pool of candidates I could feel your passion for Education your commitment to the community and everything you would bring to the table um I do I like Dr Smith Howell that you mentioned our program specifically and that you obviously did your research on that um miss etor you definitely showed your passion for education and um I could feel that with you and and the experience that you have had in myth actin um and Miss Cleary uh I you did a lot of homework which was really impressive and that you went and watched meetings and that you've looked at our presentations and you have that unique um analytical perspective as an attorney um I think I would be in this round supporting this Cleary um

074so but with that we do have some differences um is there any further discussion we would like to have before we do the roll call Vote or are we prepared for a roll call vote Mr Winters so just just for clarity there's eight of us do we need to get the five or yeah okay so what will be the process if we go through this and it is two three three uh there would be no successful candidate appointed and the uh floor could be reopened for nominations again further discussion and then a subsequent roll call votes until someone receives um five votes or if there were a stalemate there is a process in the law of what occurs after that but immediately if there's no um candidate who receives five votes after the first round

075there would be um nominations reopened in further discussion so Kyle is it would there would there be I guess it just works out afterwards we don't know yet but is it is it possible before we vote to say if it was two three three that we would just take the two to highest candidates at this point in time or not that's not in the policy and certainly um there there could be different reasons why someone maybe who received the the lowest votes in the first round could still end up being the candidate after further discussion yeah I'm just trying to make sure I understand what the next step would be okay roll call vote um Mr McGinnis uh Dr Esther Smith Howell Mr Winters Kathy Clary Mr rickstall Dr Esther Smith Howe my vote is

076for Kathy Cleary Miss kankron Kathy Cleary Miss Graf Kathy Cleary Miss Perdue Dr esta Smith Howell Miss Reese uh uh Miss Cleary I see uh Miss Cleary with five votes and Miss Cleary congratulations you are our newest mid-atkins School Board member and again thank you all for coming to the process applying for the open seat it couldn't have been any more impressive than it was so we really appreciate you you stepping up and it was a pleasure to meet to meet you thank you [Music] thank you foreign this side of the microphone that way we can make sure we can hear the audio okay it's your right hand and you can stand on here and you're going to state your name uh Kathy Cleary um and then I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear

077that I will support that I will support obey and defend obey and defend the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of this Commonwealth and the constitution of this Commonwealth and then I will discharge the duties of my office and I would discharge the duties of my office with Fidelity with fidelity congratulations thank you oh sign this right yeah all right um they're getting settled in and I'm going to open the uh the floor now to Courtesy of the floor which is an opportunity to make comment on matters that are or maybe before the board um anyone here for the special meeting for Courtesy of the floor you know Brian Earnshaw Lower Providence um first a quick question from the March meeting uh the budget transfers there was

078about fifty thousand fifty seven thousand five hundred identified as security security address for Windows and Doors my question there is why were those expenditures not charged to the uh capital reserve instead of being charged to the general fund um some more input on the budgeting process um at the beginning of the budgeting process the administration always makes the claim that they follow zero-based budgeting techniques anybody know what that is I understand what that is all right I do I don't think the administration does zero-based budgeting is a method of budgeting in which all expenses must be justified for each new period the process of zero is based budgeting starts from a zero base and every function within organization analyzes needs and costs the budgets to build around was in need of the upcoming period regardless

079of whether budget is higher lower than a previous one why don't I think that principle is being followed I thought it writes no request asking for certain details of expenditures contained in the budget and the supporting documentation for those I selected five account codes three of which were tied to the superintendent's office two dues and fees one for supplies one for facilities and one for athletics originally my writing art request was denied I've I peeled before that appeal could be heard the administration agreed to provide the requested information what I received back for each of those five lineups of the budget which totaled about 250 a thousand dollars of expenses was a spreadsheet with each line supported by one line on a piece of paper zero-based budgeting techniques would call for those details to include

080what those budgeted funds are really spent on so in the superintendent's office reducing fees what fees are going to be paid in the budget what do what dues are going to be paid what supplies are going to be purchased and the details will be provided in that that's not the case in the fact of his budget so that might be leading to the cause of these budget surpluses every year the budget methodology being followed I think it really needs to be addressed and considered in the January budget presentation there was an indication that seven PCA positions were removed from the budget reducing costs by 450 000 when I inquired about this the response was that well we don't need those positions because we use outside services to fulfill that need well that makes sense but

081if you take out the unfilled staff positions you should put back in professional fees for outside services this adjustment was one-sided which leads me to believe that not only were the budget positions in there but the outside Services costs were in there as well so an indication of double Counting the most recent budget adjustments really need to be examined and supported interest income seems that was our trailer reduced and substitute costs were increased by I think about a half a million dollars without much detail behind it you should challenge all these adjustments any adjustments going forward thank you check um we'll hand those items out to the members of the board at the conclusion of the meeting you're not going to give it to them you don't want them to have it that's fine um

082what I gave him to give to miss Drummond and Miss Campground is a copy of a board policy 903 the reason I gave it mention your name Jim worcestor anything else I can do for you before I start we good thank you um the reason I bring it up is a month ago I sat through probably one of the best meetings I've ever sat through in either War sister or mefactin and that was this grass meeting at the property committee no time limit questions answered dialogue back and forth the meeting was an hour and a half there were two or three of us in the audience I made the mistake of telling everybody about it and I knew what was going to happen I knew she was going to be told don't do it anymore

083and that's exactly what happened go to the last meeting I'm on the clock and I ask you know Miss Miss Graf hey what's the story I'm on a clock Miss cancro seemed to be taking an interest in it saying well we want everybody to be consistent we want the Committees to be consistent so I made my comment at the end of the comment I was trying to engage Miss Grafton a little dialogue I miss can't Grow Again he's saying to miss Graf no dialogue no dialogue so I'm gonna help you out for a little transparency and consideration to the public I'm sure our new board member is a lawyer is going to understand what I'm going to explain to you for policy 903 if you look at it says the presiding officer May doesn't say

084shall it says May interrupt or terminate the statement if it's obscene exceeds the established time limit or is unrelated so it means main means you have the discretion to do it or not do it shall means you have to do it and I think your attorney can tell you I'm sure Kyle can tell you as well but in addition to that option you also have the option to waive these rules by approval of the board even here it can be done by two methods one by discretion and two by approval of the board some I ask you when two people in the audience why would you want to enforce a three-minute rule and not have a discussion with members of the public that is your problem that is this board's problem me if I'm in

085charge I'm sitting there having a conversation with somebody all day long because doing it Miss Graf's way you would have been rid of Jim Malik in probably three months if that's the way things went there'd be no need for me to come and do all the right to know requests everything else I'd have nowhere else to go so you know transparency is something you guys need to work on thank you is there anyone else for Courtesy of the floor this evening for this special meeting good evening John Andrews Lower Providence using a word directors used a few minutes ago I would like to Echo Dr Malik's comments and I wonder about the three-minute time limit uh I don't think there's anything backing up its application to committees it's specific to board meetings and members of

086the public in my opinion uniformly try hard to bring good suggestions to the board and what is so unique about your public in this District that we should be ignored also at the the regular biannual uh director reinstallations or installations uh the Black Road person namely a local judge comes to do the squaring-in this evening a black sweater lady did the squaring in and I have no idea who it is I it could be a judge but I think uh just as each of you directors has a name tag in front of you whether or not they're visible on on the TV I don't know but uh I think that person should be identified to the public thank you thank you anybody else for Courtesy of the floor for this meeting hi good evening Kathleen

087Thiel Lower Providence I just wanted to take a minute because I came from the arrowhead uh and Woodland orchestra concert I orchestra concert tonight and I think it was what in Woodland I was there for Arrowhead and I wanted to just take a minute to thank the board for first of all the support of our music program because the students were fabulous and the music teachers the five that I saw there tonight were absolutely amazing and seeing it was a third grade orchestra concert with fourth grade Chimes and they were absolutely amazing and there is lots and lots of research as I'm sure you all know about what music can do for education and for knowledge and for a growing of the brain and how good it is for our students but it was also

088just really refreshing it was also in the arrowhead gym and I want to continue as an arrowhead parent who has been an arrowhead parent for a while now the gym was comfortable to sit in there was enough room for both schools and I want to thank you so much for investing in that space because it was a really enjoyable experience thank you so much for that support for our school district and I hope you have a good night thank you anybody else for Courtesy of the floor all right seeing none may I have a motion to adjourn this special meeting Mr McGinnis a second to adjourn this meeting Miss Perdue this special meeting is adjourned is adjourned we're going to take a brief Break um it is 8 33 we are going to recombine at

0898 40 for the work session thank you foreign [Music] no she's gonna give me a heart attack I need to be out of here she actually makes me so mad and anxious and I know she's watching anyways she's just gonna sit there and pretend like she's not there I know she's here okay wait that's actually so good you're talking first I'm talking first okay and then I'm taking second and middle and then you like the last one then I got the last one she couldn't believe it all right but this is exactly a little bit okay so like you'll just come right up here hi thank you um you guys gotta get the bed thank you thank you for bumping them up I appreciate it all right I would like to now convene um the

090work session April 18th of the methactin board of school directors uh please rise for the pledge and justice for all foreign all right the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting by way of attendance all board members including our new board member Ms Kathy Cleary are in attendance and now it's time for recognition of guests and scheduled speakers Dr Zerby thank you madam president this evening we have four presentations if it pleases the board I'd like to change the order of that listed and I'd like to start with the last one food service recommendations because we do have two our high school students with us here this evening who were involved in the process that will outline and share with you in just a

091few minutes so with that said if there's no uh argument uh we'll begin the Food Service presentation Mr Brooker and I will also be joining the students at the podium so give us one minute please thank you good evening and thank you this evening we have before the board as you're aware uh there's been several Communications in the in the public as well as uh meetings not only of our our committees but of the school board with updates on the process for the methactone school district a food service recommendations tonight uh are the recommendations that will be listed on the agenda for your approval at next Tuesday's meeting those recommendations include approve the Food Service management company contract with Aramark Education Services LLC for a period from July 1 2023 through June 30th 2024 with

092up to four one-year renewals the second approval is to approve the administration to move methactin High School off the national school lunch program beginning July 1 2023 and to take appropriate measures to operate the program off nslp and the third approval is to approve the administration to prepare plans for the construction of a beverage a grab-and-go cafe to be located in the facton high school for the start of the 2023-24 school year at a cost not to exceed forty thousand dollars the current uh food service status all seven schools currently are operated operate under the national school lunch program Arrow Mark provides the management over oversight and have been doing that since 2011 2012 school year in the 2022 Niche ranking Food Services for methactin even though methactin was an a district with a plus

093academic uh notations we are recognized as a c ranking Food Service School the district require was required every five years to issue an RFP to the marketplace for a competitive process to provide this food service operation and management and I will let you know that Staffing challenges in Food Services similar to that in in the uh private sector has been has limited our availability Choice quality of foods we're currently seven staffs short in the district with that said we we decided as as the requirement uh to create an RFP we wanted to move forward with a process with our strategic goals being to improve access to better quality variety dietary options for all students and to increase our ranking in food services from a c ranking to an A plus that process would include a

094pde requirement every five years as mentioned earlier and then the review of rankings of the top 100 a plus districts in the Commonwealth that also had a plus rankings in food services and to decide uh from that information what methodologies and and programs did they actually operate and as a result of that information we created an Arcola and high school Food Service review team tonight I have two of the members of the high school review team with me and they're going to tell you a little bit about not only who they are but the process that they were involved in uh for this review good evening everyone my name is Angela Wang I'm a junior at mathacton high school and I'm also the class of 2024's Vice President I was one of the students involved

