February 28, 2023 Regular Meeting of the Board

001thank you hello and good evening I'd like to call to order the February 28 2023 regular board meeting of the methactan board of school directors to order and let's rise or let's have Dr Zerby announce the pledge thank you please join me for a pledge to be led by one of our own Arrowhead student hi Thompson he at her head please stand for the planets of the of Allegiance so I pledge allegiance to the flag on the United States of America entering public I should say yes you got invisible with liberty and chances for all and now please join with me in viewing another Arrowhead student as they explain why Arrowhead is so important to them hi my name is Anika and I'm in fourth grade at Arrowhead I'm here to tell you what I

002love my school the first reason it's the teachers who are kind helpful and care about their education the second reason is the specials that lets me explore that interests such as music Sports and art the third reason is because our new school has a huge Library an awesome playground and a new gym the fourth reason is the fundraising review year-round that lets us support Charities such as Pennies from pets and pantries and the American Cancer Society the last reason why I love Arrowhead is because everybody gets to be themselves thank you for this opportunity to share I hope you have a great day let's give a round of applause for both of our Arrowhead students they'll both receive certificates as Junior board Representatives thank you Dr Roberts for having those students join us here this

003evening and thank you to Porter and Anika for that wonderful introduction to our meeting tonight um as far as announcements go the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting and there was an executive session of the board held prior to this meeting on February 2020 28 2023 in the high school to discuss two confidential special education agreements um in terms of attendance we are missing um a few board members who are excused due to conflicts MS cancro MR McGinnis and Ms Rocco um now it's time for recognition of guests and scheduled speakers Dr Zerby thank you madam president this evening it gives me a great pleasure to introduce Arrowhead principal Dr Aaron Roberts Dr Roberts to to share with you some of the great

004employees at Arrowhead Elementary School with the Award of Excellence thank you thanks for the Applause and I'd like to thank the board of school directors for allowing us the opportunity to share some information about these uh wonderful people who I'm going to talk about here momentarily so the first person I'd like to recognize is uh Dr Anita Morgan she is a student-centered warm nurturing and caring second grade teacher at Arrowhead Dr Morgan holds high expectations for students and herself she is an awesome role model with kindness and expects the best effort from all of her students she always uses praise and positive reinforcement to engage her students she is a true asset to Arrowhead and the facton school district and Dr Morgan I just want you to know from the bottom of my heart we

005appreciate everything that you do thank you Dr Morgan [Music] all right up next it gives me great pleasure to introduce Mr Michael yosefon he is an excellent uh person excellent at building positive student relationships seeing Mr Josephine Implement our inclusive practices model this year has been extraordinary uh for our students and for our staff Mr yostfon is positive he's energetic I've been so proud of seeing all the group work he has done this year to engage his students students uh thrive in Mr Josephine's classroom and Mike I just want to thank you for all that you do for the student school and the Arrowhead community thank you Mike thank you all right up next we have Mr Mark horn our PE teacher at Arrowhead I'd be remiss to not thank Mr horn for his uh

006creativity patience and leadership as we endured our new school building project Mr horn keeps students engaged in our PE lessons they enjoy all the fun activities he plans he is a strong student Advocate who understands the importance of uh nurturing the whole child we appreciate his reliability creativity adaptability the list goes on and on so I just want to say to you mark thank you for all that you do to make Arrowhead special and just for the amazing job this year thanks Mark all right up next we have Mrs uh Christina lenzi uh Tina demonstrates a very strong work ethic while caring for our new building she takes pride in keeping our school clean she works with she's always working with a smile and a great laugh she has a wonderful sense of humor uh

007lastly she's always willing to assist our students staff and Community whenever as and Tina I just want to say words cannot express the Gratitude we have for you and thank you for working so hard to keep our new schools so beautiful and clean so thank you Tina all right up next we have Miss rise as we like to call her uh there she is uh Roz is always positive happy she's always willing to help a student and staff member in need definitely student-centered kind hard-working caring she previously served as our recess assistant and she graduated to the role as office assistant and she is exceeding expectations in her new role she's happy about that as you can see Roz we appreciate your positive kind and genuine nature and I just want to thank you again

008from the bottom of my heart for all that you do to make Arrowhead so special thanks Roz all right we have another special person to recognized here I want to recognize Miss Heather cornman uh Heather is new to methacton she's a PCA and what's uh beautiful about Heather is she fits right into our building climate and culture with her student first attitude uh Miss cornman is caring hard-working and kind she's a team player she will help any student or staff member when asked or called upon she is friendly she is thoughtful the list just goes on and on and I just want to let her know that we very much appreciate all of her efforts on a daily basis to help our students stay up in the community so Heather I just like to thank

009you for all that you do to make Arrowhead and the fact in such a special thanks thank you heather all right and lastly I'd like to take this time to recognize Mrs Theresa manzi she is a fundraising rock star she really really is uh this year the arathon it is true yeah the arathon fundraiser uh raised over forty two thousand dollars in part to Mrs mancy and all the arrowhead uh communities their their strong efforts uh Mrs manzi has a strong work ethic uh students and staff were treated to many fun events due to her unwavering efforts to attain our fundraising goals this year we had a glow party the kids love the lunch uh room cartoons are asking for it again the VIP breakfast and we are looking forward to the end of year

010at laser show we are so thankful to have Mrs manzi as one of our parents who works tirelessly to support our students school district and school so Mrs manzi thank you so much for everything and again you are a rock star [Applause] yep [Applause] Dr Roberts thank you so much for sharing just a few of the outstanding individuals that make Arrowhead an awesome school Community thank you to the the awardees here this evening certainly we couldn't do the great work that we do uh without your passion so thank you so much and next on the list we also have some other folks to to award we have Mr smink the athletic director to award M awards for athletic Excellence Mr smink thank you on behalf of the athletic department I want to call up Miss

011Joe Walker she's our tennis coach and then she's going to introduce two of our outstanding student athletes who are um back-to-back state champs and doubles and actually uh qualified three years ago to be in the state championship as well so she said we're going to call them up along with uh Miss Joe Walker well first of all thank you so much for giving this opportunity to recognize Hannah and Alice this was an amazing accomplishment um it's been so much fun to be able to be the coach during this time too you know last year I thought this is so exciting they won the states and then to do it again this year I was like this is awesome I could really get used to this so it takes a lot of hard work um Hannah

012now can I get you to sleep that really embarrass them now and stick them in front of you there you go um but it takes a lot of hard work obviously to get to the level to win a state championship but um both um Hannah and Alice have really put a lot of time into their tennis um since they were young and they've been very good friends since so together their chemistry as a doubles team was amazing and they were so much fun to watch um over the years together I'll just give you a quick um brief background as far as how this works so with tennis they play individually but then throughout the season you get a chance to uh participate in different tournaments singles doubles and so forth these two were like we've

013got to be together we you know for doubles they look forward to it it started a couple years ago three years ago they won our league then they won the District tournament and they just kept winning and winning and I was like wow they're going to do this but we lost a little bit in the finals but then they came back and then last year won the leagues came in first place again in the district and then they did it they won the state championship so then we get into this year and everybody's got everybody's got their eyes on them they want them right and they're they're play a little different they're feeling the pressure and I'm like you can do this and sure enough it was like it wasn't easy they earned it um

014but they made it all the way through I know they felt the pressure but they showed together as a team they really could pull together and win it I mean they work together as a team they were smart and they earned the state championship and that was exciting not only for our team but for the school district and the community so it's not something that happens all the time we're super proud of you thanks for all your hard work and a special thanks we've got their parents here tonight too Hannah's parents are here we even have a grandma in the house all the way from London tonight so there you go um luckily we have Hannah back next year but Alice unfortunately is graduating this year so we've had a magnificent run we'll miss you

015Alice we look forward to seeing everything you're going to do and we'll be cheering you on Hannah we're ready to do this again next year so again congrats girls foreign [Applause] thank you next on the agenda is my pleasure to introduce and to welcome the methactin coordinating Council the special education Alliance and the Holman School presentation and and members of the Holman School of ours our seven uh schools uh led by Ms Stover our MCC president please join us at the podium and please share with us all the awesome things that you're doing to help support our children and our school Community Mr Stover thank you Dr Zerby we might need to go back in a few slides stuff well you normally start from the beginning thank you um everybody here we are the methactin

016coordinating Council along with a special education Alliance and the methacton home and school associations to present to the myth Acton School Board tonight one thing that happened in the beginning of the school year one thing that is going to happen in the second half of the school year and one thing that meets each of our schools unique I am Gina Stover the president of the MCC and I would like to introduce our board members tonight as they're here with us Angela pushman is our VP right here we have Chrissy Roselle our secretary right here we also have Angela Steele our treasurer next slide please the methactin coordinating council is the MCC the primary purpose of the methactin coordinating council is to promote the advocacy of our educational purposes and to support the educational institutions within

017our school district the MCC is the umbrella Organization for all seven of our methactin home and schools associations along with our special education Alliance our seas our seven schools include our high school Arcola Skyview Arrowhead Eagleville Woodland and Worcester the mission of the MCC is to promote and support each educational institution within our district the MCC is also a 501c3 which is a non-profit that collaborates with our myth actin Administration on behalf of our association now let's turn it over to Angela pushman armathacton MCC vice president thank you all right so how does it work each of our seven schools has its own home and school board which is made up of parents home and school activities are coordinated by committees which are staffed entirely by parent volunteers who plan and host fun family oriented

018activities organize fundraisers and support Community projects we work hard to strengthen relationships between families and teachers and administrators every day to enhance our children's educational experience to learn more about your specific home and School Association all parents are welcome to attend our monthly meetings additionally home and school makes announcements about events and activities through constella now I will turn it over to Reba Mann with the methactin special education Alliance good evening my name is Reba Mann and I'm a member of the missactan special education Alliance which is a committee of the MCC currently co-chaired by Julie Stevens and Sandy Katz if anyone would like to stand up feel free the special education Alliance or SCA has set the standard in the Greater Philadelphia region for parent inclusion advocacy in public schools our committee is made

019up of parents and Guardians and an effect in school district with a mission to provide a network of support for parents and caregivers of students with developmental or physical disabilities the sca offers access to relevant information and education while providing opportunities to connect with other parents and caregivers we advocate for the collaboration among families School administrators Educators and professionals to Foster successful educational outcomes the sea is accessible and present throughout the district we attend each individual building's monthly home and school meetings as well as all of their back to school nights this past October we also provided additional parent access to the district's Administration and staff through our district-wide virtual special education back to school night we advocate for inclusion and collaboration across District departments and schools and have been instrumental in with Acton's participation

020in programs like Unified sports and Best Buddies the sca hosts presentations and workshops on important topics such as Pat Rydell's 10 myths about special education law and inclusion of students with disabilities and Sarah Ward's presentation on Executive function a significant way the sea enhances our network of support is by maintaining our membership in the PA inclusion Collective a collaborative effort across Suburban Philadelphia to promote inclusive education through advocacy by working collaboratively with the PA inclusion Collective we've provided Miss actin families with access to nationally recognized speakers professionals and Advocates such as Julie Coston Shelley Moore and Dan and Samuel Habib who recently wrapped up a truly inspired month-long series of presentations looking forward to special education Alliance is planning some presentations and fun family social events in the spring and after an exciting first season

