May 19, 2021 - Special Meeting of the Board and Work Session Meeting of the Board

001know that uh miss cancro and ms perdue are both going to be about 10 15 minutes late to the meeting this evening thank you dr zurby all right so we're ready to go yeah just we're live we're ready to start all right like to call to order the may 19th special meeting of the matthackton school district board of directors please rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcast given the need to conduct this meeting in a virtual environment the board required members of the public wanting to make comments on agenda

002items or courtesy of the floor to pre-register by five o'clock today um so we'll do attendance and then um i will let the record reflect when the um two board members that are coming in late have joined us um so miss cancro i believe is still not present in case i missed her coming in nope uh ms drummond here miss hull here mr mcginnis here mr neverett here ms perdue i believe is still on her way uh ms reese here mr winners all right and recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zurby thank you madam president again this evening just for members of the public there are two meetings back to back the first meeting is a special meeting where there are items on the agenda for which the board may consider to take action

003the second meeting that that immediately follows the special meeting are matters that will be for discussion with potential action at the may 21st regular meeting of the board of school directors with that said this evening we have the 2122 proposed final budget by mr bricker and then a recommendation to the athletic and activities health and safety plan by dr spiwak so with that said mr bricker will bring up the proposed final budget for the 2022 school year thank you dr zerby okay next slide please tonight we're going to be giving the proposed final budget for the 2021-2022 school year right now we are in the may 19th meeting which at this point we need to make a decision to adopt the final final budget and advertise for the adoption of the final budget which has

004to occur by june 23 2020. next slide so when we started the budget process we had done our preliminary proposed budget which had 68.34 percent of our budget being related to real estate taxes 11.34 to other state activity and 7.2 to act 511 taxes next slide so the budget at that point in time when we prepared to propose preliminary budget in january was 115 million uh dollars for revenue and 116.5 million dollars uh budget for expenses which gave us a 1.16 million dollar shortfall on the budget next slide each month what we did is we prepared an update and presented this to the board and or the finance committee so that they could track the changes that were occurring uh in february's update we had a increase in real estate taxes of about a hundred

005ninety four thousand dollars a reduction in revenue of forty one hundred dollars for retirement and twenty five thousand dollars for social security total changes totaled 165 170 dollars and 68 cents next slide the march update incorporated an investment increase of 420 almost 424 thousand dollars the millage changed to 2.768 percent and we updated staffing as we do each month with regards to social security and peace based on the changes that were coming such as an addition of a staff member and or the retirement someone being replaced by a different individual based on our settings uh the transportation subsidy was also updated to reflect the 2020 2021 actual amount that we received interest income was updated to reflect the current balances that we are carrying and reach grant was received and based on the advice of

006the orders that was added to next year's budget and we'll take care of that on an accounting next slide continuing with revenue in april the assessments increased by another 4.8 million dollars which is very significant that allowed us to reduce the real estate taxes by 143 thousand dollars roughly um the millage then dropped to two point three nine eight which was a reduction of point three seven percent interest income was also updated based on current balances and again the staffing changes occurred which impacts the social security and appeasers next slide for the proposed final budget assessments decreased by 941 000 roughly however the millage increase changed to only 1.622 which is a reduction of 0.776 percent due to the changes in the staffing and the other reductions in expenditures interest income was updated based on

007current balances staffing again changes social security and the retirement and we also got our gaming funds which reduced by about fourteen thousand three hundred dollars title one and title two grants were also updated to reflect the current records that we have what that gives us is a 114 million dollar revenue stream for next year projected next slide we're taking all this into account that the uh real estate taxes account for 68.18 of our revenue other state revenue accounts for 11.37 and the act 511 taxes account for 7.25 next slide now looking at the other side of the equation so you have the proposed preliminary budget with regards to expenditures salary and benefits were 69.6 percent of budget operating expenses were 21.7 and debt was 8.6 percent next slide that gave us the 116.5 million dollars

008in the budget of expenditures that i mentioned before again contributing to the 1.2 million dollar shortfall next slide the february update gave us some changes so we had salary changes of 155.6 thousand dollars reduced the changes of staffing due to retirement and increase of different staffing positions we also got our first look at the medical which gave us or healthcare sorry which gave us reduction of 117.7 thousand dollars on medical a reduction of 28 000.1 in prescription eye care reduced by about a thousand dollars dental eleven thousand eight hundred dollars uh social security actually increased by two 61.2 dollars and retirements by two hundred sixty three thousand three hundred dollars we also had some changes in the operating expenses we had the reduction of the fuel costs for about ten thousand dollars routing software seventy

009five hundred 500 we lower our legal um from the preliminary budget by about 175 000 uh we have curriculum instruction and assessments we decided to purchase the bulks that we're going to use for next year in this year's budget for 152 500 roughly and we lowered our sub cost again this is to account for the attritional savings that is mentioned uh it is by reducing the subs what we'll do is budget transfers from the salary and benefits of the staff that is not hired and or is off and then we need to refill those positions with subs we'll transfer that salary and benefit amount into the sub line item that was a 250 000 reduction we reduced that item by about 1 million 1.1 million dollars over time uh debt payments increased by 56 500

010and 195 thousand dollars based on the final numbers of pfm gave us in that month of february next slide for march again we had several updates we had the uh staffing changes which impacts social security appeasers and health care benefits we added a second look i'll point you to the percentages down below we had open choice increase by 13 open choice 2 by 15 uh open choice 3 which is actually pos 14.4 and the open choice 4 is actually open choice 3 by 10 we have prescription dental and vision stay flat for the base amounts that we were recommending however the 10 20 35 plan did increase by twenty one point two percent we had north monaco uh technical center budget updated that is updated with the lease removed uh we also have charter school

011reduction due to the committing of funds to pay for the charter school as well as technology at least finally coming in and getting the actual amounts that we'll be paying on the technology lease the debt service is then updated to reflect the payoff of the esco release down below that saves us those two items save us about 273 274 thousand dollars next slide in april update we had staffing changes again salary social security appeasers and health care benefits we also received our workman's comp assessment from sdic which is the consortium that we belong to for workman's comp and that was a reduction of almost twenty thousand dollars i also did make a coding change difference three thousand dollars from operating to increase the uh reduction to increase the debt service and that's just a coding

012difference where the money was funded between a 300 series 700 series to an 800 or 900 series next slide so one of the things that we did in our next update was that we did have a reduction of staff of one individual and that is a professional staff member and that is to the retirement of an of this individual next slide staying updated for the proposed final budget include all the retirees and everyone that we knew about any changes in staffing which i just mentioned previously and the effect of the ps or social security and health care benefits with those changes we did receive the third look for the health care uh you'll note that open choice one reduced to nine percent two to nine point six four percent again open choi open choice three

013is early pos at nine point two percent open choice four is really open choice three at two percent and neither the prescriptions or the dental envision changed we also incorporated tentative agreements with the teamsters act 93 and the confidentials property insurance was updated based on the final proposal prepared by our insurer and we have the social security costs increased by two individual staff members and that cost is about sixty seven thousand dollars we also included the supplemental contracts for the suppl for the sky view and school after school music program next slide this changes the distribution of the expenses to 70 percent for salaries and benefits 21.1 for operating and 8.86 for debt service and transfers next slide kind of reinforcing what are the changes that we did this year just to bring everything back

014into the presentation uh so some of the changes and to the budget that we did we had five hundred thousand dollars for the charter schools to be paid from committed funds uh this is the anticipation of students returning from virtual back to in person and or nethackton's virtual academy that by committing these funds we do not have to tax the taxpayers for these funds there was also four hundred thousand dollars worth of it cost that we had to incur for one to one cost to be able to do one to one from k to 12. as part of this we were able to purchase the items that we needed versus finance them and by purchasing them we do not have to pay the long ongoing expenses associated with that we already discussed the esco and

015the uh north technic hurley's payoff that saved us about 272 thousand we also discussed the cia purchase of books we lowered legal again by 175 000 and we lowered our substitute cost by 250 000 this saves the school district 1 1.75 million dollars that we've removed from the budget in order to keep the taxes as low as we could next slide so what does this mean that a homeowner well one of the things that will change on this screen is that our average uh assessment value has increased to a hundred and seventy four thousand four hundred dollars so there's a little change there based on the one point 1.622 percent that would equate to an 87.27 increase to the homeowners or 5 468 and 10 cents for the average home value we did change the

016look of this presentation i want to keep reinforcing this that we changed it to be the values go up in numbers because people more associate with the values of their home versus the assessed values of their home and so we take the assessed values and like the line item number one we take a thousand dollars value of your home that equates into about 47 000 worth of assessment which would mean that your taxes would increase by 23.49 and your total taxes would be one thousand four hundred and seventy two dollars and one cent all the way up to someone who owned a two million dollar home their assessments would be about nine hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars would have and my eyes are not that good 469 dollars and 86 cents worth of an

017increase thank you very much for a total uh tax of 29 440.19 next slide so here are some of the projects that we had laid out now all these products are laid out and requested by the building administrators but i think it's important to note none of these products will be done beyond the hundred and fifty thousand fifty thousand dollar allotment that is provided for these uh building projects these are all the list of items that have been submitted by the building principles with regards to what they'd like to have done at their individual buildings we work with facilities to accomplish as many of these as we can throughout the year throughout starting in the summer and the effort is to make sure that the buildings have some sort of say in what kind of