095in this process so first we met as a group and it was a mix of students faculty and administrators and we discussed the current climate of our cafeteria and food we determined that Improvement on where needed to be made and we'd also determined the priorities the general consensus was that we wanted to try to improve things in general especially the quality of our food we went for a site visit to see firsthand what these improvements would look like for us and how it would impact the student body it also impacted their school morale very positively a few days ago we came back for one final meeting to discuss what was best hello everybody um my name is Alexandra Dubai I'm the president of class of 2025 and just to kind of continue off of what

096Angela was saying um the rest of this process kind of I think was a very eye-opening situation for a lot of the students that were selected to help kind of improve our food services situation and basically adapt to a lot of the needs of the students not only from a morale standpoint but from a logistical standpoint um I would like to kind of just uh go on my personal experience at the beginning of this year I had to go gluten-free for medical reasons and that not only changed my perspective when going to restaurants having to get pizza with my friends now I was kind of in the situation where I had to go to lunch and I didn't really have as many options as I had before I couldn't go grab pizza or like casually

097get a cookie I had to either bring things from home or get Cheetos which was was basically like the only gluten-free like chip that I could eat and although it may seem like a minor inconvenience for a lot of students getting a cookie with their friends during lunch like just that little walk up to the lunchroom is kind of like the highlight of their day kind of just being able to talk about their day with their friends I know that was one of my favorite parts of my day is going and grabbing a hookie so um I would just basically like to explain how um important I think that it would be for our students to have the option to go and grab these things and have these things on deck if that makes any

098sense have these students have the opportunity to be able to um have access to things that meet their restrictions when it comes to food not only from a gluten-free standpoint but vegan vegetarian whether that's for religious reasons or health reasons I think that our process of going off of this national school lunch program not only gives us more variety just for like Flavor wise we were able to taste a bunch of different things things when our Chef came in our district Chef gave us different sorts of like lunch meat and things that we could try a lot of the students I know had a lot of comments to make about the fact that just like the chicken was more seasoned a lot of the bread was softer it's just these things that you look around

099the room and see a lot of students smiling and it makes them happy that they have something to look forward to to eat um and I think that that would increase morale make students a little more happy or give them something to look forward to I know a lot of students I heard made comments that they would be more likely to purchase lunch from school if it were to comply with what we were given and what we were able to try not only at our school but at the other schools that we went to especially us implementing this coffee bar or little cafe situation a lot of students I know we went and we got lattes from Central Bucks South and that made my day I thought it was the coolest thing a lot of

100students just the smiles are on their faces I think that is worth it more than anything just to see the positive and impact and connotation that students have with going to school and being able to consume things that make them happy so thank you very good comments I think the one comment uh that that was mentioned it was an eye-opening experience for all of us and I think it was a good experience I want to thank Mr Bricker who will have some comments earlier later in this presentation and I certainly want to thank Dr gravanese for organizing uh such a wonderful group of students and uh staff to help us in this whole process so with the feedback that we got from students and staff uh we then uh you know took that and we

101issued the RFP in terms of the RFP Mr Bricker thank you so part of the ones we want to take care of them we're working on an RFP was there's a section where we can put in our own needs we included this student feedback staff feedback updated product specifications as their doctors Irby stated the district Chef we notice is a very key important position at the schools that were rated with an A plus so we made sure we put that in we also had the rfps being developed where we would be on the national school lunch program or we could also have the national school lunch program K to eight with the high school going off the national school lunch program and adding in a beverage Cafe we also created a matrix to score this

102with the focus on Food Services uh salaries as the salaries of our staff being key to what we're doing because we need to stay off the seven positions that are empty so that created the scoring Matrix that we created the first one being the cost which is established by pde we cannot go less than 51 points obviously we said the next piece of information was to have the starting hourly rates addressed service capabilities experience reference Financial conditions how they can involve the students staff and patrons technology use accounting and Reporting systems on-site management experience and the promotion of the food servers program overall if we stayed on the national school lunch program our Mark scored in 85 where Chartwell scored a 76 if we went off the national school lunch program for the high school

103our Mark still scored in 85 but Chartwells increased to an 81. with that being said according to the RFP that was established in 85 was necessary to move on as such our Mark was our choice to move on in terms of the impact of the recommendations we have all schools will be will provide whether on or off the national school lunch program will provide free and reduced meals as we commonly uh and as our our parents and students commonly expect and all schools will benefit from the chef students if you want to talk about that a little bit um as I'd stated before uh increase of quality and Variety in our food products I think is very important not only for a morale standpoint but again logistical so the district Chef basically provides us with

104the ability of having that greater quality and Variety in our food because the district Chef is able to cater to our certain demographic of students and give us different options um based on what our students need and I think it's like more of a zeroed in process rather than having a wide I guess like more broad situation going on so I think our district Chef provides us with more of a like focused basically process on um selecting our food and giving us that greater quality and Variety in our options thank you in addition to that um all the school meal prices will comply with the national school lunch Pro program pricing tool we've talked about in a number of occasions uh over the years actually every year we talk about that tool because every year

105we come to the board about raising uh the or modifying the the prices for the meals and typically The Tool uh has a limit to that we can't increase the prices more than 10 cents so we just want you to be aware of that uh we have the vendor has committed to uh adding thirty four thousand dollars towards the marketing enhancements uh across all of our schools also we want to make sure as as was mentioned earlier about having clear notation and access to vegan vegetarian gluten and other alternative food options we want to make sure that our students are giving continual input so there will be quarterly student focus groups in grades 6 through 12. and then the implementation of a new future slice app we are we are not 100 familiar with with

106the app so I don't have a lot to share with you but we understand that the app was not only uh promoted uh by Aramark but also promoted by uh Chartwells as part of both of their applications and what this application does it allows for students to to use or any or teachers as well and parents to utilize that to filter out menu items to look for nutrition and greeting information and basically help with promotions and events and and Chef specials so we believe this is a great opportunity to help increase the knowledge and understanding of the food not only at the high school where you would you would assume that the app would be uh largely used but certainly at other levels and as and for parents as well in terms of uh continuous

107uh with regards to impact we have all schools will increase in the product quality based on the specifications we are recommending that we combine the sky view and Arcola cafeterias as I mentioned uh I believe last month when I was presenting uh an update on this particular process uh moving the two cafeterias uh which is basically it's a couple it's like a door down from from the sky view cafeteria itself allows the uh consolidation of uh staff to operate the food service provides access for Skyview and Arcola students to other premium option meals and allows the district to better consolidate the supervision of students during that process and maybe the the greatest Advantage is because of the tight quarters in the Skyview cafeteria the utilization of both the commons and the and the cafeteria at

108the at Arcola allows for more room for the students and it also is a better acoustic environment uh the volume and there's no there's no this isn't a secret the volume in the Skyview cafeteria is significant and this change not only provides better service more options for more students but creates a better environment so we we are recommending that those things are not part of the RFP as a requirement those are things that we are suggesting we move forward with we will also gain access to the beverage and grab and go Cafe and there's a slide where I'll let the students talk a little bit more about that in a minute I wonder do we do anyone want to talk about food waste you okay so I buy food every single day um since I

109was in elementary school and they've always asked us to get vegetables and a fruit but sometimes you know we we don't want to like eat our vegetables or fruit so we end up the amount of food waste like perfectly good apples perfectly good carrots perfectly good like food in general it's just thrown away like cartons of like fruit juice they're just all thrown away like I see like the faces of like when people we just like throw out all of them all these like perfectly good food because being on the national school lunch plan we have to have balanced meals but like to like the preferences of like our individual like people it just ends up getting thrown away and like it could have been like used for someone else it could have been like

110used for some like something like useful but it's just like wasted in the food and adds to the landfills it's you know it's just not that good well well said and I think it's important to know that um while while we as a as a district under our uh wellness policy you know have an obligation to make sure that all of our students understand uh the the value of a Healthy Lifestyles healthy diets Etc we also and and this is a conversation we had with with this with the students in the high school you know giving them a little bit more uh Freedom as part of making you know uh choices as as young adults we think it's really important that um that is the opportunity that this affords and by doing so as as

111explained uh students can choose not to take certain things that are commonly required by students at all the lower levels uh as part of the national school lunch program requirements so this is a way to help support an effort in our sustainability as well as allow us to start the conversation with Aramark uh in in other sustainability efforts in the cafeteria operation so we look forward to that uh in in the coming years uh we also want you to be aware that no federal Commodities or subsidies will be provided uh to the high school program the startup costs are funded by the by the district for the high school approximately ten thousand dollars will be needed by the district to construct the cafe with 25 000 coming from uh the vendor the uh the financial

112guarantee as listed there for year one is 117 953 that means that regardless of what transpires uh the the program as a whole both the schools on the nslp and the high school off the nslp will be in the Black by 117 uh thousand dollars so um with Aramark moving forward and per pde's rules we had the ability to do some negotiation from the RFP uh the original uh guarantee was 150 000 but part of what we wanted to do is address the staffing issues I conserve the best vegetables in the world but unfortunately without someone to serve it and to put it out there for the students it doesn't mean anything so with our with working with our Mark we have the Food Service workers which are line workers their salary is going to

113be going from 14.75 up to 18 an hour the assistant Cooks will be at 2041 and the cooks moved up to 2136. this is critical in our ability to staff and be able to be competitive in the marketplace with regards to the uh the ability to compete with the Wawas of the world let's just say um and this is obviously you have an impact on the guarantee but this we felt was an important move on our part to help staff the site appropriately the meal prices right now that we have the high school 325 Skyview Arcola is 305 which would also help with the combining of the cafeteria since they have the same prices Elementary is 275 breakfast at the high school is 275 Skyview Oracle again breakfast is two dollars and Elementary is 1.35

114and of course yes we do have the free breakfast program this year and not knowing where that will go next year we'll see whether or not that's included in the governor's budget or not the national school lunch programs pricing tool will only allow an increase of no more than 10 cents annually some some years we've had no increases some we've had five cents so these are the current prices that we have please understand that while those prices are listed there the the variability be with the other pricing options from an additional dollar to additional two dollar based on some of the uh uh premium meals that will be available to Skyview Arcola and high school students so now let's talk about the high school Cafe um pertaining to the benefits of the cafe of course

115a lot of people could probably name a couple benefits but also a couple of drawbacks I know um just talking to a bunch of adults I know you guys are probably like why would children need a bunch of caffeine throughout the day um the reality of it is kids are going to consume coffee whether or not a parents or adults like it um a lot of students decide to go get Dunkin or Starbucks and different things throughout the morning um the implementation of this Cafe would not only decrease lateness due to students waiting in intense Starbucks lines in the morning um but it would also increase morale I think I know personally I've been to Sports Camps in different areas we went to Central Bucks South I have friends that go to different schools that

116have cafes like this or coffee shops and situations like this where they're all just the way that they speak about it just completely radiates pride in their school um it radiates a sense of proudness this is what we have this is something really cool that we can experience it's something that they look forward to and I think that morale can always be improved upon students can always have something to be happier about and of course it is a privilege and it will be a privilege if we can work to implement this I think a lot of students would really really appreciate it I think it would make a lot of people happy I know um the decrease in food waste would definitely also be implicated because of the fact that students would not only have

117more variety in the things that they're allowed to choose they would have access to this throughout the day students that prefer not to eat breakfast because I don't know nausea in the morning if you have swim class you don't want to eat before swim class different um choices that students decide to make now that we're all young adults we have the ability to go and grab something if we want it something that will make us more comfortable throughout the day something that will put students at ease maybe make them happier if they have a test they want to go grab a snack grab a coffee if they're tired just that allowance that gives students this sense of Freedom or prepares us kind of to have the ability to make these choices um and kind of

118make us happier to show up to school give us something to be proud of something to brag to our friends about maybe I think it's very important and very beneficial and I'd like to thank Dr gavinis and Dr Zerby and all of the teachers that helped us work on this and selected us for this process because I think that it's it's very important that they're putting in all this effort to help us improve our school in any way that we possibly can so I think that it's very beneficial and the consideration is much appreciated thank you and also we were talking about how we were going to Brand the cafe we were gonna um call it the methactin cafe but it would include like handcrafted um products from Wawa and grab-and-go's from Starbucks and Duncan