021of Acton's participation in unified bocce ball this winter we're very excited to attend the methactin unified track team's events to continue to cheer on Armor fact and athletes the sca welcomes any family to participate in our mission benefit from our resources and attend our social events we've become a well-recognized parent advocacy group in the Greater Philadelphia area prompting families in multiple school districts to approach us to discuss our mission vision and values so that they can develop similar committees we're eager to continue our mission to provide support advocacy and inclusive opportunities to the mclacton school district community and now I'll turn it over to Heather Dewayne to present for Arcola hello my name is Heather Dewan I'm the president of Arcola home in school my vice president Michelle sparanza and our Treasurer Lisa Bruno and

022here with me tonight is Jessica our secretary thanks to our principal Mr Boudreau and a wonderful committee we had our first winter social that was a huge success that the students all came to in the beginning of December and then we are looking forward in June to the 8th grade social that will be held again at Northern Star Farm and we feel that Arcola is unique because students play a lot of organized Sports at clubs and Rec leagues but this is the first chance they get to represent their school at a sports team level so we thought that was unique and I'm going to turn it over to Kelly Mann from Arrowhead thank you good evening my name is Kelly Mann I am currently the president of Homan school at Arrowhead Elementary my fellow board

023members which three of them are here tonight vice president Teresa manzi um secretary Shannon ramali who's not here tonight recording secretary Sarah Agnew and Treasurer Aaron Cardwell this past fall the Arrowhead community came together and raised forty three thousand dollars for our arathon fundraiser all students enjoyed a glow dance party with the DJ for their tremendous success we are looking forward to a spring full of fun activities such as fun day field day and goodbye events for our fourth graders last week our third and fourth grade girls enjoyed a red carpet ball with their dad or special guy the evening included a red carpet entrance movie real theme photo booth dinner dancing and a lot of fun had by all Arrowhead is unique because we have a strong sense of community which was evident as

024we moved into our new building this year we have an amazing team of teachers and staff led by Dr Roberts we also have a parent community that goes above and beyond with planning and volunteering for events which continues to add to the success of our home and school and for that we are very grateful now I'm going to turn it over to Sarah Riley at Eagleville hello I'm Sarah Riley I'm the recording secretary for home and school there um standing near is um Beth Farrell the president and Jody kohar the vice president Noel Mullen the corresponding secretary and Tara Ryan shill is our treasurer um some of the things that we would like to share is that in in the fall Bob Kelly from Fox 29 featured the students in his series Kelly's classroom and

025recognition of their hard work and success during the readathon we are looking forward to family bingo night which is returning in April Eagleville is unique because as a title one school it's home and school raises a large number of funds that goes directly back to Eagleville families in need and now I'm going to turn this over to Gabby winters at methacton high school thank you hi my name is Gabby Winters and I'm co-president of the mythackton home in school with Susan D Medea who's here tonight I also have our vice president Katie shireman and our Treasurer Sophia Pham our two secretaries Deanna Reger and Jessica Fox couldn't make it um one thing we did in the fall is we hosted a Super luncheon for our staff um in November our families provide uh soup salads

026and breads um to show appreciation for our staff we are looking forward to recognizing our graduating seniors who are most improved since their freshman year so we look at the students transcripts to see who's really worked hard to um improve their performance here at the high school and the one thing that is uh definitely unique about uh the high school home and school is it's the first time that the home in school takes a back seat in planning activities for the students because of our amazing elementary schools Skyview Arcola and our club sponsors here at the high school our students are ready to host these events themselves we play more of a support role and we get to see how bright the future is here uh by seeing what our students do so thank you

027for this opportunity to tell you about mythackton home in school and I'm going to turn this over to Lauren pyres from Skyview hi there thank you Gabby my name is Lauren Pyers I am co-president of Skyview home and school my co-pres is Nicole Rittenhouse and as you can see she doesn't provide a picture she likes to be behind the scenes because she's not here this evening as well um I would like to thank larcina Johnson our VP as she is here this evening as well as Carolyn maniscako is our secretary and Gina stofer is our Treasurer Skyview started off strong right day one we had a big bang of a welcome sign right you have these all these new little fifth graders coming into this big school so we were really excited to to help

028them kind of maybe welcome them in we also are pretty proud of our Sky View strong which is our primary fundraiser and we were able to raise 23 000 for the home and school activities and that was spearheaded by uh Jen zavertnick um if you don't know her she is a pretty let me tell you a fierce woman to what she can do and what she can do by her yourself and she really spearheaded that for us so those funds are raised and helped raise some of the amazing things that you'll see for this continued building our you know community that Spirit uh through this year we already had our mad science um evening and we're going to be having our Bingo night coming up spearheaded by Gina as well as we'll have a movie

029night and Elmwood Zoo to continue that Community presence and then I guess what makes Skyvi unique is if you think about it right we've got these wonderful elementary schools you know kind of smaller that smaller feel coming into now Skyview now we're six almost 700 kids and it's really just helping to spearhead that community that that was built at the elementary school level and continuing that and being able to provide that through the home and school and and keeping that alive as they continue through their journey through our school so um thank you to the you know board for letting us do this and thank you for MCC for giving us the opportunity so thanks again okay Now to turn it over to Gina Sofer at Woodland Elementary School exactly that was an introduction um

030we are missing a few people tonight so Michelle um Ferrante is our Woodland home and school president and she's a little sick and under the weather so I will be presenting for her tonight um we have some board members here with us we have Chrissy Frizzell at Woodland Elementary she is one of our secretaries we have Kelly Parker we have Teresa and then we also have agada and they are also not pictured they're pictured but they are not here tonight with us so we appreciate them all so this uh fall the students at Woodland we did a readathon and we read over 52 000 minutes and raised over eighteen thousand dollars exceeding our goals in our annual readathon as a rewards the students were able to duct tape Dr Euchre to the wall by Angela

031pushman our VP from MCC here who also happens to be one of our phenomenal volunteers at Woodland it was the sight to see so if you didn't get to see that we will send you the picture of Dr Euchre we love you um the students are looking forward to pillows popcorn and pajamas um we're doing an American Idol theme and a scavenger hunt and it was actually started by Woodland's own teacher um Woodland is also unique because it's the home and uh to a variety of animals we have fish we have a snake Monty um with Mrs Geiss and the students enjoy feeding the fish and seeing Monty around the building some days um so now we're going to turn it over to Rosie cook at War sister thank you thank you Gina my name

032is Rosie cook I am the president at Worcester Elementary School um none of my fellow board members could be here today and didn't want me to give them one didn't want to give me a picture but I'm going to introduce them anyway um my treasure is Nikki Ferraro um our recording secretary is Bethany Coughlin our corresponding secretary is Jessica starrace and we are currently actually without a vice president our vice president unfortunately um passed away in the beginning of the school year her name was Jen Wales um so we have actually been down a board member all year um out of respect we chose not to replace Jen this year but I do have a couple of previous board members and parents in the audience hi Amy um so worcestor this year um this fall

033our students did our annual walkathon which really isn't a walkathon if you've ever been there they run uh so really she could be held a run-a-thon that number is actually wrong our students k-4 ran 9727 laps around our blacktop area and they raised over fifteen thousand dollars which is double the amount that we have raised in the past um which was great for us um we have a number of events coming up including our Bingo night um our school-wide dance and our science fair um the spring we were the recipients of a grant um through representative Matt Bradford's office so we are actually this summer going to be able to replace our playground um this spring and summer so the Westchester Community is looking forward to building new memories on that playground thank you Dr

034Zerby and the board for everything that you guys did to help us with that Grant everyone's really excited the fourth graders are a little bummed because they will miss it but they can always come back and play on it later um one of the things that makes Worcester unique is our partnership with our really amazing neighbors um the Meadowood Adult Community um aside from being our evacuation Zone um which I just learned this year apparently um we have actually reached out to them and we are getting several residents who are coming into our school either as guest readers as um kid writing helpers and this is a brand new thing and the kids love seeing these people um come in because they're different they're not parents but they're not their grandparents either and so our

035students have kind of created a relationship with their next-door neighbors which we did not intend but it's a really great thing to see um so I will turn it back over to Angela all right me again so we need you thank you for taking the time to listen to the methact and home and School Association please join the facton home of school home and School Association at your school today we need our parent volunteers we could not do this without you your participation is essential and appreciative for the continued success of all seven myth Acton home and school associations please join us and share your talents today thank you thank you for having us the board of Dr Zerby thank you [Music] [Applause] I just want to take a second to recognize all of you

036volunteers because I know how many hundreds of hours you spend on these events and for the kids and I I know the amazing impact you have for all of our students so thank you home and school volunteers and SCA for everything you do I think uh Madam president I think we owe them a standing ovation for their work [Applause] and and Liz not to uh to um you know I don't know Jinx anybody but since you are the school board president were you Woodland home and school president at one point Trump Treasurer president Arcola president MCC vice president okay so just uh watch out for everybody but I I know how hard I know how hard you work and uh how valuable it is because that's what makes School fun what you guys do and

037what makes kids want to you know go and attend things and um it's such an enhancement so thank you so much for coming out tonight foreign keep doing what you're doing keep making the investments into your children into all of our children and thanks for being Partners in making the methactin school district Community the best it can be thank you so much we are going to move on to the next item on the agenda which is another important announcement uh we do have uh pierogolini the executive director of the Education Foundation and a number of the board members here for a significant check presentations Ms Pierre galini thank you I'm so short I don't want to say another thing hi everyone thank you I have two quick announcements so you don't have to hear from

038me twice tonight uh real quick the grant cycle for the spring 2023 closes soon so we encourage all the teachers and staff to review our website and submit ideas and again the facton education dodgeball tournament at the high school is on March 26th this charity event focuses on bringing the whole Smith acting Community together and registration closes tomorrow so please visit our site withactimfoundation.org to sign up now here's the exciting news we are proud to present a check to the mathacton school district for 126 910 dollars [Applause] this donation includes support for the following programs a 3D printer at the high school Dr kralik applied for the added technology education in classroom a206 lavalier mics for the theater high school programs Miss Denise Naylor applied for this grant to accommodate the lead roles and help

039with the programs like Footloose which was very successful Miss Carrie stancus requested blue big blue blocks for Eagleville Elementary to have Imagination Playground blocks available for all students to play creatively during recess in addition when not in recess classrooms we'll have access to these blocks for Community team building events and use them as an academic subject like science math and social studies Mr David Bickel requested a modern band Grant at Skyview it will support the addition of electric bass into the curriculum allowing them to build a Rhythm Section which is the heartbeat of modern band a music technology student teacher collaboration monitor requested by Mr Eddie McCaffrey to support all students in Arcola participating in music classes as a part of the expressive Arts rotation students will use Technologies such as desktop desktop computers keyboards

040and audio-visual production to navigate project-based curriculum a news TV studio award to Arrowhead Miss Darlene balagher pearnak applied for this grant for students to have experience with journalism and producing a news program at Arrowhead students will sign up for roles in news broadcasts from anchor to reporter to behind the scenes work such as lighting and editing in addition to Weekly News the equipment will be available to all teachers as part of their projects and then in conjunction with the Montgomery County OIC we helped sponsor the HBCU spring break college tours additionally we also are supporting the plant planetarium Horizon Project with Mr Chantry and then this grant also includes our annual donation to support the myth actin backpack program our board of directors is very proud to support these programs and we thank all the