018products are done for their buildings next slide mr brooker i accidentally moved ahead to the end of the presentation bear with me one second up forward forward one more okay so one of the uh items that we had is we put in the historical revenue and expenditures so back in 2017 2018 our total budget was 106 that million seven hundred fifty one thousand seven hundred dollars we've now changed that up about a little less than eight million dollars over the time period for 114 million five hundred forty two thousand ninety dollars and twenty nine cents i think it's important to note that the uh operating expenses have been relatively flat as has the debt service um two of the growing items that we do have in our expenses are salaries and benefits benefits are a

019function of the amounts of these employees contribution but more importantly the experience levels and the costs associated with providing those benefits next slide so one of the things that happens for the base of our salary our largest group is the mea population and if you look at the distribution of the maa population most of our staff for the good part is an experienced staff they're on step 16 of the salary staff which means they have a good amount of experience with regards to the operations of their departments their courses and the operations of the thacton school district next slide our top 10 expenditures then obviously professionals had about 34 million dollars i understand they're also the largest group of individuals so that would be expected retirement is 16.7 million dollars of our expenses and our

020insurance is 8.8 million dollars of expenses our annual principal reduction currently for next year is 7.2 million dollars and our contracted carriers which is first student transportation is about 6.6 million dollars administrative salaries 4.4 other professional services 3.7 social security another one it's just a percentage of five data salaries 3.7 million dollars our interest on our debt is 2.7 million dollars and our labor at aka the team service maintenance and custodians total 2.4 million dollars and all our other expenses total for 24.5 million dollars next slide so what we do each year is we give a five-year projection based on assumptions obviously we've taken the most recent uh labor contract agreements that we have available to us and the um i guess the negotiating parameters provided by the school board we have our third look

021on the medical and all that information and folds into how we look at our projections next year next slide sorry so if we have no increases in our in our revenue so we have no property tax increase going forward for the 2023 26 fiscal years and only a 1.622 for the 2022 fiscal year at the end of that time period we're looking at total expenditures outrunning our income revenue by about 8.5 million dollars over that same time period will have incurred a 13.9 million dollar loss and our unassigned fund balance next slide if we continue at the 1.622 and also factor in a 2.3 percent growth in the real estate taxes we will then also incur a loss of about six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand dollars a year over that next four year

022period time period however the unsigned fund balance will not drop below five million dollars at that point in time next slide you'll look and see that the salaries will be about 48 million dollars increasing to about 52 million dollars at that point in time where so appeasers will go from 16.6 million dollars roughly to 19 million dollars that's 14.54 to 15.19 of our expenses medical will go from 8.8 or 7.71 of our budget to ten point seven million dollars or more importantly eight point four six percent of our expenditures then you have the prescription and the other employee benefits overall we have a salary and benefits totaling 78 million dollars or 68.1 percent of our budget to 89.1 million dollars totaling 70.45 percent of our budget next slide showing this historically versus our actual numbers

023for actuals for 2018 19 and 20. we have a actual number of 106 million point 106.8 million dollars of revenue 110 111.6 the budgeted for this year is a 111.9 million dollars and we're proposing 114.5 million dollars for the 2122 fiscal year the expenditures have occurred at 104 million dollars 108.2 million dollars almost 100.3 108.4 million dollars and we have the budgeted numbers which are equal the savings in the 2020 fiscal year i think it's important to note a large chunk of that obviously would be due to the fact that we shut down in march of last year did to start a covid i do believe and i have presented to the uh finance committee a forecast for the 21 2020 2021 fiscal year of another surplus after the before the committed fund expenditures for

024the north montgomery technical center lease and the escrow release payoff at the end of the day i do believe that each both of those numbers would be closer to a more balanced number had we not been dealing with covet and or making estimates and or cuts in different changes to our expenditures at that point in time next slide so this is the top 10 uh major objects we have the 100 series which is salaries 200 series benefits those are the ones you're very common with the 300 and 700 series for those that is what we consider our operating expenses and the 800 and 900 series is our debt service um the changes year to year in 19 to 19 almost four percent 19 to 20.16 percent 20 to 21 3.9 percent and we're also looking

025for a reduced reduction for the 21 20 22 year to 2.46 percent next slide the pde 2028 i'll just mention that is provided and attached to the presentation uh for the school board and everyone to see next slide so again this is where we are we're on may 19 2021 we have to make a decision whether to approve or not approve the proposed final budget uh there are some changes that we know are going to be coming i think it's important to point those out we do not know where the may end of month assessments will be that will obviously change the assessed values which in turn change the real estate taxes up down uh depends on which way those go and we also have staffing changes there may be other minor changes that come

026in uh that are brought to our attention that we make but those are the large items that everyone can see and be aware of at this point in time next slide um we'll go through the next slide after this so here's what's happened for the budget history and this will be the last slide that i presented for tonight in january 26th we presented the preliminary budget february 10th we presented to the finance committee and budget update march 10th another budget update to the finance committee followed by the march 16th presentation to the school board march 14th presented at the finance committee another update all those are included in this presentation tonight just to be clear and on april 27th we updated the school board again on may 12th we had updated the finance committee with

027this similar presentation there are changes in addition to this but it's very similar to that the numbers did not change with regards to the millage increase um and tonight is when we're doing the presentation for the budget for the school board and that'll be added post this meeting and that concludes my presentation thank you mr bicker uh this this evening uh as as we said earlier there is a vote to approve of the the proposed a final budget which as mr bricker mentioned while we will have changes also we'll be bringing the final we'll call it the final final budget uh to the uh finance committee in in the meeting in june and then for your approval uh in june as well so questions from members of the board ms reese dr zurby i'm sorry

028before we get into questions from the board i just wanted to make sure that i updated the attendance for the meeting um to reflect that we have miss purdue and miss can crow so if you could miss purdue are you here yes i'm here and miss cancro yes i'm here okay thank you thanks uh you have a question or comment you're muted miss reese you're muted pretty basic here uh mr bricker uh if and i'm going to ask uh dr zurby to go back to nine please um i just i uh i'm sorry which slide nine please sorry to make you go back all the way there um i just wanted to briefly uh have mr bricker touch on this slide i had heard some erroneous information out in the public and it concerned me

029because if people in the public thought this they would be upset they would be upset with our budget so i know there's so many slides so it's hard for everybody to follow them so i just wanted to review this slide mr bricker so um the erroneous information i heard was that most of our budget comes from the federal government um and i wanted to just reiterate to those who were unaware that it is point five percent i believe um which is six hundred and twenty three thousand dollars from the federal government government that is correct it's zero point five four of our total budget okay and then if someone was confused between federal and state government the state government provides 11 which is about 24 million is that correct yeah it also includes some other

030items the other state revenue is 11.37 predominantly the state revenue comes from peasers and social security reimbursement as well as the gambling refund to this school district okay thank you so much and my last question is are there any restrictions um on that federal or uh well you just said about the state that it's reimbursement for psers et cetera but is there any uh restrictions on that 600 000 the federal government gives us yes it's all title oriented predominantly thank you so much for uh uh clarifying that after after six years i'm privy to this slide but with 56 slides i can imagine some members of the public are unaware that 90 million dollars or 68 comes from local revenue so thank you so much for clarifying that thank you for your questions thank you

031for your question miseries any other comments or questions from members of the board ms drummond i just have a brief clarifying question about the building projects the building level projects um that was i think you said 150 000 is that total or just per school or just just to clarify that number that that is total all the building products will not exceed 150 000 okay thank you other questions uh mr winners yeah i'm just gonna um make one comment that i think it's really key for people to understand through the contract negotiation and the uh the agreements that were made with almost all the unions at this point the changes that are available for staff uh to save money and also the district to save money by moving to an open choice from an open

032choice one that can cost twenty five thousand dollars per family to an open choice three that can cost 22 um and most almost all that uh difference goes actually to the staff member uh choosing to uh to make that choice and again i i use the the example of it's a very good plan no matter if it's open choice one or open choice three um and i i would equate the open choice three to a honda a honda accord uh a pretty good car and a very good program and i encourage that the cooperation that's been uh done with the unions and the other labor groups that they continue to uh look at this as a as a win-win for both the district and the individuals uh for additional cash there is the the the

033uh one thousand dollar deductible that comes with open choice three but the savings are well beyond that so the same thing for the prescription plan uh the changes that have been made with prescriptions plans uh allows us to again to keep our costs under control uh and then and also uh for for um the plans are changing but also to keep the cost for the employee to be in the reasonableness as well so uh i i support this budget i think the other slide that you pointed out related to the mea uh population um really shows how well educated our uh our staff is on the mea uh staff of course um with the almost all uh but in this case 39 having some level of masters um and then we have a hundred and

034close to 150 of our 396 i don't know what the exact number is 398 somewhere around staff members are on the top step um so you see it's a very uh lopsided uh normalized curve but it's really important for people to understand where our our staff is and how uh doctor uh yeah there you go mr bricker um does the budgeting from the bottom up and making these individual uh selections at both uh step and column but also in the expectation of the uh the medical first the changes so my question for you uh mr bricker not dr brichter mr bricker uh we had open choice plan i think for our employees in the month of may will the reflection those be reflected in the final budget so the terms of the contract agreements that

035have been entered into are factored into this presentation the proposed only open contract at this point in time is the mespa pending what goes there that would be factored into the next one change open enrollment oddly enough just open today for the staff and that takes about six weeks to get finalized so we're going to be going through that those changes well it would be nice to try and incorporate them time wise it's realistically not possible to incorporate the current changes that are ongoing uh which is why we assume everyone stays where they are for the final budget yeah so mr winner is just to clarify that we have all the labor contracts and plans with the exceptions of the mespa in this current budget proposal with a 1.62 tax increase okay very good so