119so this would provide a variety and all students would get like something what they like a little something of what they would want um like Alex said it would impact a lateness positively because instead of like students going to Dunkin or Starbucks in the morning you wouldn't see that power school notification that says unexcused Hardy they'd be in school they'd just be buying like a coffee in school and statistically speaking students um are going to be more academically successful if they eat something in the morning to like fuel them and sometimes students will come in late so they won't have the opportunity to get breakfast from the cafeteria and once the Bell Rings the cafeteria will close so um as breakfast like fuels your day and I know a lot of kids don't like eating

120breakfast in the morning but like if they could grab something throughout the day and it's not lunch yet because some people do have sea lunch and see lunches at like 12 or 1 so that's pretty late to like go throughout your day without eating anything so it would impact like students positively for their like minds and being more at ease with like a like a full stomach and also increase oh the location will also be in the Commons so the commons it's right next to the cafeteria and it's like um there's like a rectangle so the hallways like it has really good like um flow like people float like yeah space good space it wouldn't impact like the traffic wouldn't really impact anywhere else in the school because there's so many different ways to get

121around it that it would be beneficial and it's also so I on the slide you can see how it's like kind of in the corner so that's where the vending machine is and then right um down that Hall it's a wing it's also like not too far it's like near the center of the building so it's not too far away from a wing or c-wing um and the locations right near um like car lines so if you get dropped off in the morning or when you come off of a bus um you would like go near the cafeteria so that the location would be is a really good spot foreign so the cost summary the six schools will remain on the national school lunch program there's no additional cost to administrate the potential cost uh

122to the parents of the sky view and Arcola students choosing premium meals would be at their discretion the high school off the national school lunch program requires separate financials so my group will be separating out the financials because we cannot commingle the funds that would be using federal funds uh free and reduced price meals will be covered and paid through the district sales they'll be the one-time food startup costs and operational cost of roughly of a hundred thousand dollars the cost to established a grab-and-go cafe at the high school's estimated student somewhere between Thirty to forty thousand dollars we're estimating ten thousand of that with the vendor being responsible for twenty five thousand dollars in the grab and go Cafe cost and then this this kind of gives you the breakdown a hundred thousand dollars

123to one time ten thousand dollars for the coffee station and a hundred and ten thousand dollars overall for the one time I just want to say that the students the board members and the administration did a great job I kind of walked through all this stuff trying to guide people through the different things that we've seen I think the student input was incredible their passion in this was great it's just nice to see so I just want to pass that along good evening everyone I just wanted to say thank you very much for consideration for how we can always look to improve and I think that we are all on the same page food service is certainly something that impacts all of the students every single day and it is an area in which we

124really want to hit a home run so that they're comfortable at school you ever want to hear the truth go talk to a teenager so they will tell you every single day when they're walking out of the cafeteria they want better so I really want to thank the students that were involved in this process they were thoughtful they were conscientious they were the voice for their peers and in my eyes they did a really phenomenal job on giving us a comprehensive look at where we can improve so thank you to them thank you to Mr Bricker and Dr Zerby for all their assistance [Music] so when we talk about approving these recommendations we want to talk about the measures of success obviously we we're starting out trying to improve our rankings in Food Services but

125we also are going to be getting feedback from our students on a quarterly basis we know that once we are up and running our goal is to be cost neutral at the high school and of course in order to be able to provide all of these services with everything that we're trying to do it really doesn't get done without people and being fully staffed across the district allows us to accomplish a great deal more than we can today you want to do these okay um so essentially uh throughout this entire process I've recognized the happiness that it has been brought to the students I know I've already mentioned it but it really did make a big impact on me especially um being in attendance to these meetings and just witnessing our small group and uh

126the way that students talked about this program um I remember we would walk outside of these meetings and continue to talk about it which is something that you don't really see a lot I know a lot of people make motions for things to happen and suggest things but then they never really go further than just a suggestion or something that somebody would like to potentially happen so the fact that we are really working to improve um our food services is immensely important I think um venturing off of the national school lunch program will give us variety it will give students options for dietary needs it will give students options to be able to fuel their day and maybe increase some of their learning ability throughout the day maybe increase some of their morale which will

127also contribute to their learning ability so I think that the approval for us venturing off of the national school lunch program in correlation to our implementation of the beverage Cafe is very important and your consideration is much appreciated um I think I know all of us are very passionate about it so a lot of the students if you ever need any sort of input from students we will be more than likely to be very happy to provide it for you but the national school lunch program and the ability to venture off of it I think will provide us with a very wide array of improvements not only in food food services but in other avenues I'd also like to thank the board and our administrators for giving us this opportunity this made us feel really

128heard and very like our experiences feel felt validated um and venturing off the school lunch program with food that students like enjoy many like it will increase the sales it'll increase the profits and have a generally happier like happier population of the student body so I'd like to thank the board for listening and have taking this into consideration and I'd like to thank Dr gravities Dr Zerby and Mr brickert for this opportunity are there any questions from members of the board MS I'm sorry yeah go ahead Ms Graf I don't know who was calling on me so I just wanted to make sure I wasn't jumping ahead um so I do have a number of questions so I'm not sure who is going to take which question but I think this one is for Mr

129Bricker on the RFP scoring I just wanted to confirm that all of the categories got equal waiting so the scoring was done by three administrators and one board member I helped conduct that and go through each different one when the scoring was done each individual put in a score and that was the average across that came across to the final score so if I got two threes and two twos I'd have a two and a half or three up there because they were rounded the whole numbers I just I think what you're what you didn't mention I don't know in your initial presentation is about the weight of the um the the cost category and I think that would help clarify the scoring so the cost category is 51 points then the uh hourly rated

130Food Service workers was 15 service capability with seven uh and going off memory experience and reference was a seven Financial stability was a five involvement of students I believe was a three uh technology was a three accounting system was a three on-site manager was a three and promotion of the Food Services was a two and I'm gonna hope that that adds up to 100. close enough close enough that gives me that answers my question actually so and then my other combining Sky View and Arcola does that impact our lunch times today uh we are utilizing both of those but not exclusively so as an example Skyview uses one portion of the Arcola cafeteria uh to do their lunches so on that campus there are four lunch periods right now and Mr Burger correct me if

131I'm wrong I think Skyview goes period one and period two for lunch and then Arcola goes period three and period four what the two principals have discussed is that they would modify that and I believe Skyview will go period one or Colo go two and three and then Skyview would go period four so again that's up to the building principles to to work those particular schedules Out Mr Booker and I really don't have a lot to do with that um but they're currently already doing this but not exclusively so meaning that we have students on the Skyview side and we have students on the Arcola side we just think that it would be make more sense more efficient and not only from supervision but from from the Food Service a delivery perspective to be able

132to have and consolidate a staff onto one side and to be more effective and efficient with with the delivery of those four lunch periods I just had a couple of questions about the cafe um so first question is is the cafe going to be open all day so pre-school start time and then post end of day or we're still working on the start time I have a meeting with the Aramark next week to start with that as well as starting the design the plan is to open before the cafeteria obvious around 7 15 when the students come up and I believe it would stay open to 1 or 1 30 but it would be open all day so when the cafeteria is closed in between breakfast and lunch that would remain open okay and then

133um I saw in the presentation you had a like an example menu for the cafe the cafe it has a lot of coffee products and all kinds of interesting coffee drinks but I don't see a lot of food items like will it have the options for like fruit or fruit cup or yogurt or other things that students might want to keep them fueled throughout the day granola bars I'm just throwing a couple ideas I'm into coffee and I had to put that sample together for the RFP it can be whatever the students had some great ideas of iced coffees and some different fruits there can be sandwiches it'll be much more variety than my coffee selections okay I just wanted to make sure I mean I assumed that but I wanted to just make sure

134we were clear ask on the focus groups that you're going to use to get quarterly feedback from the students on the Food Services how is that food that feedback going to be like where is that feedback going to go and how is that going to cycle back yeah so Mr Bricker is going to be working with the building principals to help gather that so we're going to get advice from the building principles about which students should be involved based on their level and how it's best to organize that that data so for example it would always be best if if for example uh Dr gravanese would work with the committee or someone that the students are familiar with and then that information uh from all three levels will be fed up to Mr Bricker who

135will then provide that information to the Food Service vendor and we would then have them report back about what implementation of actions they're going to take to help address that and the more important well not more importantly but in addition to that um there's a Litany of other things that we plan on doing including uh having the manager for the Food Service meet with us on our administrative meetings on a monthly basis so principals can speak directly to the manager without having to just go through students and things of that nature so we're really trying to improve our Communications and the dialogue about how you know we're going to get to a better place on September one but how do we get to even better place after uh we're up and running right I think

136that's great um and I just had one other thought and we'll move on to somebody else um I just wonder if maybe there's an opportunity here to have a student-led contest to name the cafe instead of administration coming up with a name yeah so one of the things actually we failed to mention and I'm glad you brought this up um we have our graphic design class designing mock-ups for us of what the cafe could look like they actually just went on a field trip to some local businesses and they were looking specifically at seating the way um displays are so that they can use that in their mock-ups and then we had talked about having uh sharing the details if approved sharing the details with the school to be able to then have a general

137consensus and vote as to um the name so we can look for we needed to come up with a name for the presentation so that's where that came from but we want it to be a collaborative effort so while we might have had a smaller group of students that have been our loud voice we do want it to be a school-wide thing it's great thank you other questions Ms Reese um real quick just wanted to um say thank you to the students all the students involved but uh it's impressive to hear what you had to say from from actual students um my children may buy three children at the high school may actually forgive me for the last eight years in closing Audubon and everything else if we approve this so I'm all for it

138um uh my son literally wanted to come tonight to actually hear about this so um but I have one question um lines and that kind of thing how are we gonna how have we I'm sure we've thought about it and then also the username yeah yeah so I think previously we mentioned the app nutras slice or um we were gonna try to see how we could like you know how Wawa or like Starbucks they have like you order ahead and then you can like pick it up so we would have um the snack stand by the gym um we would use that as like a pickup like area so you wouldn't have to wait in a line you could instead just order a head walk over grab your drink and then go and um yeah

139so the concession stands so that's where we would pick up like your drinks and that would reduce the lines and um yeah so the location of where this is in the um in the Commons so typically when kids come in in the morning they congregate in the cafeteria um some of them will go to the boys or the girls gym we feel this will help us with this location we have space down the hallway for if there is a line we have the ability for the kids to line up we will need to work through the logistical details of you know the line if a kid is going to be late to class how we handle that but I think a lot of it comes with sharing expectations and rules so the kids know what

140to expect um you know a kid spills something what do you do again just sharing with them what the expectations are and we do think that if we can get this up and running we would like to then have the grab and ghost uh pick up at the concession stand we think having two different locations will help with our drivers who are coming In The West Wing doors and not necessarily coming in the East Wing we think it'll provide um space to spread out and the ability to get as many kids as that want to be part of this every day possible any other questions Ms Reese and and questions uh Mr brookstool yeah hi thank you um to the students and faculty and the administration for this presentation um I appreciate it especially as

141a vegetarian and someone with gluten-free members in my family I understand how challenging that can be for the students and I also appreciate the comments about food waste because I think that's something that we should definitely be more conscious of as a district you know moving forward I had two questions one uh Dr Zerby you mentioned that the vendor was committing uh 30 committed to thirty four thousand dollars toward marketing enhancements can you just comment on what those enhancements are is that signage around the building is that mailers like what what are those enhancements uh initially it'll be signage Improvement refreshing the high school cafeteria where the food serving lines are and then from that we can work with them but that's the initial process would be to increase the signage especially going off the