041teachers and staff who have applied and hope to bring extra opportunities to the students at methact I'd like to bring up some of our recipients and board members so we could take a picture that's okay Mr David bickles here miss Mary Fitzgerald Miss Denise Naylor Miss Liz Francesco and Miss Carrie stancus and these are some of the teachers and staff that applied to receive a grant this past fall so congratulations and then some of our board members are in attendance Miss Shannon peffer Mr Rudy roof Miss Betsy Techo Mr Gary Gallagher Mr Jim Beam Miss Christine steer and Miss Amy Smith so we also they're very helpful in both fundraising and deciding which grants can be approved so thank you all and [Applause] okay students [Applause] thank you [Music] thank you now gives me a

042pleasure to introduce uh Director of Business Services Mr Bricker to introduce our Bureau of veritas representative on our high school facilities assessment Mr Becker good evening as you know we went out to uh RFP to find someone to help us put update our facilities Assessment program and going through all that information we found that Bureau Veritas would be one of our best clients or best choices with this and right now to present this is Costa he works for Bureau Veritas and has been a lead on this project and we'll give an overview as to what we did and why with regards to this approach good evening everyone thank you Tim so um quick introduction my name is I represent Bureau Veritas my firm was uh hired by the school district to perform a facility condition

043assessment essentially it's to develop a long-term capital plan for the schools so so that the school board can understand what are the expenditures to keep the building standing in as this condition over the next 20 years next slide please so uh next slide so a quick introduction of who BB is we are a 200 year old firm uh our history starts uh from doing assessments uh during the spice trade era from the Europe uh to Asia onwards we purely uh specialize in doing building assessments and audits third-party audits so as to provide our clients impartial audit data on what the right information should be and educate our clients on what the right decision should be going forward next slide please uh the services that my firm offers uh goes throughout the life cycle of a

044given property so right from acquisition planning building to all the way to disposition of the facilities so we provide life cycle replacement uh solutions to our clients next slide so let's go over to project understanding as how we understood the project the goal over here was to understand what are the deficiencies and maintenance issues at the buildings what uh what are your short term and long-term uh investment requires as well as Cost needs for your school buildings to keep it standing what are your repair estimates and then ultimately helping the school board understand where exactly they should be spending the money so as to provide a Band-Aid solution as well as a long-term solution for the key problems next slide so let's go to approach um I'm going to spend few minutes talking about the

045approach so that everybody on the board as well as audience are familiar with how BB employees captured the information next slide so the methodology over here was we started with a kickoff meeting uh where we met with uh members of the school board to understand what their needs are we sent out pre-survey questioners to understand what are the key issues with the buildings uh followed by that we had our individuals from uh our firm walk around all the schools all the seven buildings over here uh capture information regarding the buildings different components roof mechanical systems electrical systems come up with what the different conditions are understand what the cost is associated with replacing them or repairing them and then pushing the data into a capital planning tool so as to generate reports which can be

046useful for our schools one of the key reports that comes out of that is called the facility condition index which we'll be focusing on as part of today's presentations next slide so as part of the data collection our guys collected information on iPad service so that we could have a standardized data collection for all the schools we were able to capture a lot of information through means of photographs as well as capturing make model serial number of different mechanical systems and electrical systems for the schools uh next slide uh while going through the buildings we were looking at different conditions and this is just an example slide of how we determine the conditions for a given component like what is excellent versus what's good versus what's fair versus what's poor versus what is failed so

047essentially every component in your building like right now we are sitting in an auditorium when you look around everything has a life and once a component comes to the end of its useful life the school has to budget an amount to replace those items and hence all those things rolled up together form a capital plan for a school next slide uh we can actually skip this slide because it's a bunch of animations uh ultimately it's shows how we do the prioritization and skip the slides okay let's go over the findings of our reports next slide uh what you're looking on the screen is uh the list of facilities that we had inspected and what is the approximate replacement value in a scenario where if you decide to rebuild the buildings in its current state what

048would be the replacement value for each of your facility so uh clearly the high school is around 119 million in its current state not as a modern building but what it's going to cost you in a current state to rebuild the school next slide uh what you're seeing on the screen right now are your 10-year needs for all your buildings so if you look at it uh the your expenditure for all your buildings comes to around 150 million dollars over the next 10 years you have attacked in high school itself comes to around 97 million dollars over the next 10 years and now these include a number of different expenditure arising from mechanical systems coming to Denver's useful life roofs coming to tend of its useful life your envelopes having issues as well as side

049parking Etc so it's a very thorough and uh all-inclusive assessment uh what you're looking on the screen is only for the first 10 years as it's a good way of seeing a screenshot of what are your needs and what are your upcoming expenditure for the school district next slide please now let's talk about facility condition index uh what you saw in the prior slide was a bunch of numbers that show you what are your expenditures coming up for your school right but the question is what's good versus what's bad right ultimately one has to make a decision of how great a condition my building is so that I can make a decision about how much more money I can invest in the building or I should start looking into Redevelopment of the facility so that's

050where the facility condition index comes into play uh which is essentially a ratio of your your repair items divided by your total investment or sorry total replacement value of the school so what would be your cost to rebuild the school and if that ratio is anything above 60 percent it kind of tells you that you are at a point of time where you should really start thinking about should I go for a new building right if it's anything about 30 percent it is at a point where you have exceeded threshold of I need to really start investing into a major gut rehab after building anything between 5 to 10 percent is considered as fair so consider analogy of a car right if you're there's a point of time when you decide I'm not going to

051do any more oil changes I'm just going to go and get a new car because this is expensive it's the same concept over here once your ratio crosses 60 percent the red flags start going up where you need to start thinking about uh rebuilding the school or complete a rehab so having said that let's go to the next slide and look at the results that we have come up with so if all your buildings in your current State metactine High School is around 14.2 percent in its current state that is today okay so that means it's in fair condition right within three years the high school is coming up to a 54.8 percent which is alarmingly very high coming close to 60 percent where you might start thinking about uh rebuilding the school and within

052five years it crosses their threshold similarly the administrative building is coming to that point within the first five years and by the end of 10 years it will be hitting around 37.6 percent and as you can see on the screen uh today we are purely going to focus on the mat actor High School talk more about it and uh later on in the future presentations we can go to other schools next slide please uh let's talk about high school today next slide keep going next slide okay so what you're looking on the screen right now are the four zones uh for engineering analysis purposes uh that we divide the school into Zone one zone to zone three and zone four uh the nature in which the zones have been created is directly in line with

053the age of that part of the building Zone one is the oldest part of the building and if I'm not wrong we are right now in zone one that's where the auditorium itself is zone two is predominantly your main Athletic Zone your gymnasium is there zone three and zone for your academic parts of the building and uh we are we are breaking this into four different zones so that you can really analyze and see which part of your buildings are in more need as compared to the other buildings next slide so when you look at the different zones over here you can clearly see the Zone one which we are standing in right now uh has a needs or FCI score of 33.7 so which in the current day it's 33.7 uh within three years

054it's going to hit 63.5 and within 10 years it's almost 65.4 percent so the question comes is like why is this Zone that bad right uh why is this Zone uh asking for such a high investment as compared to other zones so when we do a facility condition assessment we look at a number of different items which are uh cause classified as deficiencies in a part of the building so in this scenario Zone one has HVAC system which has uh inherent issues with it now uh the current building is run as a two pipe system so either it can heat or cool it can't do both at the same time so the question comes why it's the nature of the system of how it was designed earlier in the Years uh there was a time

055April 15 used to come and used to switch over from heating to Cooling and October 15 used to be the classic day when used to switch over from cooling to heating but right now as you can see we are in February and it's almost Springtime right which is unheard of so the climate change weather change these play a big effect on how the buildings should be heated and cooled and the buildings are not uh following the trend of how the weather is uh outside sorry how the outside weather is influencing the inside temperature and which is causing a lot of hot spot and cold spot across the building further we also figured out that uh the labs on the uh second floor of the Zone one were not meeting the ADA requirements so that needs

056to be redesigned the uh the locker rooms were not ADA Compliant so that needed to be redesigned so whenever you look at the building and whenever you're looking at Major expenditure you have to make sure that the schools are ADA Compliant in all six so those are the big items ticket items where we are clearly seeing that uh currently the school is deficient on similar items are also seen in zone two uh is this pool in the zone tree I keep forgetting the swimming pool is in zone three zone two forget me so the swimming pool is in zone two we had we have issues with a pool as well with water leaks uh from the foundation so that is causing some issues over there so again a lot of intrinsic challenges to the schools

057HVAC systems as well as uh a lot of things as associated with the nature of the building itself not nothing with how it is being maintained but it's purely as the systems are coming to an end of its useful life and uh in the current standard they're considers deficient next slide uh what you're looking on the slide is purely and a graph that shows you how your expenditure gets piled on right the blue color uh bar chart is the current needs uh gray color is the Deferred one which means that what happens if you don't expend the money in the current year right it gets added on now we are using an inflation rate of around four percent uh which is industry-wide accepted range of inflation and as you can clearly see that in 2024

058your expenditure is coming as high as like 40 percent of your FCI like efci score goes for around 40. and it's steadily increases over the time so uh it kind of shows the urgency and requirement of expending money towards fixing the issues in the building right now next slide uh I I think I talked about this slide before but uh these are the area of areas which we identified as a major Focus areas where your expenditure is going to come up your HVAC is a big chunk of money around 28 million uh your electrical system is around 15 million which includes lighting and other aspects your Roofing your all your roofs on this school building are coming to the end of its useful life some of them are already past their useful life and uh

059it it's almost going to be a 13 million dollar expenditure on that you're fixing up the pool is going to be around 4.3 million your accessibility uh requirements are around 2.7 million and uh your interior modifications so that your classrooms uh meet the state minimum sizing is going to be around 18 million dollars so these are some of the key projects for the high school that we have identified as a third party consultant to highlight the needs of the facility okay next slide so uh in conclusion uh the high school has been built in different phases similar to hundreds of other high schools in the country every high school has been built in different phases right your main challenges are humidity control HVAC system is outdated uh your classrooms in zone one don't meet the

060state minimum requirement the auditorium that we are standing in right now is uh badly for 300 students whereas the student population is around 1200 students so your Auditorium is small your audio visual systems are need are in a need of upgrade they have exceeded the useful life your pool is having issues with almost 15 000 gallons of water leaking every year sorry every day and based on all this uh items we believe that it's time to look into if there's a major rehab to be undertaken or a decision regarding the future of the school so that's that's from our side thank you thank you Cal State for for that uh summary presentation uh I should remind the board that as I mentioned last week when we had the the pool presentation that uh these reports

061will be made available to you and for your review as well as the administration's review and uh and we'll do that uh up and through likely uh April of this year uh with the hope that uh once it's thoroughly reviewed and you as board members are are okay with it the administration can recommend it uh for adoption that we would do so in April and then take upon ourselves uh to develop the master plan similar to the same sequence that we did back in 2016 where we received the reports we then developed the master plan and the schedule for addressing matters it likely will also include you know further discussion uh as uh as mentioned here this evening we may be challenged with making determinations as to whether or not we're making Renovations or uh