036i i i and although i'm asking the question at the end of the day i'm not sure for the budget purposes uh the people that hopefully will choose in the long run for both the good of the district and also for more cash in their pocket to do to move to an open choice three then that cost to the district is really not changing much over there the net cost of the employee uh is certainly where a lot of the reduction is in the first year or two so um i i'm just curious if we were able to incorporate this but otherwise thank you for those comments and questions we appreciate it other questions or comments from members of the board on the budget uh mr navarrete yeah thanks for this tim um the changes

037in um in medical uh drop a lot in the third look i mean we're five six hundred basis points some cases that's that pretty atypical no it's kind of standard uh the reason this year was a little little it's not that drastic uh the reason and i hate to say this because i really was hoping not to it's coveted related as to why the numbers were where they are because the changes in the covid expenditures they were trying to hold off as much as they could to incorporate the most recent years to try and gather as much data as possible on the more recent and when they do the projections and as everyone knows you know with coveted shutdown no one was really getting elected surgeries no one was going out and doing everything so

038the second look incorporate made an assumption as to where it should be with us starting to open up and starting to get back to a little bit more of a normalcy they were able to take the more recent experience and project that out and that's what helped lower that number thanks yeah i i don't want to downplay it right i mean a 10 increase in our health care costs is you know is a is a huge increase um it's certainly better than the you know 14 or 15 that was being uh purported before which is i'm glad i'm glad paul spoke to open choice three because i think we need to continue to to push that out i know that that's a choice that my family's gonna be making here yeah and on that if

039you look at open choice three or anyone up two percent our prescription the base plan we're trying to get across the board did not increase you've got the same you had last year dental did not increase vision did not increase i also changed to open choice three so i i do see the value in the plan yeah that's great also i just point out i know it wasn't it wasn't spelled out in your slides and maybe we can and it was in a previous discussion that we had but you know 1.62 increase if that's where we end up or somewhere close to it now is the fourth consecutive year that we've been under two percent um we've been 1.98 1.12 and 1.56 or five five last year i believe um and now 1.62 this year

040so um that uh i'm curious to see you know watching other uh school board meetings because i have nothing else to do on my nights off from here we uh you know there's a lot of school boards here that are really bumping up against that act one limit and uh finding some hardship including some of our neighbors so um it's a it's it's been a tough road to oh and i appreciate all the work that you and uh dr zurban the rest of the staff and the finance committee have done to get us where we are thank you yeah real quick on this slide though can you can you correct the bottom because it looks like we were talking about open oc4 uh but the terminology on that slide yes i i will correct that

041it must have been carry over when i slid the line across i'll fix that on the slides yeah mr navarrete you make an excellent point uh you know in comparison to other districts who uh in our last check with uh you know somewhere you know but right in the same range is where we were with the tax increase but many were at the act one index of about three percent so that's a that's an excellent point so thank you for that recognition other questions comments of members of the board seeing no other comments we'll move on to the next item on the the agenda under guest and schedule speakers that is uh with uh dr speedwack and the modification to the athletic activities health and safety plan and based on where the uh on the

042motion for the agenda i'm just gonna scroll down there just to read that so we understand what we're really asking for and then we'll take any questions from dr speedwack but it basically says approve all seven twelve math acting athletic teams and activities as well as outdoor athletic facility you use users based on the masking guidance for outdoor sports and exercise as determined by the montgomery county office of public health to no longer require masking face covering while individuals are participating in high exertion activity outdoors i.e playing sports or exercising dr speedwack comments on on this recommendation yes just as essentially what would be happening here similar to what we did in our fall season uh nothing changes with regards to masking for anyone except for the athletes that are in the act of competing

043those athletes that are in the act of competing in any sport would be able to remove their masks similar to what we did in the fall and again this is for only for athletics and activities and the outside user groups that use our outdoor facilities you may notice that there is an agenda item on the work session for discussion about other modifications to cover 19 mitigation matters that we can discuss in the next meeting questions on this particular recommendation and and just so everyone knows the reason this is on the agenda it's the earliest we could get it on the agenda for the consideration uh for the modification to an already approved plan uh and in anticipation of some of the uh athletic teams which we originally had thought would be in uh district slash

044um uh state you know play so that's why that's why it's here before you this evening questions on this matter dr zuri maybe i should clarify that that as we're in districts here uh and eventually state playoffs uh pia has acknowledged that it is not the home school rules so if we were to travel let's say tomorrow for boys and girls lacrosse like we are uh it is feasible that uh one school would would be required to wear masks and the others would not depending on how their how individual schools are are handling the situation so depending on on the vote tonight would uh certainly impact those types of scenarios where both schools do not have to follow the same rules throughout districts and state play for spring sports thank you for the clarification questions

045from uh members of the board on this matter uh dr spivak just answered my questions so thank you thank you miseries uh ms cancro so just to clarify though if they're on the sidelines they have to wear their mess it's my only concern is with that heat as it's been in the 90s and they're going into division like so they have to wear their mask on the sideline that is correct the verbiage from the county only indicates while in the act of participating in the in the sporting event okay what does the pia say when they when they discuss this what is their recommendation uh the piaa has not taken a real stance on this other than to [Music] to make it up to each individual school to make the ruling and to make it

046very clear that you do not have to follow the host site's rules that if the host site is uncomfortable playing a school that has different rules then they must forfeit forfeit the contest so they have not taken a stance with with masks at all in this particular change from the county yeah i mean i just want to express my concerns when we're dealing with the temperatures like we've had today and those those children participating in in these levels um and not being able to show social distancing on the sideline and not have to wear the master they can collect themselves and breathe correctly um you know that i think that you know that's my biggest concern yeah ms cantrell we certainly understand that and recognize that our challenge is uh the modification that the county

047has given us allows for what we're recommending to you which isn't allowed right now by the nethackton school board so based on our previously approved plan so that's why we have it before you to get at least this you know uh modification approved yeah it doesn't it doesn't include spectators either and and even though even though you know there's other cdc guidance that says you can now you know uh there's a lot of challenge with all this i'm not i'm not going to you know be before you right now and say that there's a there's a we're going to put you up the police 100 of all this going on and i'm certainly not naive to think that uh you know our our fans or fans of of uh teams that we go play against

048will you know follow certain rules i think i think there's actually a lot of confusion some of the articles that i've been reading uh suggest that there's confusion by uh by people about what the rule really is in what location and for what for what group um our problem right now is for for sure that we can't we can't just arbitrarily make the change uh for the athletes on the field and that's and we know that we can we're okay under the montgomery county uh department of public health uh making this recommendation to you and that's why we have it before you are there any other questions on this matter seeing no other questions thank you dr spiwak so then we go into i'll turn it back over to madam president thank you dr zurby

049so at this time i'll take public comment on our board action items for this evening um this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be decided upon tonight as outlined on the agenda um we asked um that you please pre-register um to speak this evening so um for those who have pre-registered you'll have um if you could keep your comments to four minutes or less and start by stating your name and municipality so for those who pre-registered please raise your hand if you'd like to speak okay first i have brian earnshaw mr earnshaw you are in whenever you're ready uh brian herrshaw lower providence um first comment relates to item seven suspension award policy uh i'll ask again uh when does the board intend to resume in-person meetings and what

050will need to happen for that to occur um you're quickly running out of reasons to hold virtual only meetings if you follow what's going on in the world in the state um regarding the budget i think it's important to note that this is the fifth consecutive year that the district will post a multi-million dollar budget surplus not all those surpluses are related to covid uh all those surpluses have been retained for additional spending none has been returned to taxpayers um and i'll point out to mr navarette regarding the tax increase that norristown is past the preliminary budget with a zero percent tax increase um there's another month to go in this budget process and i think i think the board can do better um one glaring item in the budget there's a 200 000 budgetary

051reserve that has no spending tied to it so it's really just a slush fund um or a contingency as dr zurby will probably call it but that could clearly come out of the budget and save two hundred thousand dollars um this year surplus if you adjust it for spending pulled forward into this year from next is really 4.9 million dollars and i'm also negating the effect of a million dollar overspend in legal uh which is which is quite outrageous um and what is the plan for the current year surplus is any any of that could be returned to taxpayers or is it going to be retained for additional spending uh regarding the presentation itself slide 15 i didn't see anywhere where the excess high school staffing has been addressed i'm wondering when that will be

052addressed at this year's budget or sometime in the future also a schedule i received in response to our right to know requests showed spending on substitutes in the 1920 school year was 1 million 61 000 next year's budget goes up to 1.2 million dollars i think that's something to look at and why that increase is happening regarding slide 18 the expenditures deferred or paid via committed funds i think it's important to recognize even though there's a celebration of taking one point seven months 75 million out of the budget none of that is really operational changes to save money it's using surpluses it's moving spending from one fiscal year to the next it's paying off debt with surplus funds they've been set aside for teasers um and reduction in legal costs with no plan how to

053accomplish that so really it's i don't view that as real operational savings i almost you almost term it is budgetary gimmicks um looking at the pde 2028 file what i need to look at would be special programs 1200-500 and the trend of those expenses increases significantly 1.1 million in this year's budget to 1.5 million next year we'll look at why that isn't any savings opportunities in administrative services personnel salaries 3.3 million actual 2020 budget of 3.8 million at 2022. why is the administrative salaries growing by half a million dollars and can any reductions be achieved there um in central and support other support services uh salaries again are going up dramatically 50 increase over 2020 associated increase in benefits as well um and also as i pointed out um you know part of the savings