142national school lunch program we're gonna have to really get people educated on what is a free reduced and all that type of stuff as well as the different options that are out there okay great and thank you and the second question I had as far as the cafe goes which again I think is awesome and I think you could see the smiles on the students from from here and further away so uh I'm excited for that the the cafe would it be staffed by one worker two workers would that vary throughout the day during peak times using the Central Bucks model as an example uh they'd staff it with two people the entire day they do about 300 meal equivalents which is the same that the cap that the school cafeteria does itself and they

143pretty much go through the lines relatively quick I mean you're not going to have a made-to-order meal you're going to have pre-packaged stuff that you can buy go through I think some of the big learning curves we'll be getting the students to use their badges to go through to speed up the process but overall it should be okay with just two people great thank you and the last question just about the the cafe staff workers are they considered Food Service workers when it comes to the starting wages or would they have a different line item on they would be food service workers okay thank you very much any other questions Mr McGinnis I'm obsessed with this Cafe so I Blame You two so I have some questions for if you don't mind coming to the

144mic for me um when you did your travels and you saw other cool things was there any other any other cool things that you saw that we didn't Implement that might be a good idea down the road um definitely the school stores that a lot of schools have for me personally I happen to have merch from like other schools that I've just picked up from sports games or different like sports tournaments if I can grab merch from there just because it's easy and they have a designated area to get it from I know most of our access comes from the beginning of the school year when people man like the little stands that they have at football games I know sometimes they sell our merchandise at the concession stand outside in the stadium I know

145a lot of students that's the only time that they really buy School merchandise only because ordering it online is kind of hectic a lot of parents don't really feel like going through the whole process putting in the card number and everything so I think having a school store would be pretty pretty interesting for our students and it would definitely increase our myth act and pride anything else we also saw like um something called a lunch and learn so you're gonna you're gonna grow to hate lunch and learn so I don't know how to break the news it's a 16 minute um two three it's two thirty minute blocks and it's like uh so you can eat lunch like everyone eat in the building eats lunch at the same time but you can also reach out

146to your teachers and get help if you're like in extracurriculars and you can't stay after school to make up a test um they saw that their grades drastically increased because students were able to get help and they were also able to like um like talk socialize with their friends there was a trust built between like the faculty and the students too that the like they were trusted to like go around the building they were trusted not to like do certain things and general like when we visited them it was a very positive experience everyone was in their own little groups everyone was smiling um there were like different clubs going on at like different times there were also like speakers that also came into the school like um there was a sports journalist who came

147in and there was a classroom and he was like talking about his experiences and it was a like it was like a seminar and it was like a really encouraging experience for like to experience like to witness and also um Alex mentioned the school store I think it would also be a great fundraising opportunity for like um different like activities in our school to get um different like funds and then students could graphic like we could use the graphic design classes to design a uh design school spirit and then it would be something that people were would be like more like um more like yeah AB to where like they would want to wear it instead of something that like some pers like a graphic designer design but it's not really the trends so I

148think if students design certain things they would be more inclined to wear it and buy it and we could raise money that way too thank you okay bad news for you you just signed up to present that okay and I'm not being I'm being serious I I asked you what was cool and you just gave a four minute impromptu speech and you lit up and and it had it was impactful on you so present that to us Dr gravanice I'm sure would be more than willing to at least hear it out and see how we can implement it um along with this High School cafe and we said the hours I I contemplated a little bit more down what you're saying so I'd almost want this thing to be open until half an hour after

149school stops I'm thinking of an athlete running to a practice I'm thinking of a study group that's got to sit down so when your graphic designers Dr gravanese if you could contemplate you know six person table where they could sit and do a small group projects or just get aligned to what they're trying to do meet with a teacher with a cup of coffee I think that's a little bit more impactful talk you know socialize I think this could be a really an epicenter of of how of a lot of cool things we can do and and the fact that you mentioned a school store where you could you know sell Unified sports gear that everyone could buy that would that would heighten the awareness of that program a student and a graphic artist could

150put together 20 shirts and sell them I think it's just cool I love this idea I think there's some process flow my Six Sigma brain is going nuts here about the lines and the gaps in process I love the app the app idea I love the pre-ordering I think it should be a cashless kiosk base slash you know the people behind the counter are only fulfilling orders we can worry about that later uh Dr gravanice I don't know if you're earlier but I said this job is the worst paying part-time job you can have to miss Kearney when she was trying to get involved and there are very little perks but um every time I hear your kids speak it's it's awesome it's awesome and it's a reflection of you it's a reflection of your

151staff uh we ask our incoming people what are our strengths our strengths are standing right over there thank you um I just had two things I'd like to add um one of which providing I mean Pro um pertaining to the lunch and learn situation um I know a lot of students my friends and I talk about this all the time we all play sports and we have very very hard-working parents that we absolutely love and adore but we cannot drive yet um well so like most of us cannot drive yet so as a sophomore and as being a Freshman last year and having parents that are starting new jobs and doing all this it's very difficult to be able to stay after school to speak to a teacher um maybe the night before you were

152up really late studying you overslept you can't come in early in the morning the bus doesn't get there on time there's all these different Avenues I know for myself I don't have any study halls this marking period so um being able to make up tests if I was absent because I was sick or something is very very difficult um not being able to stay after school all the time is also very difficult when I am staying after school I have clubs it's all this very logistical stuff that I think would be very vastly improved with students being able to have the opportunity to go and see their teachers during this time also sometimes students just really like to talk to their teachers I know I'll go see my math teacher and I'll talk to him

153like when I'm bored because I just enjoy like his company or I enjoy my I still see my English teacher from last year because I like her company so I think a lot of students would just benefit from this and they would enjoy it a lot um and also pertaining to Mrs Graf's question about um the feedback groups and kids providing feedback I know even for SEL we had students of so many different backgrounds I don't think I've ever seen a more diverse group of students in one room in my life and it was so cool I think I've seen I've never seen so many people that are so different talk to each other and enjoy it it was it was ridiculous it was so many people laughing and smiling and I think with SEO

154how we did that or how we did it with this smaller lunch committee um their students have so many different backgrounds we're going to have the graphic design people contributing to this as well so um don't worry it won't just be vice president and president it'll be students from all over doing all these different things and it'll involve more of the student body it's not just a select group of honors kids and then we'll like post it on our private stories and then a bunch of people will like swipe up and like tell us all these ideas and then we're like these little minions like reporting back to them like try communicating like mess we're like the messenger pigeons between like the student body to like so yeah the private stories and then like just

155like mentioning like better food like seasoned food like salt on a burger like like so many people are excited like I think everyone's seasonal depression like just it was it was gone just hearing the fact that you could have a little extra like salt on your burger the sauce the sauces were really good too they like made sauces it was it was great so so so before I take any more questions I just I just want to I want to say a few things uh please know and and uh Mr McGinnis you were you were right on I mean I wish I could bring these other two items for you today but uh the the the the school spirit um that's that's on the street it's in this strategic plan we we we're coming we're

156bringing this this we're gonna lead the Stu students lead this process but that's coming but but when we started this process I was interested in improving on the Food Services when we got started and I knew my first visit to another school that did lunch and learn and not the lunch and learn we know from from the private sector the luncheon learned that actually occurs in in a school I had to take a step back and my first as soon as I got back I contacted Dr gravanice and I said we need to start looking at this seriously um so all the things that these students have said are are spot on but the opportunities uh for just socialization imagine being able to see all your friends in the school every day now it's not

157just about social socialization but that's a huge matter that allows for students to collaborate across grade levels that collaborate across the entire uh High School it gives them an opportunity to meet with their teachers it's almost like if you remember our call has an eighth period where they get you move eighth period to the middle of the day and you combine that with getting uh you know your lunch in there as well so there's a lot of opportunities there's structural things that we need to figure out so it's not something I told Dr gravity she looked at me with her eyes wide open and said like how am I going to do this for next year I said we can't do it for next year we're just not prepared but what we can do is

158give you uh some some vision for for the future foreign so I didn't think we're going to talk about this today but um just so you know um to do something well needs uh time to think through um you know the positives and negatives and what we can do we are so blessed that we have very vested teachers so each assistant principal at the high school has forged a team of teachers and I've been sending them on site visits to schools today Dr spewack took a team of he had a phys Ed math English counselor and he had a fifth and I'm sorry off the top I hadn't forgetting it um group of teachers and they went to Harrington high school and they visited to see with their own eyes what does this look like

159um they came back and they were glowing and like all right guys don't get excited we're researching we're looking to see is this something that could be a methactin thing is this something that we want but I want them to see it because I can't explain it because if you say to me an hour of unstructured time I start to shake a little bit because I like structure kids do well with structure but what I saw with my own eyes was an hour of unstructured time and kids were thriving and kids were happy and they were able to get extra help and they were able to see their teachers so they were able to see their friends and they were able to meet for their clubs and they were able to meet for their band

160practices and all these positives so we're researching so um Mr bontempo is taking a team to Upper Marion next week where he has a different group of teachers and then Dr kokenauer will hopefully be visiting Unionville each school that we visited had a way different bell schedule than we had so there were a lot of logistical issues we really need to consider and think about but um for the first time in a long time I have some really excited people about something new and they feel committed to it and they want to be a part of it so we're researching and so when we're finished with our research um I had each of them who who went under we also took the kids to CB South where they do this as well um where we

161asked her some feedback and so when we're done with our researching I'd be happy to share with you the feedback in a more organized and not off the cuff fashion so I can accurately represent everyone's views uh just my one quick question thank you very much I think that's all fantastic you guys did wonderful persuasive arguments definitely a plus on that one so I appreciate it the one thing I wanted to include is that I'm a big one about vocational skills especially we had this inclusive Cafe that was created at Worcester I really do believe and I've seen it work in many districts that you're talking about that have um the coffee cafes that our own students can work on yeah that's definitely part of uh we talked with Mrs brislin as our transition coordinator

162about how we can have our life skills and autistic support students do part of their vocational training in-house instead of sending kids out to be able to do this so uh once we were up and running that is part of our bigger plan so that we can have a more inclusive environment I love it because you get job coaches there when you have it also but then we also have the north monco group as well so I think it's an opportunity for other people that want to look at different opportunities to work with an Aramark closely even so I thank you for that next steps that would be wonderful Ms German so I have a lot of things on my list and um I I thank you and I thank you the students it was

163a pleasure to meet you last week and um for the board I was involved with the um scoring of the uh RFP as well um so I've been sort of involved with this process um so one of the things one of the actually quick question I have um Mr Brooker the 34 000 is that the correct number because I I don't know if I'm misremembering another presentation I thought it was 80. so there was 80 000 as part of the negotiations with getting the staff increased which cost well over seventy five thousand dollars there's a thirty four thousand dollars plus a twenty five thousand dollars for the cafe so that's fifty nine thousand so we did go up twenty one thousand dollars with that as well as some of the guarantee to help get the

164Staffing uh salaries up okay so that was so I am not misremembering the 80 okay um it landed at 34 because of these I'm 25 so 59 and the 25 okay thank you um okay that I did have that question um okay so uh just about the lunch and learn I I just want to say I love that idea um because I think that helps me to our strategic plan goal of increased participation in clubs and I think a lot of times you know parents needing to come who are working all day who need to come at 3 15 to pick up their child from a club that's a barrier to involvement for that child so I love that idea a lot um I guess um I was wondering what you mentioned the free breakfast

165program if that stands um and I was wondering kind of what breakfast looks like and I guess the reason I'm asking that is a lot of my questions are around the free reduced lunch program because as you know I also have a Nexus with my involvement High involvement with the backpack program over the years so I just want to make sure um with any of this that were if if the increased participation that we're you know anticipating to see with the lunch sales that that also goes to providing really good quality lunch for the the students on the free and reduced lunch program I don't I just want to make sure that it's a really and maybe it even feeds itself in an upper upward spiral that we can keep providing better and better food