062you know possibly some new construction or a combination of the two those are things that we're gonna need to probably consider sometime in the near future or at least gathering information associated with that in order to make the best decisions uh for the long term of the Acton School District not only here in the high school but in all of the uh facilities not only the seven school buildings but the other auxiliary facilities that we have so with that said let's take an opportunity for members of the board to my left for any questions sir for constip Ms Graf yes hi hello this was really good presentation I thought it was well laid out and fairly straightforward um I just had one I had I had one question and I don't know if you can

063explain this on the fly so I apologize if I try if you go back um to the slide that has the the four zones on it yes with the circle in red um if you look at the 10-year um timing each Zone I would say like the worst case zone is Zone one with a 65.4 yeah how does that translate if you go to if you go back two more slides to the 71.9 percent that is the overall High School FCI great question so the 71.5 for 10 years is cumulative for all the zones as well as the ancillary buildings and so if you look at Zone one your uh approximate square feet is 93 000 square feet and uh the replacement value is around 380 dollars a square feet in its current state right

064not as a modern school but if you decide to rebuild so whatever it comes to around 35 million dollars as a replacement so what we are saying is within 10 years it will be approximately 65 percent of 35 million so if you add all those numbers right it comes to around 70 percent 70 what is 77 1.5 so 71 of the value of the current value of the high school current value of the high school is that a 119. 119 million yeah okay so um okay I just have to do the math because that just those numbers I would have thought that they would have been closer I didn't understand how the high school valuation number is higher than any of the individual zones does that make sense to you so if you do the

065summation over here 35 Plus 43 plus 25 plus 15 uh plus the football restrooms and uh snack bar it it does come to 119. so that that's total comes to 119 so but if I add up the 65 of 35 right plus 33.6 right if I add them up how am I getting a bigger percentage of 119 million so it's 33.6 of 43 million it's you won't do the summation of 65 plus 33 40 no you're doing 65 percent of 35 million 33.6 of 43 million 46.2 of 25 million and 42.3 or 15 million okay and so once you do that some product you will land at the same number as that thank you no problem thank you Mrs Graf anyone else uh to my right uh Ms Drummond I just I know that you

066said that um that many components are coming to the end of life soon and so is that what causes um for example in zone three a jump from current zero percent to 39.4 is it just that things are like warranties are expiring or things are being calculated to come to the end of the way life because I just am curious about how it jumps um so far so fast Zone 3 is relatively a newer building I think it's a 2002 built if I'm not wrong zone so relatively in a better shape as compared to other parts of the school there are certain parts of the zone three which are already having four pipe system which means simultaneously Heating and Cooling is feasible but again in general uh the cost that gets added up over there

067are things such as Lighting systems which are coming to the end of its useful life the school did a retrofit of lighting where I think they got some Grant and they replace the light bulbs but the fixture itself has a life right so uh we estimate the fixture will last one it does six to eight years maybe 10 years but it will soon come to a point where your fixtures will come to the end of his useful life there are things such as fire safety items which uh I think zone three doesn't doesn't have a sprinkler system there the school is like so many different zones that it's sometimes it's convulating like understanding which zone is what but there are things such as fire sprinkler system which is missing which is standard in schools right

068HVAC system is coming to the end of its useful life which uh in terms of not being compatible with the four Zone systems lighting system coming to the end of its life those are the items along with the roof so the roof typically has a 20-year life and 2002 we are in 2023 now so we are point where you know we have past that stage where you need to replace a roof otherwise once a leak start it's like you are just doing a catch-up at that point so okay so really it's a function of everything that was built together is kind of coming to the end of its useful life together and that's why in a certain period of time typically 20 to 25 years is a timeline where most of your engineering components will

069come to the end of its useful life that's when you start looking into replacement including your floor tiles paint ceiling tiles Etc thank you Mr chairman anyone else to my right see no other questions again uh Miss calstaff thank you so much for your work we'll be back in touch and as I mentioned earlier uh we'll continue to review these documents and have discussions uh among the board uh with a timeline to adopt the and accept these as uh uh as the report here here in April thank you thank you thank you madam president that ends the presentations our guests and scheduled speakers this evening okay thank you Dr desert on to reports um we have do we have Miss Washington for Dei report yes oh sorry I didn't see you I'm sorry I'm a

070little short hope you can hear me all right I am pleased to share with you the updates for the month of February um so this past month and this is probably the highlight of the month we invited very important voices into our implementation of social emotional learning and trauma-informed care that's led by Dr ingstadt and members of the administrative team at both Arcola and Smith Acton High School administration hosted a student voice day where approximately 40 students at both schools spent a day with Tom Stecker and his associates as well as staff members in their schools to learn about social emotional learning and share their feedback on school climate and so our students shared how much they value being in school and they learned how they can be leaders in their buildings to support a

071positive School climate our students also shared feedback on how the staff members in their buildings can support them they were trauma-informed and social emotional lens and the lessons and discussions that occurred during student voice day mirrored what Ed Garrity had presented in their school-wide assemblies that were held in January in addition to this day it provided opportunities for staff members to work with their small groups to listen to student feedback about their aspirations for their school and there will be follow-up meetings in both schools to review the students feedback and aspirations and together they will develop an action plan to support our students and staff to foster a positive School climate that focuses on student belonging and engagement also this month the curriculum office asked me to present at our school district's most recent in-service

072day um the topic of my presentation was creating a supportive classroom climate and more than 50 staff members attended the sessions that were offered in the sessions we talked about what a positive School climate looks like integrated social emotional learning and provided time for educators to share achievements and opportunities teens of growth with each other so I'm thankful for the opportunity from our office of curriculum and instruction and assessment and I look forward to continuing to support our staff that work directly with our students daily um it's also important to know that this work cannot and is not done alone the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit hosted their second diversity equity and inclusion and social emotional learning community of practice Workshop the purpose of this new working group is to provide support in professional development opportunities

073for other practitioners across the county that lead the work of equity access and belonging in their school districts and this group also provides opportunities for collaboration sharing information about new resources and Gathering tools to bring back to our school districts and communities I also want to add that I am grateful for our seven building Liaisons our school connection teams building principals and District leadership that continue to support this work because this work is continuous and it requires thought partners and supporters so I also want to thank Mr Regina and Dr engstadt for always making it a priority to meet weekly and help guide this work thank you very much um yes Miss Reese I don't want to put Miss Washington on the spot but now you've been here a couple months so um I just

074I just have two quick things I was thinking is that me sorry I apologize maybe I was too loud too close is that better um um I was looking at all the Fantastic home and school volunteers that we had here and I I don't want to put more on their plates and I know that you work very closely with the building principles but I was just wondering I could see that being a great marriage one day of talking to possibly those wonderful people at their uh Council one time I just thought to myself just that whole thing and you said the next thing I was going to say you mentioned the mciu and I have lots to report about the mciu tonight but um and they're all the wonderful things they're doing there to help

075people learn and grow and I had the privilege of having some networking time with some of the other school board directors and I was sitting down with the director from Lower Marion and I I find them to be in the Forefront you know um of of a lot of this fantastic work and she was talking about the how Dei is Ever Changing to help people just understand and grow as a 50 year old I am learning every day and they were bringing up the idea of the the of belonging that everyone is trying to add that word belonging in and I just wanted to share that because you mentioned it and I think that's what all this is about and seeing all those phenomenon volunteers from all of our buildings and you know seeing our

076our tennis players and our our students that come play here I just I loved that that they were including that because I still think we are working on helping our community understand and I just don't know how we can incorporate that and I don't want to certainly do your job because you're the you're the expert but that idea of adding the word belonging because that I felt is something I learned so I want to thank you since you thanked Mr Regina and all and and and Dr Eng said and Dr Zerby for helping our our school district learn and grow in this area thank you even for not even what six months not even I think so yeah okay we're good yeah thank you but um it just was a big topic of us before

077our meeting just sitting around and talking about how we're learning this in Montgomery County you know in general thank you yes Miss Perdue Alexis thank you for the presentation and information shared I did um in reference to the student voice day I believe you said 40 students participated at both Arcola and the heists are so 40 each yes do you know how the students were selected yeah it was uh really at random um so the building principles worked with their school connection teams they also worked with their counselors they looked at the list of the students that they have and asked the teachers in their buildings who are students of positive influence who also have an ear of the building and trying to make it as open as possible so there were students representing every

078different group possible we will try to host more that way we can do a reset and get maybe 40 other students and maybe some of the same students back as well that was going to be my next question whether you plan to host another one I think is really great and I'm looking forward to hearing maybe some of the action plan that gets put in place I'm sure you received a lot of input I know our students are very well um well spoken and always willing to share information with us on their needs but I'm looking forward to hear and I'm I'm glad to hear there was a follow-up or there will be a follow-up and an action plan so hopefully we can hear more about about that one of my other parts was in

079reference to the building Liaisons because I know that's something new that we put in I haven't heard much about how that's going and I was glad you mentioned that I just wanted to hear from your perspective how that's supported um the work that you're doing with the district yeah um I actually I appreciate the that model and Lower Marion has a similar one with the building Liaisons it helps to filter down what's occurring from The District's level with Administration where we do have representation from cabinet level down to the building so that we all are following the same Mission so it's a work in progress It's it's new for everyone um right now we're all centering on this focus of student and staff wellness and trying to mirror that but it's it's working and it

080is a model that a lot of the other districts seem to be following and it's working pretty well yep anyway all right thank you and we're good okay thank you very much um next is the mciu MS Reese um because of the way the meetings fall I've had two meetings since our last board meeting I won't go into detail about every single thing but we met on January 25th and we met on February 22nd both meetings normal board business couple highlights we did have our audit and the Auditors uh went through no problems there's a couple districts that are up for re-election of their person it's not methactin I've already mentioned that the budget this is the first time that there's been an increase in three years um on a fundraiser note um the mciu

081Education Foundation does have a Golf Classic so any golfers out there Monday May 15th it's really is a wonderful program I know I've already talked about their casino night um but uh it was actually a lot of fun so if we have golfers but the biggest thing I want to share um and it is really it's sometimes you know when we think about health care we're so lucky to have so many amazing hospitals in the area right well I have said this before we are so lucky to have the um Montgomery County IU in our area and um I have it from the report but I just took it right from the newspaper um I just want to read a little bit of this the mciu has been awarded a 7.2 million dollar four-year Grant

082by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration this is a highly competitive project aware Grant it is amazing the IU will receive 1.8 million dollars for four years um and it's only been awarded to 20 entities across the whole United States um and the the idea is to develop a sustainable infrastructure for school-based mental health programs and services um suicide awareness training Etc we are so lucky to have the reach program but there is more Mental Health uh needed for for lots of people and that one of these ideas what parts of this grant is to create a database because there is such limited you know uh literally sometimes when people are looking for help they're given a piece of paper with some names on it and the waiting lists are long so it's

083just really really phenomenal and a credit to the staff at the IU who helped write this grant so we will be hearing more um about accessibility to this in the future but um it's it's just a real positive thing for everybody in our community because there's methactin but there's all the communities that we're next to and all the people that we are children and our staff where they uh are surrounded by different people of different needs all over so it's a really huge deal and I will share any more information as I get it thank you Miss Reese any questions okay um and next we have North monco Tech which I was able to attend um and um highlights from that was a budget presentation there was a proposed 4.1 percent increase from each of