054that you're achieving in debt service is from the refinancing that happened which really just pushed maturities out to later years to accommodate additional borrowings for our head and then finally in the budgetary reserve the 200 thousands that i mentioned that should just come out that's just there's no reason for that on 114 150 million dollar budget uh to have a 200 000 reserve and you could probably reduce your tax increase a couple of points and also think that by looking at some of these other items i highlighted you'll likely find savings and the one thing i'm curious is whether or not mr brook ever produced a salary schedule detailing by person that ties into the budget thank you okay thank you mr earnshaw anyone else for public comment on board action items okay mr andrews

055you are in when you're ready johnny andrews law of providence good evening looking through the set of slides that were presented i see nothing whatsoever about the homestead tax credits i don't believe they've gone away and i i would like to have a comment as to what those credits are uh on on a typical household i think it's maybe a puny amount a hundred or 130 dollars but i think that uh discussing the budget without mention of that is not the proper way to do it and i i urge you to consider mr earnshaw's uh uh comments carefully he's a certified professional accountant he knows his finances and he he respects integrity and should be heeded thank you mr andrews anyone else okay so with that we will move on with the rest of our

056meeting may i have a motion to approve the suspension of board policy zero zero six point two a specific regard to the limitation on the number of directors participating electronically reese thank you comments from the board in regards to mr earnshaw's um question uh i believe we're discussing in person at some point i don't know if it was this week or next week uh yeah i want to make sure that i have all of our all the details addressed and how we are going to be returning because there are um it's not as simple as just bringing everybody into a room and saying we're having a meeting i want to make sure that we have everything accounted for um and i hope to have a statement on that next week awesome thank you anyone else

057with comments okay all those in favor aye opposed motion carries 9-0 um can i have a motion to approve the ceremonial signing of the high school diplomas and authorize those school directors with the child graduating in the class of 2021 to sign their child's diploma in the location otherwise reserved for the president of the board of directors reese sarah second thank you miss purdue any comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries 9-0 so if we if we could uh with with that motion uh could we ask uh mr mcguinness and his daughter oh and his wife and his and his daughter uh to have that have the ceremonial signing uh for his daughter so mr mcginnis i believe that you are in possession of a very important piece of paper there you go

058excellent and who are we signing the uh the diploma for the one and only danielle faith college beautiful mother elizabeth that's got me major points and on a serious note i want to thank the board president uh kim aubry larsonis for offering this to me um as in the fact an alumnus this is a special thing so i thank all of you for taking this time and allowing me to do this so as i guess the temporary president kim can i make more rules or is this just it okay as temporary president here class of 2021 danielle faith college thank you everybody congratulations thank you congratulations thank you drew the rest of the meeting is yours carry on i warned you no trade back and dr zurby tell danielle she must go to the remainder

059of her classes and do well on her finals okay all right thank you guys yeah that's only one of four signatures danielle you're not off the hook yet so and uh earlier uh i believe this week or or it was last week i might i can't remember when exactly it occurred but uh uh kim mario sonis and i uh met with our two uh senior school board representatives and i want to share a quick uh a video of that uh meeting this is our ceremonial assignment of the departments for the graduating class of 2021. you're with us i'm serena goodrich and chris spletzer okay [Music] so this is our ceremonial we're watching it twice now hold on a second okay yeah we don't need it on loop excellent uh and that was a real good

060opportunity i want to thank uh miss kelly for organizing that opportunity um and certainly i want to thank mr mcginnis and his family for taking advantage of that opportunity here this evening and we we look forward to being able to do that uh for for uh all of us and kim you know uh you did that for your child last year and and i i the same so uh it's pretty extraordinary and pretty important so with that said uh we can move on to uh the next item on the agenda yeah the rest of this is a little less fun uh may i have a motion to approve the 2021-2022 proposed final budget as attached thank you mr navarrete is there a second guinness thank you mr mcginnis comments from the board i think there's

061a few questions i think we can get clarified uh i believe um my understanding is that substitutes cost is something we uh are anticipating needing to increase the rate of i don't believe we've done any action on about but i missed uh mr rajini uh provided some explanation of that at the education meeting is that part of the reason for the substitution cost change in the budget mr speaker there is no anticipated uh substitute cost uh change uh to the budget what mr regina will be presenting in june um is information that uh will allow us to modify how we provide substitute services which will allow us to reduce the overall need for that the expenditure and that's why that's why mr bricker was able to make those modifications in the budget as presented okay

062so what what so his pres his presentation will not modify the budget okay so tim what would the future you do the differential then so we typically run into about 1.7 million dollars worth of uh substitute costs it does fluctuate on a down year would be 1.2 but typically historically we've been right around 1.6 1.7 if you look at what we're budgeting for now it's about 850 to 900 000 so clearly we've made that reduction to use the funds again from the salary and benefits for the staff that is not in and or sabbatical and or not hired into our traditional savings and we do budget transfers into the sub costs and we've been doing that for the last two years now okay um i believe there was some a discussion about special programs tim

063is that uh i speculate um is can you explain that before i speculate how about that which special programs i believe that the reference was uh so there was an increase that somebody know the exact wording uh an increase in special programs i believe that would be reach uh for the i suspect no so reach originally was a um through a grant uh we picked up some of that expense there's an extension of that which was picked up then by a subsequent grant um as those grants run off we do have to pick up those costs with regards to the uh general budget okay thank you um and admin salaries uh can you speak towards that i know that there are there has been a couple of um movements around with people in temporary positions

064and obviously we added the assistant superintendent in this year so uh can you speak towards that or dave well we've added we've added a few positions and properly uh you know staffed the uh curriculum office uh to support the main function of the organization and i guess i guess one of the things that i think is important i know we we often hear public uh comments and people referencing things such as you know we're not we're not doing this to cut the budget that to cut the budget while we are looking to not only be uh fiscally prudent in all the actions that we do our our primary goal is not designed to cut the budget our primary goal is designed to provide the best programs and services that our community uh can provide and

065and i think it's a different in terms of the perspective that that needs to be taken uh and that and the perspective that we've been taking uh all the things that we've done uh in just in this year to go from a budget that was that was established to be greater than what we could raise in the three point 3.0 tax increase down to a a 1.62 tax increase while still adding some of the the special additional reach programs by adding some of the additional science programs at the high school and a number of other improvements you know speaks volumes to the work that the board's done that the finance committee's done and that the administration has done in our work with the teachers so um you know i think we should be really proud

066of the work that mr brooker has done to to bring this thing forward yep and then the last question i believe tim you can answer related to homestead tax credits and how that's accounted for in revenue the homestake tax credits get calculated upon the final number so we can't provide that information yet until there's a final final budget typically that is based on a dollar threshold based on the approved tax rate so after the final budget i can give you that but until then i cannot but can you just speak towards the the accounting for it and how it's it's not considered uh in it's it's considered in the revenue stream but doesn't necessarily uh highlight the exact amount for the taxpayer sure so that that is accounted for in the collection rate that we

067have based on the assessment so if you take the assessments you take the rate that gives you a number then we have a collection rate a percentage of what we tax that we anticipate to collect that would go for the unpaid that would go for the um assessment changes as well as the homestead act so it's accounted for in that collection rate thank you anyone else with comments or questions on this item yeah i just want just to make the point about um there's a comment made about pulling expenses forward uh into the current year obviously that's a common practice in every organization and i'll just make the point that you know for things like textbooks that are are recurring expenses but occur on a three or four or five or ten year cycle pulling

068those expenses forward and paying them off in the current year absolutely reduces our expenses in the following year and reduces the need for tax increases in the following year and absolutely puts money back in taxpayers pockets the same goes for paying down debt when we pay down debt we every time we have done it we are paying down debt and we are reducing the debt load of this district that reduces our debt service that reduces the need for us to uh raise taxes in future years and absolutely puts cash back in people's pockets those those could be the difference between a 1.6 or a 1.8 or a 2.0 percent increase and while those are small numbers they add up over time right every tax increase is cumulative so everything that we do this year to

069keep that increase as low as possible keeps everybody's taxes low next year and the year after and the year after thank you mr neverett any other comments from the board seeing none all those in favor of the proposed final budget hi hi any opposed motion carries 9-0 uh and finally i will take a motion to approve the um change to the health and safety plan for athletic teams in grades seven to twelve reese thank you miss reece is there a second all right thank you mr navarrette comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye any opposed saying none the motion carries 9-0 and with that we will move on to courtesy of the floor anyone that has pre-registered to speak this evening during courtesy of the floor please raise your hand

070we ask you keep your comments to four minutes or less and again introduce yourself with your name and municipality first i have brian earnshaw whenever you're ready mr earnshaw uh brian armstrong lower providence um first thanks to ms reese and mr winners for following up online questions i appreciate you two board members really consistently doing that um response to dr zurby's comments on the budget of course when you go from three percent down to 1.6 it's easy to do when you start with an inflated budget um just in the most recent round 400 000 costs came out just because you got a report from the healthcare consortium and using surplus i always go bring that down as well so you really made no operational changes and i understand you add programs but a lot of

071that tax increase decreased um because of things that aren't operational now that gets readily apparent um regarding mr navarette's comments i understand pulling it forward my point of making that was if you show a budget surplus of 3.1 and that includes expenses that weren't budgeted you really have a higher operating surplus it's simple math and i apologize if you don't get that um remaining comments i have relate to a couple presentations that are coming from the word section work session uh regarding full day kindergarten one thing missing from the presentation on the on the on the website is what are some of the cons relating to full day kindergarten or what are the drawbacks uh there's many uh studies that are reputable out there that i encourage more to look at before making your final

072decision because they're not presented to you by the administration secondly on slide 10 it talks about the financials and it shows a net new annual cost of 281 000. that's a misleading number in my view the real cost of full day kindergarten is an incremental 1.3 million dollars it's just that savings being achieved through the store program are being spent on this additional program so just keep in mind that the real incremental cost of full-day kindergarten is 1.3 million dollars not 300 000. um i'm not sure what mr burger's going to present with respect to right to the legal costs there was some discussion on that at the finance committee meeting and i received a copy of the present of a presentation relating to legal expenses in response to a right to know request that