166and nutrition to those students yeah I just want to comment on that so the the goal here is to provide better quality food for all students at all levels the the difference at the high school there'll be additional premium uh so I'll just give any example we may be able to strike up a partnership with Chick-fil-A and there may be a Chick-fil-A day well that's going to be a different cost structure it might be an extra dollar or two from from the normal uh I'll call it the standard meal but those standard meals in terms of quality at all levels will be improved and I want to make sure there's a variety offer that I don't want any student who is on the free reduced lunch to feel marginalized or identify because they only get

167this type of meal just want to make sure it's a really positive all along we we intend to operate the program under the the law and it doesn't allow us to do any of those types of things and we don't do those things the the goal is to make sure that we provide better quality food for for all students and the variety in in all fairness the variety is directly related to Staffing so when I I'm when I'm short well when we're short 10 staff people the types of variety and options are are the limiting factor because we need to be able to provide quantity to the the masses so the the the problem here is that um by increasing the rates and having that being our second top priority in the scoring and renegotiating

168that to get to from 1475 to 18 shows that we're committed to making the right decision or the best decisions possible uh and looking for the right outcome so I just want you to know that uh if I'm if I'm 10 or 15 people short I'm I'm not going to fool you by saying that we're going to have more variety so it's a combination of things but I want to be really clear the goal is to make sure that we're fully staffed so that we can provide the variety and we can provide the options and um along those lines I just um you know I I understand that we are at a c plus and that we're working towards an A plus rating or to C excuse me we're striving to an A plus rating

169of food service Aramark has been our vendor and is going to presumably be our vendor again um and I you know what stood out for me with the RFP scoring was that we because of the cost and that was the 51 percent aramark's had the had the better um give back so they got the 51 points um and the competitor did not so they got fewer points and so it was but I would like the board to notice that on other areas that the panel did not score the competitor as highly so I think that's just something to keep looking at I would like to see if we're talking about um getting quarterly feedback I would like to see that feedback from all of the schools K-8 as well and um I definitely want to

170see improved menus portion sizes quality of food because it hasn't been good K to eight that was also the feedback of the most of the administrators that were in the RFP scoring and I just want to make sure that we're not just focused on the high school for improved quality and and improved food experience um can I would you mind having a comment on that because I think it's important to the board to understand that the first recommendation is to approve Aramark for from July 1 2023 through June 30th 2024 with up to four year renewals so that's a key statement and I think that speaks to maybe your concerns with the fact that with the fact that you know year one we're going to be able to get the feedback and and if and

171if they're not cutting the mustard I mean there's there's there's options for us to go back out onto the marketplace now that doesn't that doesn't you know stop us from uh continuing to run the cafe and run the high school as as we are but but we you know we need to hold them accountable to the matters and the good news about this is by working with the students and the feedback and the the benchmarks that we're laying out here gives us an indication for us to report back to the board and not not only hold uh our vendor accountable but we'll hold me and my Administration accountable for making sure that we're moving this thing forward and we're not allowing hour mark uh to just get us from a c to a c plus

172and that was the following point I I had written down that I want a presentation to the board in time to possibly go back out to bid for the next years I just want to make I don't this is not to me a five-year or deal this is a one year this is five one-year deals that's exactly that's exactly correct but I want to make sure reality yes but sometimes it's oh here we are again like we don't take a look at it again and I want to make sure that especially with all these changes and improvements that we're hoping for that we are seriously looking at this again and again and again each year um in in a timely way for reevaluation and rebid in response to that let me let me I I

173can't tell you when we have to come back to the board so that if there is if there are recommendations to go back out to RFP we can do that so I'll work with Mr Baker we'll create a schedule and we'll communicate that to the board yes that's why that's why specifically asked for that time frame um and another matter just just to keep everything in in play you know that could also be a matter of uh policy we could create that you know that the administration will uh do these things on a regular basis regardless of the stuff we just presented here because if if this is as important as it is to our students to our staff and to you as members of of the board representing our community then we should put

174it into policy and make sure that um you know we can we can you know see this on a regular basis and it's not just a matter of this conversation and an email to the sitting board it becomes something uh long-term uh institutionalized um and the the issue of food waste I thought was really interesting and I do really hope I I'd be interested to see if we have anything on that right now um on the amount of pounds that are thrown out for food waste and then if we have any way to measure that against anything else no um and but I also want it pointed out that you know the food the program is it's going to stand in K to eight that food waste is going to continue to be a problem

175there I would like to see that reduced too because I think part another component of reducing food waste is to make food that children students want to eat so I want to make sure I you know I think our you know we don't have that option of not taking those items but I think we need to charge error mark charge the vendor with providing food that that K to eight wants to eat to reduce that waste that's a good comment um I think that was all I had thank you very much for those comments I appreciate it Miss Purdue um I do want to say thank you to the students I know it's late and I appreciate you sticking around and providing your input and I think your input weighs a lot and really provide

176us with clarification I wasn't expecting you here today to provide it so I do appreciate the time and also thank Dr gravanice and the high school um team that's working on it um one of the things I was looking to hear about was curious about the lunch I learned just because I feel like it's a great opportunity for collaboration and I'm looking for it but I do know that it takes a lot to get it started so I appreciate you and the team taking time to look into it to see the best way we can implement it but I think it will add a lot of value to the high school um in reference to collaboration so I appreciate that um I did have a question or not really a question but in reference to

177the food waste then I think goes back to um what Miss German said um I think we will still continue to see that at the um K-8 level just because there there are certain things that they have to pick up regardless but I think there are schools now that are looking into how to recycle the food right and I think there are options there are some national programs available whether that can be provided to non-profits or um Charities so I think we can look at that at the Cato a level just because I think instead of the items going to the trash the kid don't they have to pick it up they can just exclude their neck and be pulled off separately and you can it can go to good good use right there's a

178lot in our community there's a lot of um organizations in our community that can utilize it I don't know if we're limited to that based on the fact that it's part is still part of the national school lunch program but I think it's something that we should invest some time into looking into I um in reference to the program itself I think is great because I think as mentioned by um the students it really provides an opportunity for students with dietary restrictions and I know for me I have came with severe food allergies and the very limited options as far as what um they can get so I think it provides them with the opportunity lunchtime is is a social time for a lot of our kids right and so being able to grab something

179in the cafeteria with their friends and be able to sit down and have something with their friends instead of not having any options I think is great and um hoping that this will pass and then we can really start to work on this but there's a lot of work that needs to be done I think coordination but I'm looking forward to where we lie thank you thank you Miss Perdue any final questions from members of the board if not just please join me just for a second and let's give Applause to our students [Applause] you guys did a wonderful job thank you so much for coming out and presenting and we now know that you are the conduit for student feedback and we want to hear it too so thank you [Music] Dr Zerby thank

180you so if it's if it pleases the board I'd like to do the facilities assessment update next and then I'm going to recommend that as you see posted to the agenda there's the arrowhead construction update if you have any questions on that just email me and we'll be glad to answer any questions of the board of just email me with that said we have our our representative from Bureau Veritas to talk about the facilities assessment you should have a paper copy of this report in front of you as well as an electronic version available greetings greetings everyone this is not going to be as interesting as the prior presentation um I hope next time Mr brikas invites me uh I'm invited to recovery that opens but uh okay uh so quick introduction my name is

181I represent Bureau Veritas we were a consultant through metactan school district my firm is a 200 year old firm originally based out of Europe we often call ourselves as a tick company that is testing inspection and certification form uh we were hired to do a capital planning project for the school district so as to come up with a 20-year Capital plan essentially a financial plan of how money should be allocated to keep the building standing habited and safe for its operations you know a quick introduction of my firm we do a lot of different things we support our clients from Acquisitions all the way to disposition of buildings uh based on whatever the needs are the the the team that I belong to is asset management where we help our clients mainly institutional clients like

182schools to understand what are the needs of the schools as the buildings age over time and what kind of expenditure would they be anticipating over the life of the buildings so let's go over to project understand this the goal of this project was to understand efficiencies for all different facilities uh we were given nine facilities to look at we were asked to come up with short term and long-term capital requirements what are the repair items that needed to be addressed how do you prioritize different costs one over the other uh what kind of capital you should be forecasting and essentially understanding how would you rank the buildings compared to each other so uh a quick approach how we approach the project we started with a kickoff meeting Dr zombie Mr brickers and others were in

183participation on that meeting uh we had detailed interviews with the maintenance managers as well as school principals for all the buildings to understand the needs deficiencies as well as the requirements for the school to meet their agenda or their mandate we were also shown around the buildings we were shown the different efficiencies at the different locations we were allowed to talk to different maintenance individuals and while doing so we developed an inventory of all mechanical electrical Plumbing items in all your facilities we identified all different components in your buildings for which you as the management committee or board of directors or the planning firm in general are responsible for paying and keep upkeeping of those uh individual components of the buildings uh we presented draft reports uh to Dr Zerby Dave has circulated to uh

184the principals who gave us their feedback they were circulated to the maintenance uh individuals they gave us their feedback uh everything was taken into consideration before issuing the final reports to the school district uh we also developed a cmms plan for uh preventative maintenance schedules for each and every component or in your mechanical systems so that your cmms systems which is computer maintenance management system will create work orders for your maintenance staff in order to ensure that the systems are up to speed and being maintained regularly at the end of the day this is a data driven economy and data driven world uh we provided all this information in form of asset calc which is a online tool where the client can have access to they can provide different level of access to different members

185of the board so that they can go through the findings and understand where the needs are okay uh the data was collected using iPads so that we can have standardized data collection across the board we were able to rank every component from excellent good fare poor to failed based on what the condition is on the screen you can see and typical example of how we are ranking different conditions it's a subjective way of looking at things and it is based on looking at a number of different buildings once the data comes in we have a qaqc team that goes through the data again to make sure that the the condition ratings are calibrated again in order bitter firms decisions so let's go over the findings on the screen you are seeing the different buildings that

186we were asked to investigate starting with Administrative building so in general there were three non-academic buildings and rest of the buildings for academic buildings essentially schools High School Middle School Elementary School uh forgive me high school Intermediate and Elementary School we came up with a replacement value for each building in its current state so that to understand what it would be what it would cost you to build a new building of a similar type in today's world the 20-year needs are on your screen right now uh essentially what we have come up with is that over a period of 20 years uh the school district would be spending approximately 269 million dollars to keep the facilities standing and habited okay the the bulk majority of expenditure is associated with the High School uh followed by

187the Arcola Skyview building of course one should note that it is probably the largest building in terms of square footage so naturally it has a large allocation of budget the other buildings range between 16 18 million dollars uh the non-administrative the non-educational buildings are towards the lower end uh reflecting of the end use as well as the size any questions so far we can I will take questions you know when we're done okay sorry uh so the question is like 269 million dollars to be spent where exactly do we see the expenditure right uh on the left side the pie chart shows you that a bulk of your expenditure is going to be addressing the HVAC Deeds of the facilities uh typically HVAC has a life of 20 to 25 years and uh at the

188end of 25 years uh the components need to be replaced uh because of wear and tear and utilization so a vast majority of expenditure is lined up with HVAC a bulk of that also is lining up with your high school expenditure uh the second biggest is your interior finishes for your schools uh followed by electrical systems fire protection system is also a big one where uh especially for high school which a bulk majority of that area is not currently having fire suppression system so that's a big item for you guys uh the short-term needs we anticipate the school to to budget approximately 74 million dollars over the next two years for maintenance of the nine facilities a bulk of that again is in HVAC interior finishes envelope projects envelope in this case represents a lot