084the sending school districts which is in line with the Act 1 Index this is primarily driven from several Staffing changes due to added programs North macotech hired a new mechatronics teacher after an extensive search this is a very much in-demand program so we are really glad that this teaching position has now been filled there is a classic or well car show if you have an awesome car on April 22nd that is sponsored by the north monco Educational Foundation it's Saturday April 22nd from 11 A.M to 2 p.m and you can enter your car enjoy food trucks see awesome cars and participate paid in Raffles and 50 50 drawings and then we also we actually kicked off the meeting by recognizing our student of the month our very own Erica sincere who is our school board

085representative here [Applause] thank you and Erica wowed the board with her video on her culinary accomplishments and aspirations and we were just so proud of her and to to watch how she's um just learning everything she she can at monco so it was great to see Erica it was really great to see you there um so that is all I have for North monco Tech now it's time for the student oh yes do you know if the mechatronics instructor have they started yet or when would they start they I believe they started the day of the meeting um yes they have started no thank you just because I know that was a hard course to fill and I know many Obama's acting students are in there and actually having a really wonderful time with that

086course and um so I'm happy to see that they were able to staff it thank you you're welcome um yes student representative reports we have Joey Shaw and Erica sincere good evening everyone to begin the second marking period of the 2022-2023 school year officially concluded on January 27th additionally this actin hosted its semi-formal dance for freshmen and sophomores on February 3rd regarding Sports and with Acton the unified Bocce team competed in the Montgomery County championships against possgrove High School on the 21st as usual basketball performs well with the boys team concluding a successful season on the 24th against Westchester Henderson High School and District playbacks the girls basketball team also ended their Triathlon season with a loss in their District playback game against Conestoga on the 25th on top of that the methactin cheerleading team

087participated in PAC championships on February 4th receiving second place the udhs last chance meet occurred on the 14th for the boys and girls swimming teams as well lastly The Varsity wrestling team held its senior night celebration on February 8th congratulations to all these teams and players swing sports are also on the rise as boys Frosty track is hosting its first reading of the spring season on the 22nd in addition to that the boys lacrosse team hosted its first practice on the 8th as for other events the loose the musical was performed on February 23 24th and 25th along with that MHS will host a student blood drive on March 2nd any students of age 16 or older will have the opportunity to donate blood during the school year thank you good evening to start off

088the date of prom has been announced this year and it will be held at Sheraton in Valley Forge on Friday April 28th tickets will be sold from March 20th to the 24th ticket cost is 90 a ticket and will be sold during all lunches after March 24th the prices of tickets goes up to 100 and they will only be sold during The Home Room students are full-time Tech can buy their tickets from the East Wing athletic office from 7 30 a.m until 3 P.M the same date process this as before anyone who is interested in the Red Cross Club please seek out Mrs Thompson with Thaxton school nurse on Tuesday manython on Tuesday manython held their annual student assembly students were taught about many thought and had to participate thank you very much um now

089we have communications Miss Kelly good evening 13 with Acton high school students have been named finalists in The National Merit Scholarship competition the program recognizes students from across the entire nation who exhibit exceptional Scholastic achievement arcola's math counts team recently completed in the Valley Forge chapter competition and won first place math counts is a national middle school math competition two Arcola students also placed in the top four at the individual level giving them the opportunity to compete at the state level next month some exciting news through the district's office of Community Education planetarium director Mr Adam Chantry LED 20 laser light shows over five days and welcomed 508 guests the laser light shows featured an Eclectic soundtrack of classic hits across musical genres our guests had a terrific time and we can't wait for the

090laser light shows to return next year tickets are still available for March 15th 7 PM planetarium show the 5 30 show is sold out go to methactin.org planetarium for additional information to buy your tickets and finally this month we celebrated school resource officer Appreciation Day on February 15th and school bus driver Appreciation Day on February 22nd our school resource officers and school bus drivers like all of our staff serve as important members of arm effect and team we appreciate their efforts each and every day thank you very much thank you Miss Kelly and now our superintendent's report Dr Zerby thank you madam president uh listed on the agenda are a number of advisements plus I have one other announcements so in an effort to uh in an effort to continue with providing an exceptional Moncton

091School District experience and through the leadership of this board the methacna school district began preparing for a five-year renewal of a food service contract by enlisting the help of students staff and parents this process included the Gathering of student and staff feedback site visits food sampling sessions and more the engagement in this process was purposeful in our quest to move our current food service ranking from a c plus to an A plus as part of the review process students and staff at mathacton visited other local districts and observed tasted and experienced other options we received an overwhelmingly positive response from students and staff one noteworthy comment is that all of these locations had as an example a coffee bar with products similar to that which can be found at Wawa or Dunkin Donuts I guess

092it's called Duncan anymore I still remember those Dunkin Donuts anyhow more important students recognize the value of having access to higher quality foods one key element added to the RFP application process that that methactin has submitted will seek to have a vendor supplied a chef alongside with our cooks and line workers to provide an opportunity to increase quality and variety of foods served across all buildings in the district a committee of students staff and home and school Representatives will meet in early April to assist us with the review of the RFP and to select the winning vendor to service our schools and fact and for the next five years that ends my report thank you Dr survey any questions okay um now it is time for public comment on board action items this is an

093opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be decided upon as outlined on the agenda the board asks that you keep your comments to three minutes or less and we may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of the comments on board action items please state your name and municipality yeah Jim Alec Worcester um payment the bills how much money in the payment of the bills was for improving test scores here at the district I know you like improving the food Dave that was one of the niche things but how much money did you put towards improving the test scores that were down 30 percent if you can give me that answer and you can email it to me I'm going to talk about the fact and construction companies 1.1 million dollar

094planetarium that's 9gc21 that's on the agenda the seating all right now the seating that you guys are purchasing for 54 Grand is that the part of your discussion you have with Mr Chantry when you told him to think big go big is it is that it get the most expensive seats we can find is that the game plan um my calculations are I heard there's 60 seats going in 54 000 for the seats that's a thousand a seat Mr Chancery went pretty big did you get any other bids any competitive bids for the 60 seats at a thousand bucks a pop and what are they massage chairs heated air conditioned a thousand bucks a seat see when it's not your money it's easy to waste that's the problem and nobody seems to watch it it

095just you know guys just do what you want my opinion is you need to not go big you need to get more bids okay the crossing guard ten thousand dollars for a Crossing Garden I sat at a finance committee meeting or either that or the property committee meeting where Mr McGinnis wanted to extract money from the church who's actually helping you guys find parking for the students he wants to make sure the church pays their fair share of the 10 grand so I thought maybe I'd clue you in onto some etiquette the church is helping you out the church is doing you a favor helping you find parking for your students the church applied for a variance actually I think it was last night to help you take care of your students that's not the

096way to treat somebody who is trying to help you take care of your students you should be thanking them not sending them a bill to pay their fair share the church is saying they want donations they're not charging anybody anything and the donations are going to be for the wear and tear on their life are you going to pay for the wear and tear in their lot so I'm for the 10 grand for protection of the kids I'm not for harassing the people at the church thanks any other comments on board action items this evening oh I can stand cool well yeah I can't okay no sorry I'm sure wait a minute sure I can't I should have left it okay can you guys hear I'm sorry I run into this all the time I

097was gonna go out okay it goes out sorry thank you for that okay learn something new tonight okay all right Sheila Smith Lower Providence can you guys hear me okay okay there are certainly much to celebrate tonight it was great to see the speakers however there must be balance and transparencies I have some questions and comments regarding the following board option auctions the the pool and the high school the Ada law took effect in 1972. how is it a problem now the American and Disabilities Act does not require districts to structurally alter bleachers built before 1992 so long as the district provides program access to wheelchair users so what have we been doing all these years to provide access over the years excuse me this is for public comment on board action items this was

098in the board this was so you stopping my time this was in the agenda and this was in the material from last week so this is what the pool is with the presentation and within the budget so it is within that so it's in there it's not an action item for this evening it was a presentation uh last week so the the time to speak on this would be during courtesy of the floor well I don't because you because you was playing then I don't understand because this was the presentation and it's embedded in all because I went through the agenda and all the community um the committee members and this was discussed so at the committee members start interrupt it's the action items items that are being voted on at the meeting tonight so

099what items are being voted on because I'm looking right at your agenda right now items uh after item seven were on public comment now anything being voted on would be your minutes item eight fiscal items nine and so on until the end of the meeting I'm sorry could you repeat that for me sure it's I the vote the voting items on the agenda tonight the action items are the things that the board will be voting on which are the minutes which is item eight fiscal items and then Personnel items uh curriculum and programs policy and then the other items so this is uh if you have a comment on anything being voted on that would be for now and then just any comments on any other matters including presentations would be during the courtesy of

100the floor at the end okay thank you for the plan queue anybody else for public ation items foreign Douglas white Lower Providence you are voting on the extension for the school bus with first student tonight is that correct thanks for the opportunity to speak to the Stockton School Board my name again is Douglas white I'm a long time resident both Chester and Montgomery counties I've served on both the EAC and historical Commission in Schuylkill Township I'm presently in the Lower Providence EAC chair of the sustainable clean energy Commission I'd strongly encourage the board to renew and extend the contract with first student to provide safe transport of methactan students for additional five years I applaud the school board for choosing to lease rather than to own and maintain our school buses I believe schools should

101be in the business of teaching rather than running a bus company we all trust that the buses are mechanically safe and sound as they require annual inspections but ensuring the safety of the air quality inside the bus is another matter I didn't know this but there are no emissions requirements for diesel-powered school buses I'll say that again there are no emissions requirements for any diesel-powered school bus so a new legislation which we mandated in 2027 is for that's for new buses only so I'll make available to you and anyone who wants it an eye-opening diesel exhaust school buses and Children's Health I have 10 copies I'd be happy to to give to pass them out tonight the report includes sometimes exhaustive studies of diesel related pollution over the last 23 years singularly one report might

102not seem terribly impactful but cumulatively except sub subjecting students and drivers to dangerous pollution too many times with sometimes fatal results is quite alarming and needs to be addressed uh some of the studies show direct relationships between diesel pollution and things like asthma athletic and academic performance elevated risk of lung cancer and on and on and on math scores and actually lowered English and math scores for those who don't ride in diesel-powered buses there's an advocacy advocacy group called mothers and others for clean air and they consider riding in a diesel-powered school bus as harmful as smoking cigarettes for children it's kind of amazing now you may know you may or may not know the first student Prides itself as being at the Forefront of transitioning their fleets to Reliable and safe electric power buses

103on their website it's it's happening across the world and the U.S taking the lead by providing five billion dollars for cleaner buses and the infrastructure to support that I'd encourage the board to not just contract with first student for the buses but to make replacing the oldest and most dangerous buses a priority to protect our children thank you for your comments pardon me thank you for your comments time's up did you want to leave those copies thank you part of my speech so you're voting on our student so that was part of my speech so I'm back okay okay so I just started over again it won't be that long okay so um please state your name again then Sheila Smith Lower Providence so to summarize the borders opt-in to go with the more expensive