073is now posted on the website but is buried within the finance committee section of the website and that talks to legal expenses and it really shows a lot um it shows some positives i will give you that the special education expanding on legal expenses has decreased pretty dramatically over the four years presented but one of the things that really has increased dramatically is the cost of spending on right to know requests it went from 1 575 in 2017-18 up to over 600 thousand to date this fiscal year it's just a substantial increase and and i know that you've taken money on the budget but there's really no plan to address that and nobody's discussed why those costs are being occurred there's been discussion of appeals and losing appeals no discussion of who's making decisions to

074appeal um the ramifications of losing and and why are you appealing all these right-to-know requests and is that really contributing to legal fees um and what are you gaining it seems like you keep losing on these appeals and it seems like you're trying to hide something don't want to put something out there to the public um so this this needs to go to it nearly needs to be addressed um to spend 1.2 million dollars a year to date on legal fees it is just outrageous and the other slide that shows is that two percent of local tax revenue which ms reese point out was significant is spent on legal fees and that has no educational benefit whatsoever and there's been no discussion of of what's going to be done to bring these fees down and

075it's also concerning if i was on the board that this didn't come to light at least from from what i know until the april forecast review you know pretty much you know nine ten months into the fiscal year to realize you're over a million dollars over budget on legal fees this would just be concerning that didn't come up before thanks thank you and next i have john andrews whenever you're ready can you hear me yes i can john andrews lower providence over the past few years there's been uh activity called arrowhead forward some people didn't know what that meant and uh in talking to random homeowners they were totally unaware of the arrowhead project now today i went to a census website and found that uh lower providence's uh population is flat from 2010 to

0762020 and they have yet to make comment as to the changes in the adjourning township of worcester also in lower providence uh they claim that 92 percent of their homes have internet so the the present system of uh transparency relative to major building projects even though 92 percent of the homes have the internet service the present system fails maybe only a thousand residents in the township read the local newspaper that you advertise in there are other local school districts that put out annual reports that are mailed to residents homes you rely on is to get people to find out what the election day date is and and who you want elected but uh for sure the the only mailer that gets to the township homes or and the businesses the businesses are also taxpayers is

077the annual tax bill i think you should do a survey as to what would people like to be informed about the school district other school districts as i may have mentioned put out annual reports uh this is all under the guise of transparency and uh you know putting out mailers can can get the facts out there they can overcome ignorance they can benefit the school district and when the school district ends up with excess school facilities and high tax rates to pay for them and that discourages young families from moving into the district there's no benefit to that so you know maybe you should put out a mailer saying that that when where you have the internet service you can sign up for emails or something like that and and if you don't have the

078internet uh you can uh get mailers maybe on a quarterly basis uh the internet is not a cheap thing it may cost a thousand dollars a year uh you know using the school district practice of of going to new computers every four years uh that's a that's maybe a three hundred dollar a year expense the the internet uh service provider charges thirty dollars a month uh people have to maybe people have to buy printers and paper uh and so uh you need to do study as to informing the people that you're taxing thank you mr andrews is there anyone else for courtesy of the floor okay uh closing comments from the board before we adjourn miss drummond i just want to address uh mr andrews comment on the mailers um i was a part of

079many tours and meetings at arrowhead and about arrowhead um and dr zerby could you just remind us if and what mailers were sent to everyone's home to surprise them of this project i i'm trying to recall from memory but we've sent at least on two occasions for sure uh postcards home remember uh informing families that uh the project is underway there was a website that was uh cataloging all actions and discussions and communications that were sent home we've also communicated with both township supervisors not supervisors the township managers and asked them to share information on the construction project uh with their uh constituent uh mailers as well those are just a sample of the things that we've done and just for clarification purposes the mailers that went out they went to not just to district

080families they went to the to the district-wide families whether families that people had children in the school or all resident homes all resident homes thank you very much any other comments from the board we'll have a more comprehensive discussion around the right to know process um as part of the presentation in the next meeting but i did want to address just a couple of things that this was not a um a late coming realization that our right to know crop costs were increasing um part of my concern this is something that dr zurby and i have spent a lot of time discussing in our one-on-one conversations and my personal concern is that i don't want to dissuade people from using the right to know process properly i think it's an important function of of our

081government that we are allowed to request and have access to documentation and um and i don't want to dissuade people from using that the way that it's intended to be used um unfortunately i think that there are some abuses to the system that are happening and that's something that we do have to um find ways to address um and a lot of the appeals that we have entered into are are in looking towards um avoiding setting costly precedence um and you know we we don't just um enter into them carelessly and it is done with a good bit of thought and consideration um but again we'll get more into the right to know process uh in our next meeting so if there are no further comments from the board i will take a motion to

082adjourn mr mcginn reliable as always um with that we will adjourn this meeting at 8 17 and reconvene momentarily all right dr zurby do you need to do anything on your end to make the switch over are we good to go now we're ready to go all right then i'd like to call to order the may 19th 2021 work session meeting for the methachton school district board of directors please rise for the pledge i i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcast given the need to conduct this meeting in a virtual environment we

083require members of the public wanting to comment during courtesy of the floor to pre-register by five o'clock this evening since we have no voting items i don't believe attendance is necessary but we do have all board members present recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zerby thank you madam president this evening we have a number of guests and scheduled speakers we have dr bruce campbell he's our consultant for the diversity equity inclusion efforts uh going on in the district dr campbell i know you've been on the call uh awaiting to to appear so excellent we have you with us and i'm going to bring up your presentations bear with me one second good evening everyone as we're waiting for the presentation to go up hope everyone's well okay all yours dr campbell thank you um

084so yeah so doctors already asked if i could uh present uh basically where where we are with the um dei work that's going on in the district so i thought we would uh start off by saying where where we came from and then um tell you the rest of the timeline so um we've obviously had several meetings uh with administration and when i say we i mean me and dr zerby um as well as the leadership team um working together with dr zurby we have created the leadership team um for the district as well as the bigger uh diversity equity and inclusion committee which also has subcommittees so there are five subcommittees for that group as you see on the slide there curriculum community outreach human resources professional development and student life that group which

085is individuals and those individuals are students parents teachers staff administrators community members and board members who make up that group all work together to create the diversity equity inclusion community survey if we go to the next slide so that brings us up to this month may so once the committee um came up with the survey uh we presented that to dr ziri for his review and approval and then we also sent it to um miss amanda kelly um who was in charge of putting that through the blackboard system um [Music] so that people could fill it out um it was admit uh delivered to the community on may 10th and it's going until this sunday at midnight so usually it takes two weeks but just because of the timing um it just made sense for

086it to go all the way until this sunday go to the next side please so that takes us up until um to next month june where we will have data from the survey so the committee will be able to review the data from the survey we've been asked to present the preliminary findings of that survey to the superintendent's cabinet in june and then also the committee will be working on recommendations based on the data for the district go to the next slide please um in terms of august the uh there's a couple things so one that the survey results as well as recommendations would be presented at the administrative retreat which i believe is the very beginning of august um and then that session would also be a working session with the administrators um to

087work on the dei work for the district in tandem with the district's uh strategic plan so that's important piece um for this work i also think it's important to just uh state that that august is also when uh my contract um ends for the district um but obviously there's continued work that would happen with the district so the next slide september after the um work around the strategic plan and the results from the survey and the recommendations all came out there would be goals that would be set and an action plan for the district around dei work and then finally the presentation of those goals and the action plan that the district has approved would be presented to the community so i'd imagine that would happen at a board meeting but maybe other meetings as

088well where that information was shared um so that's all i have i just just um again this is a timeline not different than what i uh submitted when i first came on to the district but um dr zurby thought it was important that i agree to um share what that timeline looked like and then extend it on so um the district knew where the work was going thank you dr campbell uh see if we have any questions from members of the board at this point uh miseries hi dr campbell it's nice to meet you i have not been personally involved because there's can only be so many cooks in the cooks in the kitchen so it's so nice to to to uh put a name to a face or a face to a name whatever

089um i just have my questions are not specific to my facton necessarily but i've been asked several questions from people recently um about your work or just about um dei in general so this is the perfect opportunity to clarify some of those uh questions i've been getting so could you just give an example of what you mentioned recommendations it does not have to be one that you think is from a factor but what would be an example of a recommendation um so recommendation could be that there is uh personnel that are specific to dei work within a district there could be recommendations on how the district would embed um policies and instruction around dei work into the classroom um also around events that would happen that are not academic events but there are events that

090are happening on campus um [Music] within the within the district those are some like low hanging fruit i think question exactly perfect and then when you said you there would be in the timeline goals what would be an example of a goal and again not in fact in specific because we haven't finished yet but what would be a goal example so a goal could be that within um five years mathakton this school district would be oh yeah it's not methactin so but i'm just right since that's what we're working with that's what i'm gonna use um would increase the diversity of their staff by x percent and then there would be bench you know with all goals there would be benchmarks to obtain that so there would be i'm talking about an hr goal here

091so that would be what practices and procedures are we doing as a district in hr to diversify our staff and then lastly you mentioned an action plan i suppose the action plan kind of combines the recommendations the goals to see how we're going to do this over the next five years correct yes okay i've been very quiet on this topic only because again like i said so many cooks in the kitchen but i just have to share that i grew up um in philadelphia and went to the most one of the most well i can't say statistically but of extremely diverse high school graduated in 1990 um so don't do the math please um and i myself thought wow i know all about diversity equity and inclusion and i am so looking forward to hearing