189of roof replacement a number of your buildings have roofs that are either leaking or have come to an point where they are exceeded its useful life and should be planned for replacement pretty soon so that's that's the bulk majority of expenditure related to your envelope ah okay uh now after 269 million 262 million are associated with the six schools whereas 7 million are associated with the non-academic buildings uh the non-academic buildings being the transportation administrative as well as a facilities building in both cases again HVAC is the major uh source of expenditure for you let's take a look at non-economic buildings uh roof is and site are the two major items especially for the transportation building Transportation building is still owned by the school though the bus services has been leased out to a third

190party but the school district owns and operates and maintains the buildings and infrastructure now one should note that the equipment inside the transportation facilities which are required for maintenance of the bus facilities are not part of this audit because those are considered as operational items but things associated with parking lots roof external envelope of the buildings the overhead doors those are all included in this cost okay Administrative Building is also in a dire need of cash inflow in terms of HVAC in terms now let me quickly switch back to academic buildings I think we spoke about it previously where fire systems and HVAC are the two big items that need to be addressed in the near future breaking this down further like what is your expenditure over the next 10 and 15 years we saw

191the 20-year uh clearly uh the matachan high school uh takes to bulk of your budget over your boat for 10 and 15 years uh on the left-hand side you're seeing the 10-year expenditure that has been planned out uh or recommended rather than planned out I should not be using the word planned out the boxes are on the four buildings which have the most uh expenditure at this point of time according to us in terms of both uh the worst performing buildings at the same time of the dire need of cash inflow so yeah matakan High School Woodland watches and or sister Elementary along with adminster two buildings are those four buildings uh now what determines which building is good or bad as compared to each other right all the buildings serve different purposes uh six

192of them are educational buildings three of them are non-educational buildings But ultimately how we defined us buildings uh survivability or life expectancy is by running an FCI index which is facility condition index it's essentially a ratio of what are your immediate needs divided by total replacement value uh general rule of thumb is anything between 10 to 30 percent is considered as poor that means approximately 30 percent of your replacement value you are going to invest in repairing and fixing items so this is this indicates a need of a significant rehab or renovation project that needs to be undertaken for the school anything above 60 percent or close to 60 percent indicates that that particular facility has come to the end of its serviceable life and a decision should be or at least a committee should

193be constituted to understand what is the future of the building and what can be done to it okay uh from that perspective of FCI let's look at your buildings uh your administrative building within the 10 years is going to be around 37.6 percent FCI so it kind of indicates that uh it will require major rehab over there your Arcola Arrowhead and Eagleview they are on the lower side port Arcola and Eagle uh will are at around 18 percent so it just shows slow movement towards life cycle replacement nothing alarming uh over there as such uh facilities building uh uh is around 10 percent uh metactan high school will be around 72.6 percent so it will be at a point where uh we are showing a number of different components in that building have been have

194would have already exceeded its expected useful life and uh a decision would have to be made by the committee on what's the future of a building Woodland Elementary and Rochester Elementary are also seeing significant expenditure coming up in year 10 both of them are associated with mechanical equipment coming to the end of its useful life over there so uh in this presentation since this is a high level presentation I'm going to take a deeper dive in four of those top uh buildings which are in dire need of uh investment okay uh starting with Acton High School uh so the school has been split into four zones I'd refer to that in the prior presentations of how we addressed it the reason for doing this is all the four zones were built in different time spans

195Zone one being the oldest one and if I'm not wrong zone four is the yeah so zone three if again zone three is the latest one I always get to introduce between those uh zone three is the latest uh built in 2002. so clearly uh components and the way systems are designed vary between different zones okay here is an FCI chart that shows you the expenditure uh on the screen you will see blue lines bar shots and gray color bar charts so forgive me on this presentation the gray color is not very clear but uh one are the needs for that given year so when you look at a blue bar chart it tells you what is the uh what is the proposed expenditure for a given year and gray is the Deferred cost so

196in a scenario where if investment is not made what would be the cost in the next year as a summation of the prior years at escalated at four percent interest rate okay so that's how it has been built and on the right hand side it kind of shows you in an FCI index percentage and clearly within 2024 you're crossing the 40 threshold and within 10 years you are hitting the 70 threshold so kind of indicates that this uh based on the needs of the building the facility is coming close to its useful life uh system-based needs is a really good snapshot to provide you where the expenditure is going the total needs over 20 years are around 127 million roughly uh again because this is planning level the most important projects over here are roof

197replacement HVAC modernization we talked about two Pipers is four pipe where ability to have Heating and Cooling at the same time uh the swimming pool is a challenge over here we have seen that is a continuous leak from the pool uh Auditorium expansion and modernization uh is a big project the gym floor requires replacement as well as the lighting upgrades which were completed a couple of years ago but uh would require replacement pretty soon within six to seven years the next one is the administrative building uh this is just snapshot of the building uh the FCI over here by 2026 is going to be close to 30 percent and by 2032 uh you will be crossing the 35 37 person Mark which uh takes you close to the poor segment over there okay your main

198projects over here are again roof replacement domestic hot water boiler replacement Plumbing upgrades uh there are a number of split system uh air conditioning system that needs to be replaced over there there's a lot Chiller over there which needs to be replaced the electrical system uh is more than 40 years old uh Breakers which are more than 25 year old are typically being recommended for replacement by all electrical contractors because a generator just uh unsafe situations uh parking lot is in need of resurfacing milling and overlays required for that facility yeah uh the next one is the Woodland Elementary School over here your needs over the next 20 years are around 18 million dollars um the FCI chart kind of shows it really spikes High during the 2027 year as a major expenditure starts showing

199up most of those expenditure are related to your mechanical items mechanical systems coming to the end of its useful life you can clearly see it over here forgive me in this case it's the interior finishes which which takes around five million dollars of expenditure in the near term that's three to five years whereas HVAC expenditure is more or less remaining flat for the first 10 years and then shooting up in year 11 to 20 with around six hundred thousand dollars of expenditure uh over there the biggest expenditure over here is facade repair repointing requirements for a building's heat pump Replacements uh flooring replacement and heat recovery system replacement for those buildings okay the last one is the Rochester Elementary School uh again over here you're seeing an FCI crossing over the 30 threshold by the

200year 20 2031 which takes it into the poor uh poor category your biggest cost expenditure over here are in the year one related to your interior finishes uh Then followed by roof replacement projects BMS upgrade which controls the HVAC systems a lot of split systems over here need to be replaced though they are r410 a refrigerant and they are coming to the end of its useful life and need to be replaced fire alarm systems uh need to be replaced every 15 years that's going to be a big expenditure over here so in short our analysis showed that more than 50 percent of your facilities are 50 years or greater in age right and that means that a typical building has a life of 50 years uh not structurally but component wise within 50 years a

201lot of components will come to an end of its useful life and needs to be replaced you are at that juncture across multiple buildings uh there are systems with older refrigerants which are harmful to the environment and they have been phased out you still have few condensing units around there with R22 they need to be replaced with r410a at the earliest uh High School the HVAC system is a challenge humidity control essentially where one would prefer to have Heating and Cooling simultaneously so as to make yourself uh climate resilient with changing climate and outdoor temperature uh in high school there are a number of issues related to Ada items accessibility uh the goal is to make the building more Ada friendly than just Ada accessible and there are Labs on the in the zone one

202which are not Ada accessible that needs to be taken care of the sizing of the classrooms are outdated in terms of when they were constructed I'm assuming they're grandfather didn't but as compared to the state standard they are smaller in size and uh in general based on we would recommend to the board to closely look at the FCI numbers with the facility condition index and keep a tab on where exactly the major rehabs need to be undertaken okay so with that thank you for your time and uh let me know if there are any questions are there any questions from members of the board on this Miss craft okay all right so my first question is can you explain to me the difference between immediate repair costs and system-based needs and Facilities needs okay immediate

203repairs cost is anything between your zero to year two well that's not that's not true when I look at in the information you just presented I think it refers to immediate repair costs um uh which slide so on slide 15 we've got facility needs that's right forgive me immediately is your zero short term immediate is year zero that means what you should be expending today where a short term is year one two year two no I'm asking the difference between what you're referring to as facilities needs okay on this page and then on the previous Pages you refer to it as yeah expenditure forecast it's in the FCI explanation you use the reference to um immediate repair costs so my question to you is what's the difference between immediate repair costs you to calculate the

204FCI and what you provided to us on this slide which is facility needs okay good uh so immediate repair cost is everything that falls in year zero so what what should have been taken care in year 2022 when we did the audits those are the immediate repair costs okay so the FCI is calculated based on your needs for FCI for last year for the year 0 is calculated on the needs for the year 2022 divided by total replacement value okay okay so if I'm looking at your FCI summary page when I'm looking at year 10 yes in that case when you look at year 10 it's a summation of the first 10 years in a scenario where you don't do any investment in year one or the first 10 years and that's why it's called

205a deferred cost so the cost keeps accumulating over the 10 years so is that the same as what you've got on this slide as facility needs yes that exactly would be the value that you would be dividing by the total replacement value now when you look at FCI we don't take into consideration the site cost okay because we're just looking at a building in itself we are not looking into your parking lot or like that is a whole different cost uh when you do FCI it's purely related to the building in itself so is this facilities needs number the number that's used to calculate the FCI this is for your site plus building cost site so that sounds like a no that's a no okay so my question is then what number is used to

206calculate the FCI for year 10. since you give me this chart with year 10. I uh it's good so is it this number on this summary page no so this includes site as well as that uh I will have to provide you that number as a separate thing but we can I can subtract out the site and give you the cost in that chart we showed you the total in case of High School uh Mr brikas and I went over it this afternoon it was around seven million dollars at site cost and so if you subtract that 7 million it comes to around uh 92 million dollars or something so I guess what I'm asking is in order for everyone to unders mean we probably need to include the numbers that go into calculating these

207numbers presentation yes because you can't reproduce these numbers with this data that I've got in front of me I can provide you those numbers uh in detail on which numbers are being used to calculate FCI can we add them to the presentation yes I can do that for you and can we make it very clear that we can walk through an example yeah we can do that because I think there's a lot of different numbers and they're referred to in a lot of different ways and it's a little confusing if they're what the definition is of the words we're using yes so I think we're going to get a lot of questions on how to calculate those numbers and so the easier we can make it and maybe even walk through an example calculation that

208says for example if you take the high school in year five here's this number here's this number and here's the calculation I can do that for you I I'll add a slide which gives an example of high school and I can tell you what the number is for site what is the number for the building and how that match works out these are all generated by our asset calc software so there is no manual intervention these are automatically generated numbers so I can run that analysis for you and present it in the slide so yeah I just think we need to be we're not I know a number of us were trying to run the calculation and the calculations are not working okay based on the data we have in front of us so good

209enough we probably need the additional piece of paper okay we I can uh I will happily provide you that data of what how the FCI is being generated for each building okay that would be great thank you any other things uh feedback yeah yeah thank you for the presentation and I just have a question and maybe this is more to Administration um so I mean this is a very forward-looking presentation the next you know short term to 20 years um could we also have something just to put it in context maybe for our newer board members or people what we have been doing to maintain and improve our facilities snapshot by building because I know Woodland had a renovation when was that what was done um I just want to be able to kind of

210put the whole story in context from the past and and what we've been keeping up with um and then to help it tell the whole story of what we need in the future so so it's my understanding that uh this is a summary presentation of all the individual nine reports that should have the data that this graph is referring to yes and the and the additional uh the additions that were that occurred in the other uh School locations that's right so we've provided a worksheet that shows the 2018 to 2022 uh planned expenditure uh some of those items have not been implemented because of it was a planned expenditure but we are going to be adding that particular uh Excel sheet as an attachment into the appendix of all our reports to show this was

211an expenditure plan further in the executive summary you will see what projects have been implemented at each School uh in each report and when we put the financial plan together those are the things that we take into consideration so for example if a roof was replaced in February of 2023 or forget February of 2022 then we are going to mark that as an excellent roof and we will say the expected useful life on that roof is 20 years and the remaining useful life is also 20 years for that roof okay and and with your your question is there's we have a report that shows all the historical Renovations and and Investments that we've made as part of the initial 2016 facilities assessment that we did so we have that for you um we can certainly