104provider leading to an increase of 75 000 a year despite our year-over-year decrease in enrollment and increase in student drivers and an increase in parent drop-offs I was wondering where we stand on the August 2021 audit that identified non-compliance and significant internal deficiencies school safety bus driver requirements Transportation operations where we're using the same provide our first student where are the service level agreements and how is the contract going to be monitored how are you controlled and manage additional cost costs if they add the electric fans the presentation states that the electric buses prices are not included nor do I see how the board is addressing concerns raised by taxpayers who send their children to private schools I don't understand why Equitable accommodations are not being made for those students and taxpayers thank you thank

105you hello my name is Julia nakui I live in Lower Providence I've emailed this to the board previously I'm repeating this here for emphasis you're considering renewing your contract with first student for five years I applaud you for potentially having electric fans in the future but was disappointed that the possibility of electric school buses was dismissed is there a way that you can structure the contract to leave open the possibility of electric school buses my understanding is that this extension would put us to 2029 a lot is going to change between now and then and leaving the option to have electric school buses would help prepare methactin for the future the high cost of electric school buses was given as the reason to rule them out but that does not take into account that there

106are lots of Grants and subsidies out there to Electrify school buses in addition the maintenance cost of electric school buses are much less than Diesel and electric vehicles are much more efficient than diesel therefore the lifetime cost of an electric School Bus compared to a diesel bus is a much different story than just looking at the initial cost alone and is something that should be researched another more compelling reason to move to Electric school buses is that it is much better for the health of our students who are particularly vulnerable because they take more breaths their hearts beat faster and their organ systems are still growing the diesel pollution inside the school bus is much higher than outside the bus meaning our children are being exposed at a higher rate than many people realize diesel

107pollution causes many issues including coughing nausea headaches asthma cancer damages it damages the lungs and the Heart it decreases academic performance and decreases athletic performance these are just some some of the problems caused by diesel fumes that switching to Electric school buses would help solve additionally bus drivers love driving electric school buses they are much quieter allowing them to better monitor behavior on their school bus we know there is a bus driver shortage and improving their job quality would help retain and attract drivers one more consideration is that electric school buses are much better for the planet using diesel fuel contributes to climate change which we have already seen the effects of with hurricane Ida as well as this eerily warm winter these children will be living in a future where climate change is more

108and more of a problem many children are already anxious about what their future will look like due to climate change moving to Electric school buses will send a signal to these children to let them know their school district is taking action to help combat climate change for these reasons I would like to ask you to consider ensuring that electric school buses are an available option in your renewed contract with first student looking at their website I do see that they have an electric School Bus program please consider exploring this option thank you for taking this into consideration thank you I don't think I need that thank you [Music] Brian Earnshaw Lower Providence first regarding the planetarium there was discussion at last week's work session about the funding for the planetarium project I think it's important

109to acknowledge that even though the district is only funding 200 out of the 1.1 million dollar cost that substantially all the other sources of funding is coming from taxpayers whether that's state taxpayers or federal income taxpayers uh so you you need to be good stewards of all taxpayer dollars regardless of the source uh at last week's meeting the board president reference The Rittenhouse astronomy club or something like that um could you provide information on that and are they all local methactin residents or are they coming from the outside and if they're from the outside are they being charged any sort of fees to use the planetarium and again I would ask what are the educational benefits of laser light shows how the planetarium regardless of the attendance figures regarding the transportation contract extension I encourage

110the board to vote against this renewal that may be the right decision but it's not the right decision now the contracts is being extended a year early first student requested the extension did anybody ask why what do they know that you don't first student has not always been a good partner to the district if you recall at the beginning of the school lockdown due to covid the district is required to make a payment of several hundred thousand dollars which the only explanation was so we can try to retain our drivers my view at the time that was similar to an extortion payment so I'd really think about first Jordan the value they are bring as a partner no bids have been obtained on this contract extension approving this contract is essentially you'd be approving a

111no big contract with a value of 40 million dollars over its life there's been a lot of comparison of rates paid in this contract to other districts let's just want only one contract aspect there's not been a full and complete comparison of contracts between districts something that needs to be done to make sure you're comparing Apples to Apples this proposed extension includes significant increases eight percent in years one and two each of years one and two four and a quarter percent in each of the next four years again bids should probably uh be obtained so you can evaluate with the reasonableness of those increases there's been a lot of discussion briefly about parking on campus we're going to pay more for a crossing guard the charge is helping out um is this the opportunity to

112get the buses off the campus off the high school campus to allow for more parking is this the opportunity to reclaim the transportation building which we saw requires millions of dollars of investment to maintain so you've got a lot of opportunities to save costs cut Capital costs increase parking at the high school take the next year that's left on the current contract get bids and take the time to make sure you get the proper contract in place thank you thank you okay anyone else for public comment on board action items seeing seeing none um we will move on with the agenda um okay um may I have a motion to approve the January 17 2023 work session and proposed preliminary budget and January 24 2023 regular board meeting minutes as attached Mr ruxel may I

113have a second Ms Graf any questions or comments all in favor any opposed 6-0 thank you and now two fiscal items Mr Bricker thank you madam president this month for your approval or seven fiscal items with no changes from the work session okay thank you may I have a motion to approve all fiscal items or does anyone want to take anything separately okay Miss Reese with the motion do I have a second on fiscal Mr Rookstool thank you any comments from the board Miss Reese um I did miss one property meeting in the last few months but I know we have talked about this uh quite a bit at property the um excuse me I'm not being clear um on the transportation contract extension could you give a very um from when many of us

114were not on the board in fact I don't think any of us were on the board when first student was first hired before Paul and ice time right Paul okay just double checking but could you just briefly um the the part that I'm the most interested in that I would and that I will help the public is not only how much Transportation has changed in the last nine years but how much transportation has changed in the last three and a half years just there's nobody there's in short and I don't want to take words the wrong words no one's knocking at anybody's door to to take Transportation there it's you there's a lack of bus drivers there's a lack of everything so could you if you don't mind or maybe I'm not asking the question

115correct properly in short we are doing the most fiscally responsible thing as far as transportation is concerned and I'll get to the electric in a minute yeah I think what we can address a number of these items that were brought before uh uh the microphone here this evening uh specifically uh Mr Bricker uh took the necessary steps to have the conversations uh with first students about the use of electric vehicles and and certainly he can elaborate on that uh to a greater extent but the most important part that this board wants to understand is we've already included electric vans which are available and are affordable as part of an agreement to move forward in the next five years but more importantly our contract allows us the flexibility in order to renegotiate if in fact electric

116buses become more affordable and are the right path for us or we if we fall into a you know Federal uh Grant dollars and so on so the opportunity is there this doesn't lock Us in to only having diesel buses in the future and and the beauty of that is the Mr Bricker has an eye to that particular matter who also you know drives an electric vehicle himself so if you want to understand the the value and the interest in that area um you can speak to all of those benefits on on a second note though uh the entire uh agreement it was done in a way that allowed us to evaluate all the existing contracts and preempt a requirement for us to go out to bid because there's because there's only one year left

117on our agreement it would be irresponsible for us to bid in the last year of the agreement knowing the major challenge that could unfold if in fact we decided to go with a different vendor and because this is a service it doesn't necessarily require us too bid but it does uh make a good sense to to make the right business decisions and Mr Bricker as always has brought forward the comparative rates has brought forward the recent award ordered bids and has shared with you in a previous meeting that if we go out to bid we have an opportu we have an opportunity to actually be be required to pay more uh because then Not only would first student be bidding against themselves they you know that would there would likely be a higher uh cost

118coming to us as indicative of the of the current contracts that have been rewarded recently so with all that said uh I can tell you with confidence that this uh uh agreement has been reviewed and it has the flexibility necessary uh to make advancements when the time is appropriate with electrical vehicles or any other types of vehicles as you recall we also added in a box truck and a number of incentives to help with the driver's shortage and that's all through the leadership of Mr Bricker and his negotiation with first student so I I must commend him for that and I I recommend that the board vote for that matter unanimously yes so um my question is I I mean I hear the comments about the electric buses I I'm with you right like I

119I think it's a great idea did we do ask the question of whether or not first student has the ability to actually Supply and provide a fleet of electric buses today because it's my understanding that many of the bus companies will provide some electric vehicles and they do tout that it's not very common that they can provide them in the whole Fleet kind of approach that we would want if we had our our best choices right they could not uh just to be able to order them the time to get them um you're looking from my understanding and talking with them and I have talked to their uh their electric group for lack of a better term for their electric division and it's about somewhere between a year to 18 months to get them they'd

120have to order them we're probably looking at a price right now we're talking about the first year being 3 26.70 and we're probably talking about 600 for an electric bus roughly so essentially they would be taking the cost of purchasing the buses and rolling it into our contract of course um and almost doubling our costs that's why the to be determined uh is built into the contract for the electric buses because we are looking forward that grants could come could come available we could phase them in right now we're looking to phase in the Vans because we have no experience with electric vehicles I think we start with the Vans understand how it works understands the needs understand the operations and then look to expand it down the road it's definitely some something we went

121ahead to and direct ourselves towards but we got to do it in phases okay thank you plus plus there's infrastructure that's required to support those yes and and so that was my my follow-up question was the infrastructure would have to be built in order for us to be able to have electric buses here to be operating for us so that would all be another construction effort on our part to accommodate the buses once we know they're ordered and coming to us at a certain point we would then have to be prepared to allow them to have charging stations okay correct okay right and it's a timing matter as you have you seen through some of the conversations and presentation on the high school facilities assessment we hear the concerns about parking on the campus a

122gentleman from the audience mentioned that we should move the transportation facilities off of this campus imagine making an investment in that infrastructure and then having to move all that to some other point we're at a a I'll call it a a functional challenge in terms of you know what is the right maneuver for the future and you know over the next you know 10 12 months we'll be having those conversations and hopefully you know we can set the path forward and make those decisions and uh hopefully you know what if the time it presents itself you know start having those conversations and renegotiate uh for electric vehicles uh electric buses when it's appropriate thank you I do yeah I did just have a question just because um this was discussed by financed and I know

123I asked the question about um the contract and also the availability of the electric buses and I appreciate the information that's been shared I think we have to think um that Administration is also have things in the work now in reference to sustainability and also looking at other facets in that component right when we're thinking about and I think the electric buses are great but we also know that there's things that we're not are not in place for us to be able to move to that direction by the end of this contract right so where the contract is up and are we in a position to make that but I think one of the things to highlight is that based on where we are right now we know that this contract based on the way

124it is can be amended when the time comes and I think that's the point that we want to clarify is that the contract the way is currently written if we are in a position to implement a change to it as far as moving to electric buses based on whatever happened having the infrastructures already the buses are available because I know there's shortage issues also are we in a position to amend this contract we are and that's that's that's the exact point and thank you for uh reiterating that so we we have the flexibility uh but we need to make sure that we preserve the best financial uh and operational of aspect of of our relationship going forward so that we continue uh providing services at the least cost and the best service anybody else I

125just want to really quickly I just I wasn't I just wanted to reiterate ever since we added transportation to property and Mr Bricker has been incredible at working on inefficiencies and doing his due diligence and working really hard and I believe that it was after Mr earnshaw's time on the board that Mr Bricker took over that role and I I could be a little fuzzy on the timing but I just wanted to reiterate as a member of the property and transportation committee I listened to all the due diligence that that Mr Bricker has done and I don't want to keep you know it is a different world today than it was eight years ago in many different aspects in many people's different work lives and education and transportation are two of those there is no