092what your work brings about because you know we all need to learn more about this topic and i am just so thankful for you and all the volunteers um and all the members of the the committees and all that not volunt all the uh members of them the facts and staff that are participating in this because um i'm looking forward to it as a parent as a board member and as a community member so thank you thank you dr zerby for having dr campbell come and uh that's it thank you thank you for your comments miss rhys any other questions for dr campbell ms perdue i just um first of all thank you for being here tonight i do have um a couple of questions just because they've been brought up by people of the

093public in reference to our community survey that went out and i wanted you to share your insight or provide insight on within the survey we have some background questions can you provide reasoning why we will ask certain types of question in a survey of this capacity for the community sure um so it's usually it's so let me start by saying all the questions that are asked are typical questions that are asked in a diversity equity inclusion survey um it's to get a breakdown of subgroups so usually you're going to be able to have tons of people that answer but you won't be able to say like oh well i don't know if these if it's a whole bunch of students that feel this way or if parents feel this way or staff or administrators and

094like even within like district staff it's it's important to sort of break that down um the other thing that i would say too is i'll just put it out there i know like some questions might be a bit jarring in terms of like there's so many responses or choices that people can select um so one that i think comes up quite a bit is the you know question around religion right um so there's like why would you ask that for a public school why are we asking about somebody religion so usually the answer that i would give to such a question even though it wasn't asked but um is relevant is the idea of maybe that would give us some indication as to why a certain population of our community is fasting or a certain

095population uh honestly maybe doesn't care about a halloween parade because it's not a part of their religion so it's getting a bit of an understanding of our community no thank you and then one comment um not a question all but it asks is will we send out a reminder about the survey just because i know um the and it's at the end of it and we only send out one communication about the survey will we communicate again like a reminder yeah ms uh ms kelly has a schedule of reminders that are set to go out okay and some of some actually have gone out to different groups so for example uh i sent one out to the staff just this week perfect thank you thank you miss purdue any other questions for dr campbell at

096this point i'm sure he'll be back before you uh as we get closer to you know using you know having some information uh from from this uh audit and other other information sources so with that said dr campbell you've been very patient with us tonight i wasn't sure exactly what time we'd be able to get you on but thank you so much you're certainly welcome to stay with us or you can you know quietly drop off and uh we will uh continue to do our good work together thank you thank you all i will quietly drop off next on the agenda dan sakala from federia is here to provide an update on the arrowhead project dan hi good evening dr zurich good evening everyone hope everyone's well um i have to do a couple quick

097introductions i know the property committee has seen both of these gentlemen and i know we we throw a number of individuals it's probably about 10 of us working on the various projects but with me tonight is shelby bonner who'll be doing the presentation for hour ahead shelby is the full-time person on site overseeing the project on our behalf on your behalf and also with us as mr jack ayers jack is handling the other three projects eagleville canopy and pads and the fuel tank projects so shelby if if dr zurby do we have the presentation we we do and we're going to we're going to show it now okay great there we go shelving thank you thank you dr zurby shelby go right ahead good evening everyone uh thanks for having me i'm just gonna run

098through this uh presentation that we prepared for tonight um the basis of what's going on on site right now is the first part of the presentation uh we're we're going through structural steel i'm at the back of the bill at the back of the building of the new building that's going to be building a which will be the main classroom building so you're seeing the columns being erected um beams and stringers are going across there decking is now being set for the second story floor and um that's going really well they're both they're making the bolted connections they got some welding going on and we're making good progress there um next the next big item that you'll really notice if you're out on the project is the uh concrete block masonry going up uh foundation

099walls or sorry the foundation block is uh being installed over previously installed concrete footers the footers uh were just completed this week in whole so we are now out of the ground with concrete and just continuing on with the masonry as we move up uh the third main item is utilities are going in um we finally got pico sorted out as far as relocating a gas line to maintain service to the existing building um now we're we're we've already started the process of getting them set up for the new building uh because it was some you know there's a bit of a time issue for them so we wanted to get a head start on that we've already uh enlisted them you know to get them ready for that next service uh electrical and in-wall

100uh stuff inside the building is going on and they're they're back filling over that and the new electrical main service to the new building was also installed uh for the remainder of this month and into june uh until we see you again here on the on the meeting we'll be continuing to erect structural steel um in building a and building b and b building c will uh take place shortly after that uh concrete foundation block and exterior masonry will continue to be constructed underground and under slab utilities within the building footprint that that is going to include the plumber who is scheduled to start the beginning of next week and we'll be fi well actually that finished up today uh finishing remaining concrete footers that were quickly held up by a gas line so that

101is done with um the budget everything is in good shape there and we have no change orders to report at this time other than the one that was already approved at a previous meeting and we also have no board action items to undergo at this time um everything's looking good out there schedule was looking good as well we have some items that are ahead of schedule we have a couple things that are behind schedule we think that everything is going to be in good shape uh for meeting deadlines and you know the overall schedule so thank you shelby uh before we take questions from the board uh just as a reminder for those of you that are able uh we have a a tour of the facility scheduled for tomorrow uh questions from members of

102the board uh for shelby and the uh fadevia team at this point mr winters yeah i appreciate the update i won't be able to attend so uh i there was a comment i think on social media today about what was going on at eagleville and i think it's really important the importance of owner rep for us so that we don't end up in a multi-million dollar facade issue 10 years 12 years down the road so we appreciate your eyes on the project and making sure that we are getting the most uh for mr jones and mr bonner um any ques any issues around procurement costs accelerating inflationary costs on steel uh or logistical costs of getting materials um is there any risk for the district on any of these sites i'll take that question um

103and and it's i mean it's any anyone engaged in construction knows that that issue of procurement and escalation is pervasive everywhere in construction um shelby or jack well i can tell you on on jacks on the eagle project they jack in conjunction with the kcba team did a great job of nipping it in the bud you might have heard that there was a real run on availability and cost of steel bar joists and they they modified the design on the fly uh to basically avoid that issue and not have any impact on the project so kudos to them there but yeah i mean it would be dishonest to say we don't expect an issue because it seems like every week another issue is is presenting itself to be dealt with but i i i don't

104you know kelby i mean uh shelby and um jack anything candidly anything that needs to be talked about or we find i haven't encountered anything at this time i think we're fine i mean i see lumbers going up dry walls going off that type of thing that that that happens every year basically yeah and we and the contracts you have are not sensitive to fluctuations in commodity prices so we're okay we're okay all right um the two last points one uh thanks for chain making the change on the financials to show the change order being the change orders we've approved i think that was came up in the property committee um also just for clarity uh mr bonner you say building a b and c it's it's probably scaring people to hear three buildings you're

105talking about sections of the building can you just explain that really please yeah absolutely not a problem um there it is one building um overall and when we're referring to that that a building is a section of the building near the rear it's the two-story section uh that will have the the overall classrooms uh b is actually just really a corridor with some mechanical room functions to it and then c is the uh gym administrative and cafeteria uh up at the front of the facility okay thank you any other questions for uh the vadavia team seeing no other questions uh thank you gentlemen for being on the call tonight next on the guest of scheduled speakers we have dr deb euger who principal at woodland elementary school here is to provide the recommendation administrative recommendation

106for full-day kindergarten dr euger hi good evening dr derby and board members uh thank you for having me today um i'm excited to talk and give the final presentation on uh full day kindergarten and kind of sum it up for you where we've been and where we plan to go so uh next slide please so as doctors are be said we're here tonight to give you our recommendation and as an administrative team our recommendation is that you approve the implementation of full day kindergarten for all my facts and students beginning with the 22-23 school year we've talked a lot about our strategic plan and the how it aligns with the five tenets of the whole child and developing a full-day kindergarten program that aligns itself with the full child will be able to uh benefit

107us and all the stakeholders here at mafacton so i'll tell you a little bit about that as we proceed next slide please so back in january 2020 i went to all the teachers in all the elementary schools and gathered information to see what their opinions of the folding kindergarten were and the overarching majority of arma factor teachers are in favor of full day kindergarten all of our kindergarten and first grade teachers as you can imagine are in favor but um it was probably 98 of all teachers were in favor of a full day kindergarten in february i published a website to only two um mafactan employees that could house all the educational research as well as information about social emotional learning about um play learning in kindergarten and about the change process so that they

108could have a reference point for all of us and then in april april 27th we had a special board meeting where we went through all the tenants of the whole child how to um promote a healthy safe engaged challenging and supported environment for full day kindergarten children so we kind of talk to you about each one of those tenants um and aligned it to where we want to go as a district next slide please in october i gave a summary report to the education committee but if you remember in october we were doing a lot we were trying to reopen school there was a lot going on in october so we decided that i would give another um another report to the education committee in january and um in that october presentation you had our

109yeah not october you had asked me to research three different options besides a full day kindergarten you asked me to look at a half day program that is provided by an outside agency um and what if we offer offered full day kindergarten only to the neediest students and then what is uh the full-day kindergarten for all in the fact and students so um as we went through and researched all three of these options there were definitely pros and cons to all three of them the outside agency as you can imagine is limited with the amount of people that we could offer that to because of um parents having to pay for it and because of only being able to house a certain amount of kids in our building needing the other rooms for the kindergarten

110as well if you were looking at full day kindergarten offered only to our media students um we it begged the question of how do you identify needy in this time we have kids i mean we need to look at the whole child so we're looking at kids who may be struggling socially we look at kids who may be struggling emotionally and academically so how if we're not screening students this year how are we going to identify those media students so um we did meet with our legal team and came up with a plan of what it could look like but again um the deficit being you're not reaching all students we're just reaching um the neediest students and then again we had the option of full day kindergarten for all students it was at this