212you know provide attach this presentation with reference to that yeah and maybe even in this report to make a note saying you know Woodland built in this year renovated in this year just because I know that we have had some big Renovations in some of our schools just as uh just to be a little more specific about um you know what we have been planning and what we've done sure we will make sure that it's included in an executive summary in the final reports I just have a question um I think there's a lot of information here that um maybe you need to consider um it may come more familiar to you just because it's it's the nature of your work but I think it's harder to follow and so that's why um some of

213the questions some of these numbers just don't add up but I think we don't have all the information um to be able to reproduce it but if you look at slide 15 I'm trying to figure out how to how to make sense of it because if you look at facilities needs in 10 years and comparing to 15 years how do we go from failure crisis um I guess the color Choice I'm thinking unless I'm not reading the color choice right to pour in 15 years I'm thinking it will just get worse right so are we saying if we made changes I'll let you is this a slide which one okay and so uh I missed the last part of your question what I'm sorry so when I look at your I think you have the

214condition conditions rat ranking on slide nine right and you use the color scheme there how do that translate to what you're giving us here because you're saying if we're looking at the color scheme unless we're not supposed to look at the color scheme if I'm looking at the colors in 10 years I'm saying that everything is in well failure crisis is that how you should look at that slide there so version that oh the bar chart colors are randomly picked by they have the weight yeah yeah they are not related they are not related they are not connected they are not really it's a template color and that's what they come up with forgive me but uh over here this is how we grade it right that's fine this is how we don't they don't

215connect no no they don't connect so then can you explain um slide I guess so then 15 is really just giving you a summation of the amount it gives you summation of the amounts that are needed by the individual facility for both site as well as building what your cost is in year 10 what your cost is in year 15. okay okay the goal over here is uh you know when you see that these numbers on a big table they don't make as much impact as when you see it in this kind of chart where you can see that okay High School is demanding the most expenditure as compared to Arrowhead which is the newest building uh is only requiring 1.8 million dollars right so it's interesting to look at like how that expenditure changes

216as the buildings get older yeah I think I just want to make it clear that that you know the the way that the summary report it was trying to condense nine very lengthy reports into some kind of a summary format so it's going to be absent of of a lot of information that you know you would use to typically you know make sure that this adds up to that we can certainly uh do that additional work so that it's it's clear and any uh uh uh any individual looking at the uh at the document a layperson would be able to just follow it through so uh allow us some some time to to put that together and we can certainly uh update that for the board uh prior to next week's uh meeting I just

217want to make sure that everyone understands that um what what our goal here is uh to make sure that you understand that we've completed the assessments uh this is a summary report just kind of highlighting at a high level of what some of the things are that we need to consider the idea is that next week we would uh accept the reports given the fact that you know my Administration I've reviewed all them a second time to make sure that we have reviewed them for what we consider to be you know accurate representation of what has transpired and then we would then use that information to then come back to you to say okay what are we going to do with this because there's a lot of stuff and to say that we're going to

218invest 72 million dollars in two years you know isn't necessarily a realistic uh conversation so at the end of all of this we we really need to uh like we've done before you know include our owners rep include uh you know we have Bureau Veritas include our our facilities uh new facilities director and get you an outline of a master plan that actually you know can Something That We're accustomed to that we can follow and say on an annual basis these are the types of things that we need to address and this is the Run rate that we're going to need in order to you know Implement into the budget and these are the things that we're going to need to do the conversation that we normally had right now that's not what this presentation

219is and and and and while we might have been expecting you know the the master you know the new master plan that's not what they is just a high level representation of the nine uh facilities assessments that were that were provided so I hope that helps uh we certainly if if there's any other feedback uh that we need to do so that we can clarify things and type things out by all means pick up the phone shoot me an email whatever it makes best sense for you but I'd be more than glad to you know make this more I'll call it communicative and then we move from uh that to uh to you know working out a larger uh master plan that that incorporates you know the future does that make sense any other any

220other questions for uh Costa for this moment thank you very much I will make sure that the slides get updated with this cost thank you as I mentioned earlier we are going to we're going to uh just let the board know that the arrowhead construction update um is is is it posted for your review if there's any questions please reach out to me um again there's no action item on the arrowhead construction update but the last presentation that we have this evening and while I know it's late and certainly you've been patient and and uh and I appreciate that I I it would it would be uh it would be a significant loss if we didn't allow Dr angstead to present a stop Wellness committee update I think you'll be pleased with the information that

221she's here to share uh because it's crucial uh to the long-term health of our district so Dr Wang said please present sure thank you Dr Zerby tonight Abby Morgan from Tom Stucker and Associates and I are pleased to provide a recap of the work of our school connection teams and share information about the next steps as we move forward it is important to acknowledge that the work of the school connection team is aligned to the Strategic plan and specifically it relates to two Focus areas in particular the first Focus area student growth achievement instruction and staff development this our work targeted the various strategies that are listed here but in particular work towards inclusive practice School culture and climate improving our multi-tiered system of supports and increasing positive behaviors the second Focus area is student

222staff and Community experience where we targeted strategies related to I'm not going to read them all but staff and student wellness a sense of belonging making sure we establish district-wide set of expectations for an exceptional methactan School experience improving Communications as you heard tonight we had students talking about school spirit we're making fostering connections to provide a positive School climate grounded in diverse Equitable and inclusive practices so this year our work with our school connection team was really centered around building a systemic Foundation each of the schools as well as the district office had a core team of individuals who participated in six full-day interactive sessions on topics addressing social emotional skills School culture and school climate student voice days were really resounding piece of this whole part and our students were very excited at

223both our Cola and the high school to participate in those activities we had hosted a community voice opportunity for both parents Guardians and community members to participate and then each School connection team developed and refined throughout this entire year an action plan that was focusing on their particular building and ways to build capacity within their building and also build connections for students staff and the community and I'll turn it over to Abby hi everyone I'm not used to having a microphone because I have a loud projective voice projecting voice but I'll I'll do my best uh we did this uh the methodology for all of this connection work that we've done with a lot of other school districts as well uh was three things the building of social emotional skills and defining those and and

224the results of those and the benefits of those being up at the top left as well as all of those skills being listed on on the right and actually I noticed multiple skills that were talked about tonight from the first being here with the nominations and decision making skills and being able to give and receive feedback and problem solving skills conflict resolution these were all things that were talked about maybe not using those exact words but talked about throughout this meeting that are needed for school board members are needed for our students are needed for our staff and we can do those things uh throughout our school day in building those those skills and these are also there's lots of reports out there of these are top skills that employers are looking for they're looking

225for how can we have more collaboration on our teams with remote work how can we have creative ideas brought to our organizations how can we solve problems and effectively and come up with a resolution so these are all not just the things that are happening within our buildings but how these skills are going to benefit our students going forward are adults going forward so that's one of the pieces this leads to that school culture idea which was is in in strategic plan and that sense of belonging in the data and feedback these are the beliefs the Norms the things that are really under the surface the things that as a quote Outsider you walk into a building and these are the things that are that are happening without us noticing and um the the things

226that are Unwritten and the things that are written are are that culture this is the work on the building if you will and what happens in the building is what comes out in that school climate that's the atmosphere that's the walk-in and you feel that welcoming environment you feel that sense of belonging that emotional safety and all of these three pieces give you all the results that are on the left they give you academic achievement they give you graduation rates and that's that's the uh salute to seniors there in the middle uh the low Dropout rates the teacher retention this is what happens when you have students who come up and are feeling we walked in and you felt it that's what they're talking about they're talking about school climate School culture and it comes

227from all of these these skill building pieces that morale is another piece of those so what we did with those three and really wanted to share these pieces is what came of these days what came of these student voice days this community days what came of our days uh with these connection teams so we grouped them in um in those strategic plan pieces as well so all of these things that are listed on the next two slides came from chart paper came from Google Docs of notes from all of the sessions from these connection teams which were representative of each of the buildings they all came from the work that we did the the knowledge that was given the research that was given but then adapted to what's actually happening in our buildings with those

228representative teams and a lot of them were were talked about by the students the lunch and learn is stuff that the the high school talked about and they are how do we prepare to do that how do we plan to do that those were conversations that were happening in these connection team meetings as well as eighth period with um with the advisory period and and how that can look at Arcola and how we can make that better that was something that came out of the student voice day they wanted to look at that and how can we have representation of of inclusive spaces and how can we have more mentoring opportunities and and have um teachers be able to collaborate with each other time for that have how to have more team building and connection

229between teacher staff and students all of these things on these next two on these two slides are all of the things that came out either that were done this year or are in they're actionable there are things that our teams need to gain more information on they need to prepare more they need to have more feedback from from different groups to get to what is something that's going to last and Dr gravity said perfectly we don't want to make we don't want to make change just to make change you want to make sure that you're putting all of the preparation into it so again all of these pieces assessing our our procedures throughout our day how are our environments being inclusive how are we having flexible space alternative locations for lunch or somebody where somebody

230just doesn't want to hear all of that noise with our sky view on our Cola is there a space for that that student to go all of those spirit days that were talked about uh and school store graphic design being involved in them I mean those are all of the things that lead to a positive and healthy school culture and climate and those are the things that were talked about and planned and looking to be actioned action steps on foreign going back one I'm too I got Sticky Fingers how's that possible one more here we go and here are some of those next steps so as we think about moving forward with this work um the people that were involved and you'll get to see a picture of them on the next slide they kept

231asking is this over now and we're like no we want this work to continue and they said resoundingly so do we um the six days people were not only excited but enthusiastic and very passionate about this work and there wasn't one day when somebody said I wish I was doing something different today they truly enjoyed this experience this year and they want to see some of their other colleagues have these same experiences so moving forward our commitment to this work is essential and will be addressed through some of the following continuing our partnership next year with Tom Stecker and Associates next year it moves from being that systemic Foundation to working within buildings and taking this now in and taking this development staff development and building the capacity within each of the schools providing that

232ongoing staff development expanding student and Community voice opportunities we want to look at incorporating Skyview into the student voice days next year also aligning our social emotional skill building School culture and school climate with the mtss framework whether we're looking at positive behavior interventions and supports also looking at our tiered supports for mental health we also want to explore the establishment of a leadership role to support the district's commitment there is a lot of work around this effort to keep this going and building upon this and how can we best support this um as we move forward this isn't next year isn't the end of it this is something in order to sustain you have to keep working on it and then continuing those School connection to team meetings in each of the buildings and

233then as we said it's so important to continue to monitor where you are and looking at the needs assessment that Dr Zerby sends out for the district um Tom Stecker and Associates had some needs assessment that they shared surveys looking at all that data and actually doing some site visits within the schools trying to get a feel within those buildings and working with the principals as we move forward with this work so on the next slide this is our school connection teams all of them a few people were absent so but there we are and a special thank you to Tom Stecker Abby Crystal lay and Scott heat who were very involved as facilitators in our sessions as well as our school connection team members and we do look forward to continuing this work next

234year and I would just like to say too that in conclusion we would also like to thank the board of school directors for their support with this initiative this year and it was probably some of the best professional development that we had where 65 to 70 individuals came together for an entire year at these sessions and really got to know each other across buildings people met people they didn't even know they worked with in this district and that was just a phenomenal takeaway for a lot of us so I wanted to just say thank you thank you Dr Einstein and thank you Abby Morgan uh questions from members of the board uh Mr Winters yes thank you um I do have inside information and it was a very successful uh training session I I I

235I think it was well worth the investment so my quick question is are you that for moving forward to next year these teams are responsible for the training or or it will expand the training in similar manner so uh there'll be another class of 65 that goes through this or what what is your thought and also the concern about the professional development time that we have available so I'll speak to the aluminum if you want to add so what we do now is we go into the buildings and we build each building's team we build upon their team within their building next year so the core team that you see here from each building will still be working with Tom Stecker and Associates people will be coming and supporting them but it will now be