126pounding on the door of Transportation companies wanting to transport thousands of children Mrs Reese thank you for recognizing uh Mr Bricker for the exceptional job that he's done we appreciate that I actually had a question about um it was mentioned the August 2020 audit on our services or the bus if if you have a recollection of that could you please remind us of what those findings were of the deficiencies and how they were addressed so one of them was the fact that we did not maintain the driver's record in HR we actually maintained them in the transportation building so we made copies and brought them up while the Auditors were here there was also a question as to how to store our data data points because the system we use is dynamic it's not static

127and did not keep that so we made the changes to keep the data static and save it and the other one as you'll notice on 13 is to as drivers are hired to make sure we add them to the agenda so they're approved each time and all of those matters have been resolved and processes and procedures are in place and approved by the Auditors from their responses to their audit okay so basically it was a clerical issue with a driver's log a board agenda issue with approving drivers and a moving of data points from Dynamic to static that's correct okay thank you okay any other questions on fiscal anything under fiscal okay I just had a question about the planetarium seating and um if that was just part of the sub Contracting that was done

128or if that was a bid requirement um and so the planetary seating cost includes the surface of the chairs the delivery and Freight of the chairs as well as the installation of the chairs okay so it's basically everything that gets the chairs into the building not just the physical chairs themselves that's correct okay thank you okay anyone else okay um then with that if I can um all in favor of all the items as presented under fiscal any everyone in paper anyone opposed under fiscal in favor of fiscal okay anyone opposed all right that was a six zero thank you thank you and next we have Personnel Dr sorjani good evening and thank you madam president for your consideration this month we have the Personnel items as presented last week at the work session with

129the following editions one resignation professional Rebecca Gallagher math instructor at the high school this is for retirement we thank Mrs Gallagher for her 25 years of service to methactin and we wish her very well in her retirement we have one uncompensated leave of absence Rob Howard school counselor at the high school is noted the addition of two supplemental contracts for instruction in the home and one for homebounding excuse me instruction and two additions to the list of coaches thank you motion to approve all the nail items as presented Miss Reese and may I have a second Miss Perdue any questions or comments under personnel Miss Reese Yeah you mentioned last week you were going to have a new retirement bummer to see a long-standing math teacher on here and um in addition to all the

130other things she does at the school um there's a newer um I can't I'm sorry I can't find words today a newer dead there's a deadline not a deadline but there's a newer incentive to to retire by a certain time I assume this is in that time not in that time I don't want to get nosy but it's within that it is okay the the end is actually tomorrow okay and that's that's so this not I'm not saying this is it I just because we don't want to see any of our wonderful teachers retire but so that that was my question so this is not the last of it but hopefully the the most of it that's the hope is I discussed last year at this time the intent of the incentive in large measure

131was to allow us plenty of time to know who might be retiring and to begin the process of replacing those positions okay and not to get to the nitty-gritty because that is not our job here um I would certainly um approve uh this leave for Mr Howard that does seem to be in the Crux of course selection for freshmen so I'm assuming he's just timing that out a little differently that's correct okay thank you any other questions or comments under personnel okay um all in favor of all items as presented any opposed 6-0 thank you thank you now curriculum and programs Dr Walsh thank you madam president tonight I'm seeking approval for the revised curriculum documents as listed below for the 2324 school year items 11b and 11c will appear on the March 28th Action

132meeting agenda for your approval at that time thank you may I have a motion to approve all items under curriculum and programs as presented the motion should be approve all items under under curriculum 11a as presented oh that is not what this says 11a okay thank you okay that's okay may I have a motion to approve all items listed under 11a as presented Miss Kraft and a second Mr Winters any questions or comments on this all in favor any opposed 6-0 thank you thank you um okay policy Mr Regina thank you madam president uh there are no additions to the policies that we were reviewed for second read last week again most of the major changes had to do with threat assessment updates and some legal changes due to recent court cases thank you thank

133you may I have a motion to approve the policies for second read as presented Miss Perdue and a second Mr Rookstool any questions or comments under policies all in favor any opposed 6-0 thank you and other doctors Irving on the agenda under other the only additions to from last week would have been the agreements listed in the 13d and that's the approve the settlement agreement and release for student 250953 with special language of the terms of the settlement agreement approved by the district solicitor and two approve the settlement agreement and release for student 271594 with special language of terms of settlement agreement approved by the district solicitor okay thank you may I have a motion to approve all items listed under other Mr Winters and may I have a second Miss Perdue any questions or

134comments of the items listed under other all in favor any opposed 6-0 thank you all right now it's uh dates for board members calendars please note that the March 9th policy committee is canceled for March and now we have old and new business do we have any old or new business from the board okay now it's time for Courtesy of the floor this is a time for residents to make comments on matters that are or may be before the board please keep your comments to three minutes or less and you can submit questions to information effecton.org anyone for Courtesy of the floor this evening beautiful Brian Rochelle Lower Providence um Ms Reese Mr Bricker did oversee Transportation when I was on the board and I greeted a tremendous job and also I'll note that we

135went out for a bit a lot more things when I was on the board as well so just to note that um at last week's meeting I brought up the stated auditor General's work in the area of some neighborhood school districts and looking at their tax increases and what they've been doing with fund balance I referenced an article and I'll just quote one sentence from the article of what what the auditor general said some Starling Trends began to appear to our Auditors like moving money around to make sure our district would always meet the threshold to raise taxes if doctors are if you could explain how what the factors practice of taking Surplus is and moving to them the capital reserves is any different I'd like to hear that and also could you explain what

136happens if a gestures general fund balance exceeds eight percent if memory serves there's limitations on tax increases in that situation the district posted a 3.6 million dollar budget surplus for the 21-22 fiscal year um I found an old forecast it was done in April of 2022 it projected a 1.2 million dollar Surplus so in two months that Surplus went from one two to three six um so I'll ask a question again is the district doing anything to improve its forecasting and has the forecast been done for the current fiscal year and preparing for next year's budget at the February 21st meeting I asked about a prior adjustment from the Auditors and I appreciate Mr Winters asking for an explanation and Mr bricker's explanation seemed to reference the change in Auditors and how they had a

137difference of opinion well I turned to page 79 in the audit report and an explanation of that prior period adjustment States when auditing beginning balances an error was discovered on the client's estimated reimbursement workbook the amount stated here is the correction that was needed to reflect what the recruit receivable balance should have been in the prior year it sounds like an error to me not a difference of opinion between Auditors and it sounds like there was a revenue under accrual in the financials for the year ended 21 that had to be corrected so maybe you could hopefully clarify that for me page 90 of the audit report shows a schedule that tax collector's receipts could somebody explained to me why 745 000 of local taxes were returned to the county if you could explain that

138at some point I'd be appreciated as well um Mr winners last meeting I asked about the pcas that were moved from the budget I think it was about 450 000 and the sound of the explanation was that we didn't need that Personnel because we outsourced that function well if you're removing a salary costs but there's no evidence of those outsourced costs being put back in so my question is did the original budget double count those costs and are there any other situation in the budget we're both double counting are we double counting salaries and substitute costs for example you might want to look at that thank you oh thank you anyone else for Courtesy of the floor hi Rebecca katagnes Lower Providence when discussing the building presentation Dr zarby you turn toward the board members

139and you asked and you said to them when the board and the administration decide on the repairs I find that very telling that you didn't mention the community and I think a project like that really needs to go up to up for a referendum secondly you talk about every making everyone feel like they belong I watched you cut one of the few people here to speak in an incredibly dismissive way you interrupted her and you stopped her time you control the information you control the agenda you control this meeting and you speak freely amongst yourselves but you give residents three minutes three minutes so now for what I prepared I'll do it as quickly as I can recently I read an article addressing the request for a quote book ban from some parents in the

140district as a journalist and a veteran I would literally die for our first amendment rights so naturally such an inflammatory allegation was an attack to my sensibilities so I reached out to some of those parents who have been publicly tarred and feathered as book Banning political idea ideologues dead set on censoring literature literature from their school library a place which is supposed to be a curated collection of academic materials I wanted to hear from them directly what are their motivations are they Banning books did they really want to censor ideas they all answered unequivocally no I asked if they are members of moms for Liberty and none were did they coordinate their efforts for political purposes not one were they trying to shelter their children did they oppose sex education do they not like gay

141people did they object based on religious beliefs again their answers were no no no and no their concerns are not about publishing and politicking but as parents and some of their valid some of their issues are actually incredibly valid sadly three minutes does not allow me time to accurately address their points without rendering my commentary as fodder for later misuse in sound bites for those Ministers of Truth out there so I here I stand before you with one simple request of inclusivity that we do not dismiss those with different ideas or opinions as simple political hacks it is disingenuous to do so attacking others at a personal level in order to render their argument invalid is intellectually lazy misaligning individuals with organizations where they have absolutely no Allegiance borders on defamation those who hold positions

142of power be it elected or administrative have a moral imperative to whom much is given much is expected each person here at the lectern is but one voice their voice speaking on behalf of themselves but you you have a duty to be the voice for all of us you sit there at the proverbial table but it is not a throne I implore board members who truly ask yourselves whose words do you hear when you speak are they your words or are they our words our words believe me from where I sit the emperor wears no clothes this is not an accident existential fight against the Third Reich it is a discussion about some books attacking each other does not equate to the heroism of fighting Nazis it diminishes it this is not Germany but rather

143our community we are not enemies we are neighbors thank you how too shall we live [Applause] anybody else for Courtesy of the floor tonight foreign I want to help Mr Earnshaw out because I got a copy the article he was referring to and it says here the auditor said the audited District moved unspent money out of their General funds into reserves to be eligible for exemptions not unlike you taking seven million dollars of Shannon Del escrow and putting it in a capital fund so to sit here and say there's no shell game this and that I I disagree um what I handed you is something from the Cochran view which is the most extensive study on masking in the country and I asked you guys before did you are you going to evaluate your coveted

144response and and how you performed and nothing zero I mean we're spending money we're building planetarium we're knocking down Audubon but nothing about what you did to the kids masks social distancing and all the rest of it so I'm going to help you to start your little study with regards to medical and surgical masks um wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcomes of influenza and covid n95 masks same thing hand hygiene same exact thing everything you did for kovid was wrong so never again should that happen to these kids your actions resulted in them having their test scores drop 30 percent over three years I suggest you do what I said go back and evaluate your performance now for the I'm going to talk about the methactin Construction

145Corporation again Miss Graf I have to disagree with you on the presentation from the Veritas people it's probably one of the worst presentations I think I've ever heard because they didn't say anything to us I mean you must have a different report than he showed up there maybe that's why you think it's good but basically I looked at that and he's like trust me we go from everything being fine to all of a sudden we have an emergency here time for a new school you're going to build I know for a fact you've already decided Dave you're going to build a new school I'll bet you a thousand dollars that that's what you're going to do because I've seen your playbook this is right out of the Playbook get your people get your Consultants to

146tell you what you want take your little vote and then go down the road to spend a hundred and twenty million dollars on a school we don't need just like Arrowhead just like Skyview it's it's a shame but this time is going to be different Dave this is not gonna this is not gonna stand this time there's going to be some people involved in what you're doing yeah here all right Sheila Smith Lower Providence the care board has raised taxes every year for the past eight years with the potential of a 4.1 increase in 2023 despite having a surplus this year you've gotten around this by transferring the Shannondale tax appeal settlement at 7.1 million and an additional 4.1 million of unassigned funds to capital projects so they will be categorized at an expense the