111presentation that we the administrator recommended a full day kindergarten program for all students next slide please so um in april just last month dr zurby presented to the property finance and work committee about how to fund and fit full day kindergarten into our programming and into our schools and the nice part about this presentation it was kind of like a culmination of a lot of work that we've put in for the past five years and goals that we've had based on um you know including our students more in and using strategies to get kids to stay in their classrooms as well as as well as fiscally how are we going to support a full day kindergarten program um so we're excited to see that we we absolutely can afford a full day kindergarten program and

112be able to use staff that we have right now um and realign them in other roles and i'll talk a little bit more about that in another slide um which brings us to tonight which is kind of the summer report and then hopefully next week the uh you vote on full day kindergarten next slide please so when we looked at what value full day kindergarten has we we obviously focused on our students but we also looked at the other stakeholder groups our parents who now can work outside of the home and don't have to worry about um child care for their kids we looked at the teachers how teachers can form those relationships with their students and they have way more time to get to know each and every student so they can individualize education

113for the students more we looked at the district being more competitive right now there's only less than five montgomery county districts that do not offer a full day program so looking at the benefit to all stakeholder groups we really strongly thought that full day kindergarten was a positive for all our stakeholders next slide please so when we start thinking about what the program looks like we can really focus on creating an environment that's healthy and not just healthy physically but socially emotionally and cognitively we need to make sure that we are providing that safety for students and not just physical safety not just being there for double the amount of drills that we have but also creating a climate for our youngest learners where they feel like they can take risks academic risks social risks

114and emotional risks we can produce an environment that keeps kids engaged an important part of the research is all about learning through play how learning through play is the cornerstone of how students learn so um developing a program that captures play but structured place that our teachers know what to plan and know what to look for is really going to be crucial in that full day kindergarten program also making all kids feel supported and challenged we often we past practice has been to be pulling kids out of a classroom to give them services in a full day kindergarten program we're going to be able to push into a kindergarten classroom because there's going to be double the amount of time so we're going to be able to provide that support for students within their regular

115classroom next slide please if you remember on one of my presentations i went and did the half day schedule versus the full day schedule and what we we wanted to see is how much time we can spend on the social the emotional and the cognitive development of our youngest students um it's important to reflect on the fact that yes there are people out there that say that full day kindergarten may um may not be for every child but the power of knowledge is that we can we we know why that happens sometimes because the students have attachment issues to their parents because the students aren't emotionally ready and we can fill those gaps so we can look at what um what kids may struggle with with a full day kindergarten program we can design things

116to put in place so that we prevent those downfalls from happening so if you just look at the amount of time we can really structure a program that is giving kids many many many more hours in the day to develop socially emotionally and cognitively next slide please so um we this is from dr zerby's presentation where we're going to start the implementation of our sore program and that is has been a goal of us to focus on that mental health to focus on to make sure that kids are ready to learn because they're mentally in a good emotional state that starts next year so um we are having a behavioral specialist at each elementary school so that behavior behavioral specialists can help us plan for those students who may need more support coming into a

117full day kindergarten program for years we've talked about inclusive practices and because we are offering the soar program we are able now to restructure some of our staff so that we can provide more inclusive practices so in other words if we have we may have a special ed teacher um designated at each school that works on that emotional and that connectedness of students well now we have the soar program so we have a team of people who can be looking at that so as we look at our staffing we can say okay we can restructure some of this staff now and we can really align the staff to what the students need um we've heard from our teachers for years that it's so difficult to be teaching two different grade levels if you're a special

118ed teacher well in this new model that limits the amount of double double grade levels that special education would have teacher would have to do so the benefit that we have now is time we have the entire next year to be looking at things like the schedule and curriculum planning and the materials and the distribution of materials and possible need for redistricting we have an entire year to be using to make sure that we have a program that is successful next slide please so here's just a brief summary of the financials but as you can see because we are able to reassign special ed teachers we won't need to hire the amount that we initially thought and that we're basically down to hiring you know two two and a half teachers and two aides so

119that's where that um little bit under 300 000 cost is because we are restructuring um the current teaching um assignments so that we can um make it happen next slide please so like i said before our benefit now is time so if this does pass at the end of the month if this does pass next week we have um to think about how we're going to structure the next couple months in making it the best transition we have to look at the staff we have right now and make sure that we're offering pd make sure that we're talking to them about scheduling making sure that we're talking to them about um the most successful approaches to doing the to doing a full day program then you're looking at november towards the nov you know october

120november we're talking about the budgeting of it what does it look like how many supplies do we need in each of our schools um what other resources may we need to support a full day kindergarten program another thing we have to think about is shifting everything up sooner so that we have all the data beforehand so instead of waiting until march or april to start thinking about staffing we really should look in december and january who do we have in our current staff that may want to be a full-day kindergarten teacher who's duly certified so that they can go into one of those extra kindergarten rooms so if we do that early enough we'll know how many other contracts would open up next slide please also registration we currently don't do registration until the spring

121if we start registration in january of next year knowing that the the next september is going to be full day we'll have a better idea of our attendance and that's also going to reflect on what we need to do with the outside hiring um and interview process and then if we if we plan it correctly then by next summer all we're looking at is are our classrooms ready or is the schedule ready to support a full day kindergarten program so um the benefit of passing this now is that we have time to plan a great program next slide please so um on the website you will see that all the presentations that we've done so far um are right here on the fact and web page you could click on that and find all the

122presentations since october 2019. next slide please so i appreciate you having me here today and just to finally wrap up that we really have done and been talking about this for years um but now you know thinking about where we've been in the past year and a half and how much kids um you know how much kids possibly have not been able to socialize not been able to go to preschool not have been out of their house as much as they typically would be at three years old or four years old a full day kindergarten program opens up the world to um to these kids into these families so thank you for listening and that's all like that thank you dr yooker thank you for your leadership over the last year and a half possibly

123two years for bringing this full circle to the board i hope that you know if it is passed next week i just want the board to know that we will make dr euger the lead administrator on the implementation of this project uh certainly working with the curriculum office and the supervisors and uh dr dr walsh and the rest of the administrative team but but having dr eucher be the lead on the project so with that said let's open the floor to any questions from members of the board at this point point any questions for dr euger ms drummond thank you dr eucher for this um i just i have a couple um you know to a previous speaker um comment about drawbacks to full day kindergarten um i guess you know what what do the

124studies show about that if anything and um and i guess you know parents can still choose to have an alternate kindergarten arrangement for their child at that age and then um rejoin you know and join the district in first grade correct correct well not i mean if you approve this not here it wouldn't be if you approve this it would be a full day kindergarten program right right but they could come in but like yeah they don't have to they're not compelled to have kindergarten here correct um when you look at the cons when you look at the research it is all about the social emotional piece that some kids just aren't ready some kids are too attached to their parents but like i said before if we know that and we can see that

125in the first couple days of school we can use our behavioral specialist we can use our school counselor we can set up like individual programming for these children and it is a very very small percent of children that um that go through this so we can be proactive knowing that that's where they are um you know is is just giving us the power we will have the resources to handle that for kids um would it hurt kids if we didn't address that social and emotional piece and they were you know they have those attachment issues and they have that fear and that anxiety if we didn't address that sure sure then you're going to see a kid who's hate school and not ready for it but um you know where we are in my facton

126and how much we focus on the whole child and being able to support that child emotionally um i don't foresee there being any issues and i do want to thank you for that um the emphasis on the social emotional learning because i know that in in past presentations going back a couple or several years that we have been you know talking about that a lot that when this was first presented to us we really emphasized you know our desire to see that is a large component in this so thank you and then just uh kind of a quick question is i i guess then um the students are there all day then they'll be able to take part in the why aftercare if if that's offered at the school i mean so then that would

127be offered to all the grades yeah they would be involved in everything that has to deal with the school launch and recess everything they'd be involved so then working families could take advantage of that okay thank you you're welcome thank you miss german uh miss purdue we just have one when we talk about the social emotional component of it and maybe some kids that may have um may want to be with their parents do you feel like with full day kindergarten a half day kindergarten is there a connection with some kids having an issue with transitioning into a full day kindergarten program and i guess in respect to a half-day kindergarten program so you mean if they were half-time before they came in well no not half time but just in general right like we're

128currently now providing half the half day program the am pm but have you seen just because i know you've provided us bind us with extensive amount of research and i'm just wondering have you seen where um there was any studies maybe indicating that some kids just pray better in a half day program or you know with the transition some kids just have a harder time transitioning into a full day program in and easier to transition to a half day program yes to answer your question yes we have but um what the research doesn't tell you is what you can do to prevent those things from happening right so if we know that and if we know that some kids may have attachment disorder some kids may um be you know um introverted to the fact

129that they're not opening up then we can we can put things in place right away instead of just focusing on the cognitive development um there's no research out there that says that kids are not ready to learn the emotional and social skills at five years old they absolutely are it's if that's our emphasis then that's how we're going to solve that problem we have um we'll have that um behavioral therapist there that will be able to work with the family as well as with the child we have our school counselor and we have an amazing kindergarten staff so i don't foresee that being a problem and again the amount of kids that we're talking about that may go through those attachment disorders are very very small doctor you're just uh to piggyback on that are

130you saying that really what the social emotional aspects will do will prepare the children to be ready to learn um as they enter first grade and which is is the most significant matter so that when they're hitting the the the grades one two and three they've already got that fundamental uh basis of being prepared to learn and socially emotionally and ready ready to take on those challenges correct i mean it's a risk-taking i mean we're not making um um a watered-down first grade we are focusing on what a five-year-old child needs socially emotionally and cognitively so that when they are in first grade they're the best first grader that they could possibly be um and that's what full-day kindergarten allows us that time to focus on that right now i mean it you should it's