236within their building so we're focusing on their building's climate if that helps yep and and the one piece that is additional for next year where you mentioned is it this and um hopefully I heard this right but this group would then be kind of turnkeying this to other that's not the case this would be a continued support of and and the the real professional development staff development skills and strategies would be in a coaching format and a coaching cohort in small groups so that we can really dig in to how do we do this on a daily basis with our teachers so providing that that skill building and strategy within a smaller cohort fashion so that we're kind of coming at everything from different angles the systemic is there first and then how do we

237do this on a daily basis with also then continuing the work that is still the systemic foundation on all of the bigger on the building Concepts somebody obviously it's your your problem to figure out but it seems like it's hard to to roll it out when you've had a small subset of seven or eight ten teachers at the high school and now you have 100 that you have to plus not just the the mea staff but of the rest of the it's a slow process it's a slow process and we've done it with um districts that are bigger than this and and it does take time but you want to have that small group that you're coaching and have multiple sessions with the the group throughout let's say a fall uh you know one session

238in late September and and and only in small chunks maybe a three hours and these are all logistic pieces to to be to be hammered out but uh that then there's a spring cohort then there's a new set of teachers that come in but really keeping it to maximum 30 and that would be within secondary buildings and Elementary buildings so with substitutes and all of those things we work out those details but we've been able to do it successfully we've um in in another District we're finishing up our spring cohort and we will have had 260 teachers go through over 17 buildings this school year in a cohort style fashion thank you and then one last uh sort of comment I had a friend uh share a story recently about their son becoming a mentor

239in elementary school and developing friends that way because they were successful in an area and sort of progressing and because so I I think I if I read that correctly that mentoring meant any direction in all directions so great excellent questions Mr winner anyone else from to my right to my left Ms Reese um first thank you you know it's I'm glad we included this I I didn't want it to be pushed till next week or what have you it's it's important and I don't know where I'm going with this exactly and I don't want to micromanage it but I can tell you like from tonight what was probably our most enjoyable Parts hearing Miss Cleary um talk about the connection Mr alzamora made with her son hearing those students talk about the group that

240got together right my favorite part of the board member no offense um we get a very long board memo it takes me I have to read it three or four times to absorb absorb everything in the memo but my favorite part is when sometimes I Dr gravanese and other principals do it when they when they share those very poignant stories that nobody knows about um and I I don't want to add to anyone's plate but we've done a really good job with um communicating out to the community with you know the new athletic newsletter and the uh the K-12 career counselor and I'm not suggesting we do this for the community but I wonder and you guys are the professionals if we can share some of these things out among the staff in like an

241inner inner what do they call that intranet newsletter type thing and no not everyone's going to read it or read every word but if principles or teachers or other people could share types of poignant to get everybody more involved and like I know we it might not be right for the board or the community but some things that Alexis you know can share anything that can be shared about this as like a motivation some I know as a teacher I might Zoom through one little teacher magazine or one teacher newsletter and I get this one idea so if we could possibly create some type of communication with all those all those stories because that's that is that's everybody's favorite part of doing of doing this right you know of doing this job working with you

242know everybody who works in school pretty much cares about kids right so to hear those things is what we want to hear those were a lot of the conversations that were happening within the buildings that were that were happening at the district level table was they're most excited was how do we recognize how do we celebrate how do we show gratitude for all of those stories and all of the the positive things that are happening not just around academics around music around I mean I went through the Facebook page and tried to find all types of pictures that were you know the the high school meet and greet Arcola had a a career day as well the appreciation for music the appreciation for all of the different things that students are doing the teachers are

243doing that that buildings are doing those were a lot of those conversations so those things are those things are in the works those ideas are coming to the table it's just how do they all play out and how they all get done I think people that work at mathacton in many places do everyday kindnesses yes that people don't see and it's how you spread it's how you spread and this is a such an amazing beginning and um so thank you for those comments uh Miss cankrow I only have one quick one I mean there's so much here there's just so much here and so you do see like this web of everyone being involved and you know you said to establish leadership to make sure that it gets continued because I do feel like we

244already have a lot of leaders helping to advocate for that like the diversity Equity inclusion that we've got in here we've talked about the mtss I think of that under the education arm there's so many administrators that are involved in this so I like this group here too but I also feel that we should definitely establish a leadership just to make sure that it's it's all connected it's all connected because right now I feel like we have a lot of everything like tomorrow we're meeting with the district council and like there's just so much and it's great but I do agree like having a leadership there to help can make the connections for everyone make it consistent and collect that data absolutely because I feel like there's not data to show how valuable it is

245so that's a lot to say but thank you for all your efforts Miss Cantrell just so you know tomorrow's district council meeting is is a takeoff of what you just said so I look forward to that conversation other questions Miss Perdue first of all thank you I think I was asking about this um last week and I'm happy to see this provided I appreciate you ending with this picture just because when I look at it I mean for me personally it warms my heart just to see everyone on there very happy and I think you um mentioned the fact that when it ended it was like what's next right I hope this don't end and I think it's something that we have to continue to do but like Leverage it because it clearly shows it

246as value and there's value that we can gain um from there I think you do have a lot of items here as far as next steps but I think it's important that it don't fall through where we just did it in one thing one time and all when we do it if there's something that's not working but like really trying to make sure how do we continue it to work and um continue to keep it successful one of the things when I look at your next steps is um in reference to the voice opportunity um I see it's just student and community is it because and I was wondering I think for me I put um I put a question mark next to teachers and staff and I was just wondering is it just because

247they have the connections teams within the buildings and that we're getting that input there or is that something I need to be captured we're getting that input from there and and that's where it has it has started and we have laid the seeds for the student work but continuing that student work and actually uh someone mentioned Alexis um is is going to a conference this summer with students from I think it's eight from the high school and two from Arcola to have a whole week experience on on things that are around around all of these topics so it's expanding those opportunities and and having more of them and having them uh be specific to the needs of all the buildings and just a a note those two slides of actionable items those were from seven

248different buildings so it does look like a lot but some of them are are more focused on on one building or the other as well and if I could just add the principles are going back with their school connection teams and holding faculty meetings with their staff and then they bring that feedback back to their action plan and say what do we need to revise what do we need to adjust and to see them work we were at Round Tables and to see the conversation and discussion that was happening and Shea was there Jason and and Matt to we were just hearing that conversation and that dialogue and it was so rich and then they would share with the table next to them and they would do sharing out it was just really uh I'll

249use the word cool because other people used it it was really cool to see this group of people who may not have known who each other were at the beginning becoming friends and working together it was just really an interesting experience and I think that's a critical point because I know at one point we um actually lost the um a staff member and I think she said at one point she said It felt lonely right and I think we do see that where maybe a staff member don't feel like they have someone that they identify with and they can feel very lonely and I think this is something that we can leverage also to really connect them with others that they can feel a little bit more um connected to I guess a um for

250better lack of term but I think this is great but I really do want us to make sure we are getting the um voice opportunities um for the teachers and staff also because that's critical thank you excellent comments any other comments um Dr anxiety I just want to thank you for all the work that you are doing in this area and because to me well one of the things was I remember I think even from the Act 48 committee that I was on was that um what what Miss Perdue was saying that um some of the teachers did feel like they were in a silo they didn't know teachers from other schools so this is a great way to help that along um and really to me the overarching um phrase that stands out to

251me is the sense of belonging that that is the key here that we want everyone to feel that they belong we want to be able to identify who doesn't feel like they belong so this is um this is great I um so I thank you for all the work that you're doing thank you what else Abby Susan excellent presentation thank you for your work and your commitment to this effort we really appreciate it we appreciate it now that ends that ends guests and special speakers for this evening so uh admin team please get to the podium uh let's go we'll get we'll get moving so we're going to go into uh the other presentations we have reports I will let you know that um we do have a building tour this Thursday uh April 20th

252from 5 30 to 7 for a community walkthrough of the Arrowhead Elementary School so please join us there also will be a ribbon cutting so uh we have scissors uh for for board members and we're we're excited about this opportunity this so again uh 5 30 to 7 at Arrowhead Elementary School with that said we go on to fiscal items Mr Bricker this month for your approval we have the list of bills Treasures report budgetary transfers facilities assessment study accepting the facilities condition assessment nine in total as rep as presented by Vera Veritas approve the north Monaco technical career center budget for 2024 with the general fund budget in the amount of 14 million 477 590 with methact and share being one million 436 691 dollars this represents a ninety three thousand thirty six dollar

253increase from 22.23 the General Supply bid Awards with the district business amount of 247 836.14 and the mciu bids in the amount of eighteen thousand fifty six dollars and ninety eight cents also to approve the Food Service management contract with hour mark Services Educational Services LLC for a period of one year from July 1st 22 23 through June 30 2024 without the four or one-year renewals and finally change order 29 under the arrowhead product for labor associated with the elevator cost of 17 850.96 and just so you know uh the agenda will be adjusted for uh uh nine G there will be a two and a three as we presented in the Food Services there are two other motions that we want you to prove that is to go off the nslp and to build

254the cafe so we just want to make that any questions on fiscal items from Mr Vickers to my left seeing none to my right Mr winners just real quick to just comment on 9e the North monco tech center for the board to understand that the increase is primarily driven by our increased usage with the number of students so it's not so much an increase in cost there is an increase in cost but it's more being driven by our percentage of students at North Monaco it's actually our enrollment over a three year period that has has increased which is an excellent thing because that means more of our students are participating in the great programs and services any other questions on matters of Finance seeing none we move on to Personnel items Dr sir Genie good

255evening and thank you for your consideration this month we have the following Personnel items one resignation classified this is for retirement Elizabeth Santa personal care assistant at the high school we thank Liz for her 22 years of dedicated service to the students of methacton and the entire methactan family wishes her well in her retirement we have one employment administrator Mr Robert Corcoran for the position of principal of Eagleville Rob will be here next week and I will be presenting him at that time one change of status classified Noel Mullen paraprofessional at Eagleville as noted one uncompensated leave professional Christina catone instructional support teacher at Arrowhead as identified one uncompensated leave classified Danielle Mazer paraprofessional two at Skyview for next school year for the first semester as identified supplemental contracts including extended season pay for winter

256coaches and an additional supplemental contract correct for outdoor education and the addition of John Higgins to the Casual on call list for custodians we welcome John the methacton thank you and just another note it's important to know that the the appointment listed on the agenda for Robert Corcoran for the principal illegal bill you should know that he is coming home meaning that he was once a sixth grade science teacher at Skyview for a number of years he left us to his you know pursue his administrative career went to Palmyra went to Upper I have all of that information if you is it already in there if you want me to read it I was going to read it next week but I can well no I just it doesn't brief it and then an Upper

257Dublin right is where he's coming from yes so um so he's coming back home and uh we're pleased to have him join us any questions on matters of personnel to my left to my right seeing none thank you doctor next we have curriculum programs you have no items policy we have uh first reading policies but no second reading policies so we don't need to make any comments on that this evening under other we have gifts and donations from Shannondale uh Foundation of two thousand dollars for the backpack program we've we appreciate that generous donation we also have listed three drivers uh as per uh the roster uh submitted there and then we have dates for board member calendar I'll turn it over to Madam president all right yeah States for board members calendars then we

258have any old or new business this evening to discuss I just want to Super quickly just remind people about the car show at North Manco this this it's this Saturday if it's raining I can't remember the weather it's Sunday just if anyone's around and enjoys that it's a great uh for their Foundation thank you thank you Miss Reese um okay it is time for Courtesy of the floor uh anything okay uh seeing no comments courtesy of the floor any comments from board members may I have a motion to adjourn Mr McGinnis may I have a second Miss Graf this meeting is adjourned thank you