147approved cost currently 3.9 million in projects with available funds of 12.9 million remaining after all projects are paid out now you're laying the groundwork for us to take on an additional 120 million best practices would require a second or third opinion meanwhile you have never completed an after-action review on how you handle the building of Skyview Arrowhead and community members are struggling to pay to pay for the food and pay the rent and mortgage how are you prioritizing and measuring the impact around academic performance and school ranking our schools and performance continue to plummet year over year our ranking have went from 11 to 62 under care test scores went down 26 percent in 2019 instead of striving for academic Excellence the district has lowered standards our enrollment continues to decline year over year under

148care students are leaving with Acton to go to private and Charter Schools this year we had 97 students choose Charter with actin 18 more than expecting 124 over budget what about the 1.7 million over budget for professional Education Services what exactly are those Services there are numerous 504 IEP violations parents are forced to secure lawyers and file complaints bullying is at an all-time high and the fact in students with behavioral issues bullies and stalkers have more rights than the victims when are you relentlessly going to prioritize and make tough choices we are facing inflation pressures and a potential recession your spending is out of control you are almost 800 000 over budgeted Arrowhead your 1. million for the planetarium project closing Arrow Autobahn is going to cost us 2.2 million after demolition one bad decision

149after the other last June Lower Marion School District agreed to return 27 million to settle a lawsuit over property tax increases is this going to be methactin School District's future thank you [Applause] I don't know if I I'm a big boy ah there we go greetings um my name is Dave cooksley Lower Providence Township I'm a 14-year resident that downsized my home to move to the school district my youngest graduated last year and is a freshman at Penn State pursuing a biochem degree my eldest is an or nurse at the new Penn Medicine organ transplant facility in Philadelphia needless to say my wife and I have been very happy with the school system here both my children were members of the gay straight Alliance student group here at math Acton high school and I feel

150compelled to speak is I only became aware two weeks ago that there's a rot of witness District there appears to be recurring organized regressive movements in this country that are currently focused on book Banning on a national stage the anti-science then anti-vaxx then enter a mass contingent is now advocating against books I thought book Banning was a backward Florida in Florida and Texas thing but Pennsylvania is tied for third place with Tennessee and banning the most school books organized groups mentioned tonight like moms for Liberty are currently circulating Target lists of books by Voices of color and lgbtq plus authors and more tolerant school districts these groups are successfully targeting Classics like Catcher in the Rye To Kill a Mockingbird and other Classics that were required reading at least when I was in school many

151of the books currently under review for Banning here at the district were cited in the public comments is containing pornography or smut at the January 17th board meeting for the eight books under consideration for Banning by the district or on the Reader's Digest top 10 band book list and also appear on the uh the moms for Liberty top 20 hit list reality check here people how many students would take the time to go to the library and pour over a book for potentialist salacious material when the most used Gateway Texas porn and smut is in their pocket thank you if you're worried about your child accessing alternative voices at the library first have a Frank discussion with them about the browser history and to the board members please continue to support these alternative voices in

152the library and the students who want to access them just a minute uh in closing please continue uh let's see where was I answer the board members please continue to support those alternative voices in the library and the students who want to access them you know the more I read the news these days the more I'm reminded of the terrific quote attributed to Huey long Allah Sinclair Lewis that says when fascism comes to America it'll be wrapped in the flag and carrying across thank you for your time thank you foreign good evening Katie Theo Lower Providence I just want to be quick I was at the board meeting that was referred to then an article was written about and I feel the need to say that what I witnessed was the school board that listened

153to parent concerns from both sides of that argument and I saw no form of disrespect from the school board towards the audience that night in response to concerns about those books I want to thank the board for allowing the current policy in the district which calls on educator Professional Knowledge to review the books and respond to the parent concerns thank you very much [Applause] anybody else for Courtesy of the floor tonight okay seeing none um any other comments from board members or wrap up comments yeah I'd like to just touch on a few things if I could so there were there were comments made about the auditor General's report and a couple other comments made about Shell Games and moving money around and all that kind of stuff and I explained last week uh when

154those same uh and similar comments were made that you know the the district uh has the requirement to provide a third party auditor on an annual basis to come in and audit the books for the district okay so I'm not going to repeat exactly what I said last week you can look at the video and go through that on your own but I think that's a key element for the board and the public to understand the second item is there are multiple funds that are made by by school code available for school districts one of them is that one of them is the general fund another is the capital fund and just imagine how would we ever get money to the capital fund without moving money from the general fund we don't we actually don't

155have a a program other than the ability to move the money from a general fund to a capital fund that is by nature the way that you would get a capital Fund in order to maintain your buildings and maintain the structure of your organization uh otherwise you would think that then you would raise taxes within your general fund to take care of the roofs to take care of construction and therefore your your tax increases to go us would spike up go down Spike up every time you need to do a project it's illogical so there's a reason why the legislature provides those necessary funds so that you can put money aside and then there's also reasons why uh there's percentages of your annual budget that are supposed to be held in reserve so that in

156an emergency the school district has the opportunity to address it without having to do emergency borrowing which might put them at risk of spending you know exorbitant amount of money depending on the market at that given time in terms of uh the comment with respects to the audit and an error it should be known that uh there were no findings in the audit if there was anything that was of concern by the Auditors or even our previous Auditors we would be cited for that so while uh Mr Brooker shared with you that it is a difference of opinion you must understand that our prior Auditors were fine with the mechanisms and the mechanics associated with what we were doing with respects to the uh the previous year's uh number the 580 some thousand dollars the

157new Auditors as Mr Bricker indicated suggested that they prefer a different procedure and therefore as we would with any auditor we would comply with their request and as such that's what we did and that's why you see that in the audit report I must also just jump into rankings real quick because it's really difficult to sit on a regular basis and have people uh make claims with uh irresponsible facts what I mean by that is the methactin school district and I've done this on a number of occasions and I've I've made presentations of before the board um so this is the first time you're hearing this but we can't continue to say that methactin was once 11 and now is 62. the truth of the matter is in the in the 17 history year history

158of the rankings that I can get my access to methactin was ranked 11th once they were also ranked 175 once and we generally are in the 60s to 65 ranking would I like it to be different I absolutely would and that's why in the Strategic plan we have two goals to improve the uh favorable feedback of our constituents and improve our ranking and that's what we've been doing so we've been moving from uh High uh 60s into the 50s just in the last two years thanks to a leadership of Dr Walsh in the curriculum Department thanks to the leadership of Dr angstadt in the special education department thanks to the work of our assistant superintendent and all of our staff our parent supporters and so on so I I really must share with the board

159that while we were once 11 and I wish we were always 11. and we have work to do and we always can get better um and our strategic plan has more than a hundred plus strategies associated with making those improvements and you heard one of them tonight yes Food Services and the quality of the food is a part of the experience and that's our Target here so with all that said I just want to make sure that you're clear and Folks at home are clear that yes we want to be number 11 and we need to work towards that but we were 11 once and we want to be 11 one more time again if not consistently going forward so with that we need your help we need your help we work together we get

160it done any other comments from the board Miss Perdue I do want to say thank you Dr Zerby I think we heard a lot of um great presentation today I do feel um very grateful the work that the mccsea and also a home in school are doing I know all those groups there's a lot of work there's a lot of planning um when I was first in missact and joining War sister I know coming into their first meeting it could be as early as August or September they already have plans laid out as far as the things that they plan to do for our district and also our students and a lot of that go into what we want to see here providing exceptional education experience for all our students every one of those facets

161matter um the check presented by the Education Foundation we appreciate it and I think we are on our way to making a lot of improvements with our district as mentioned by Dr Zerby and I do commend the administration and the staff teaches parents all of us for our support and even everyone I show up at the board meeting to provide feedback each of it is very helpful it helps whether it's you're bringing discussions to our attention but when we do look at it there are policies in place by the school board and in the school district also to make sure that every single comment that is brought to the board is reviewed and also um handled in a proper procedure based on following our board policies so I do appreciate all the work that we're

162doing and continue to do for the district thank you thank you any other wrap-up comments Mr Winters yeah there was a couple questions that I think we should follow up on uh related to the finances um there was I believe uh if you don't know this Dr Zerby it's completely fine but there was a reference to an audit issue with 750 000 or 745 000 being returned to the county does that have something to do with I believe um uh student uh students that are getting education at the facility and that's my understanding is because we have the uh the correctional institution um I believe is the reason for that uh there was also some uh continued questions related to the double counting in the pcas um well there's no double County winners so we're

163actually a million plus short in a special education budget because we had to you know pay for those additional uh uh bcbas in order to meet the requirements and the needs of the students and therefore um while on one hand we had the uh the budgeted staff those staff don't typically come from the district and therefore they had to be pulled out of the special education budget so they weren't budgeted for but they were expended out of that budget yeah thank you uh and also there was some uh I certainly agree with the promise the premise that we need to continue to try to get closer on our forecast before year end no doubt but there's many variables in that include living State funding coming back at certain points of time additional issues so it's

164not an exact science but of course Mr Bricker and everybody is trying to get as close as possible throughout the year I do want to make one other comment that in the budget we did put seven hundred thousand dollars for a transfer of the capital reserve this year and uh that is to be for primarily for ongoing Capital needs right that we know that we're going to have um so it's interesting that the that was argued to be taken out of the budget as as something that we could save on on the tax increase but the purpose is to fund it on an ongoing basis and not have to pay interest on that so it is a little bit ironic that the argument that the the capital reserve is overfunded uh when we weren't when

165we were trying to fund it and in the beginning on an ongoing basis so the other aspect you know there has been no decision related to a high school for sure uh what to do with the high school I think what was presented well today is that there is a lot of expense that needs to be done to improve this facility over the next five seven years certainly the ten and it does seem to accelerate in year three four and five because the hea assist HVAC system is the one that's crashing at that point more or less uh maybe crashing isn't the right word but it's when you're reaching end of life so I think there's a decision point that has to be made about where you spend that money it's not like that the

166HVAC can run on the other 10 or 20 years without us investing in an improvement and that's what the purpose of that variety support is to give us guidance on some of those things I have to agree with you on the on a particular matter and I think this board did a good job with uh pausing uh several months ago when we brought before you uh the recommendation to go out to to bid on the HVAC work at the high school if you saw the pie chart up there that that expense of the high school is is subject to about 28 of the overall uh cost associated with with the 119 million dollar uh value of the high school so given that that investment that we would have made we would have likely been uh

167making not only that investment but that investment blindly without the consideration of all the other aspects and things that that were included not only in the report that we have yet to fully review but also in inclusive of some of the things that we might not find in the report like you know consideration of parking on this campus consideration of of uh you know traffic flow and a number of other items so I think there's there's a lot of homework like you said Mr winners that we need to do as an Administration and a board to make sure that whatever Investments we make here at the high school we make them with a vision for what tomorrow is going to look like and what 50 years from now is going to look like any other

168comments or questions from the board yes I was going to motion to adjourns in honor of Drew Mr McGinnis may I have a motion to adjourn I see Miss Reese may I have a second Mr Winters thank you so much for coming out this meeting is adjourned