131it's difficult to get a lot in in two and a half hours when you have 15 minutes of recess a half hour special 25 minutes of team time you know the classroom teacher is left with such little time to focus on individual student needs and that's what we want our kindergarten teachers to do be focusing on that child so that when first grade comes i'm ready to read i'm ready to write and i'm ready to learn excellent thank you dr euger other questions from members of the board miseries real quick uh i have just thank you for saying that dr euchre because we've talked about that in the past but i think the point that you just made is what many of us have brought up before that kindergarten in 2021 in two and a

132half hours it's anyway so thank you because that's i think the biggest point i just had one question um you had said five districts in montgomery county did not have full day kindergarten and i'm not asking you to name all five and i'm not asking to put you on the spot but a lot of times we focus on our neighboring districts and we focus on our um the north monco tax sending districts that's what we know we've talked about you know in a lot of meetings so i would guess neighboring is springford does not have it and and i believe maybe pv pb does not so does that you're neighboring that okay and then i know north penn recently added it and that was a real push because i know we've been talking about it

133we were like okay if north penn can find the spit you know so okay so that's that's helpful and i believe with the hicken does and dr walsh can shake his head yep upper marion does one of the morelands does not okay jenkintown maybe does not i mean i don't have it with me right now but there we are we're just one of five okay thank you you're welcome thank you ms reese other questions from members of the board mr winters yeah thank you dr euchre for this it's very good um i do i'm gonna make a comment here that i certainly supportive on all the reasons that we're doing this and i think uh we're doing it for the right reasons it sets up well with our strategy and um i think it's the

134right thing for the the children um and that's the most important for sure somebody's going to say this is a 1.3 million dollar cost that we can't afford and i i think dr euger's point about setting the stage and and setting where we are it's a it's a relatively small investment that probably will pay for itself in future interventions and certain special needs requirements um it may we may have more discipline issues less discipline issues hopefully going forward so there's a lot of benefits and i i hate for wood to be advertised or characterized i guess as a 1.3 million dollar expense because i really believe this is the correct thing to do for the students but also fiscally responsible thing to do for the long run for the acting school district well said mr

135winters other questions uh mr navarrete yeah i just wanted to piggyback paul and andrea really hit what i was going to go for there too the fact that you know we think we shouldn't say think we are leaders uh in the county in a lot of different ways right what we've done particularly on the mental health front um in the facton uh is really setting the stage for everyone else but the way we have not adopted full-day kindergarten here um particularly relative to the rest of the county and our neighbors puts us at a competitive disadvantage right when families when young families decide where they want to buy a home this quite frankly gives us a leg up over spring ford it gives us a leg up over pv and when paul talks about all

136the ways that this pays out if you want to look at the financials of it when we make our community and we make our school district more attractive to to new families and new buyers that improves that increases the likelihood that people want to build homes here that they want to buy homes here that they want to improve homes here that's good for everyone that's good for our property values and in turn what that does is that drives up all those new new construction drives up assessed values drives up our tax revenue which keeps everyone else's tax revenue that's already here low so um there's a lot to like there's a lot to like about this for our students for our community as a whole i'll be very happy to support this next week thank

137you thank you for those comments mr navarrette uh well said other comments from members of the board on on uh miss hall i just wanted to say thank you to dr euchre there have been so much research that has gone into this and i actually pulled out my big green binder that we had dropped off i went back through that and reread some of the articles and just want to say thank you because you did so much work on the benefits of play the power of play play-based learning the benefits of exercise and you know drawing out the minutes that would be benefited in each subject area so i just want to say thank you this is fantastic i look forward to voting for this next week oh thank you i'm going to be rude

138and jump right in and say ditto what mary said that's what i want to say i want to express my gratitude to you dr euker uh for keeping this on your plate uh and your extraordinary leadership at woodland through this disaster every year we're lucky to have you so thank you very much thank you that was kind thank you very much miss hall mr mcguinness well said thank you both uh ms abby larsonis yeah i'm kind of chiming in with more of the same but i also want to say that um as a parent i had a lot of reservations about full day kindergarten um when we started these conversations because i'm not certain that it's something that i would have wanted for my children when they were young um but seeing the this has

139got to be one of the most comprehensive proposals that i have seen since i've been on the board um and it this puts my parent mind at ease but it also puts my board member mind at ease that this is absolutely the the direction that we need to be going as a district um it's it's what's good for families it's what's good for the district um the emphasis on play and not making this into just you know another version of first grade is particularly what has won me over um the the importance of play at that age is huge and i just appreciate all of your efforts and and the fact that you were able to continue to move this ball forward through this past year with everything else that's been thrown at us um

140it's very much appreciated so thank you thank you madam president any other comments from members of the board before we proceed thank you if everybody's saying thank you you know i think you're fantastic i am for this from the beginning it is fabulous so i have to chime in everybody else is saying thank you thank you for all your hard work i think it's going to benefit everyone all the stakeholders and the children are the most important focus so thank you you're welcome thank you miss kane crew uh anyone else gonna jump in all right here we go all right thank you so much everyone thank you dr euger for your leadership on this and uh again you're welcome to stay on the call or drop off uh spend some time with your family after

141you know being on for these these two meetings but uh certainly what we'll ask you to come back for any final questions at the voting meeting on next week okay okay that sounds great thank you everyone and thank you for such a kind words and davis says good night too dr euger he wanted to jump in good night thank you come on all right have a great night everyone thank you next on the agenda we have the act 93 teamsters confidential exempt employee contract summary so bear with me we're going to have mr bricker and mr regina uh provide that information thank you dr zurby um bear with me one second this is it yes okay got it thank you dr zurby and good evening to the board members just a quick summary of what

142this presentation will show um as many of you know we have uh currently completed these uh the last contract negotiation with teamsters two compensation benefit plans for our act 93 confidentials earlier this year we did ratify our teachers contract and we are currently still uh completing our mespa contract so um hopefully if all goes well we'll be looking to complete five different documents here throughout this year the three comp uh collective bargaining agreements and two compensation plans so obviously uh a major thank you to the board committees that were part of this process uh we have an opportunity to speak with and thank the mea group um tonight certainly want to recognize our teamster group mr mcginnis uh mr navarrette and ms cancro were vital members of this process and i want to thank them

143for all their hard work throughout the negotiations also for our act 93 and confidential exempt compensation plans uh president larcenies aubrey larcenies and president drama vice president drummond uh again thank you so much for your hard work and working with us fund these uh when we get started tonight we're going to be proposing the financials for all three of these one we will consider the term contract the other two are considered compensation benefit plans um so the teamsters contract will go over the financials and language mainly the hot topic language items that were either removed or added to the agreement and then the other two will be the act 93 agreement financials and language and of course confidential and exempt financials and language and without further ado we'll turn this over to mr pricker to

144discuss teamster financials thank you um tonight what we want to do is uh mr regina stated the salary will be based on hourly pay starting july 1st this is a changeover there'll be 26 pays versus 24 pages the teamsters will also react to that 26 pay schedule unlike prior years we had the 26 pay schedule which was a salary type based pay schedule this will be hourly based a salary increases over to four years or two and a half percent we include pesos and social security the rates are 2.68 2.79 2.71 and 2.70 percent next slide one of the other things that we had would be from the financial point of view would be the healthcare as you noted in the budget presentations earlier the healthcare has been increasing nine percent um all new hires

145on or after july first will be eligible for open choice three only for the teamsters effective july 1st 2021 the prescription plan will be changed to the 15 25 40 plan this is the largest participative plan within the montgomery county healthcare consortium and retirees will only have open choice 3 and 10 i'm sorry the 15 25 40 rx plan as you can see in the chart below prescription plans the medical contributions will be changing 18 19 20 20 for open choices one through the eight eight nine ten and 10 for open choice 3 rx dental envision will increase 1 each year next slide mr regina thank you mr bricker as you can see there's a from mr bricker's slides it is a four-year agreement uh some of the topics uh major language topics that were

146addressed in this ratification uh the first was the discipline revision uh one of the items in the contract required the administration to reach out to the association within 10 days of receiving information based something that could result in discipline one of the concerns of course are items in which we whether it be by state federal or criminal investigation we can't necessarily notify individuals within that timeline um so we did add some language to increase this to 20 days and that of course is waived completely if there is any investigation pending uh the second was an unpaid leave provision the unplayed leave provision that was in the teamsters contract basically would give an additional 30 days of benefit coverage to an individual that would go on unpaid uncompensated leave outside of fmla approval so for instance

147if an individual had utilized all their fmla they would still receive benefits at the current contribution rate but in the teamsters contract beyond that they could go into an additional 30-day benefit paid option and that has been that will be sun setting at the end of this contract so that will be something that is eliminated the next item is a probationary period for new hires uh the current or well actually the current probationary period is 30 days we have extended that to 45 days for a probationary period with the option to extend that for an additional 30 days if the administration feels that it's necessary to extend the next item would be tools we did have language in the existing contract that would provide a stipend to our master mechanic and mechanic employees for them

148to purchase tools and those pull those tools were would be their tools that they would use for work but would be their own personal tools that they would be able to use and take with them we had removed that from the contract and the district purchasing tools and they will stay in the ownership of the district after june 30th and finally the uniforms language uniform things was something that was added in the last contract what we've done now is added a third anniversary date an individual could replace the required uniform um if they have so many copies or or substitutes of that for an item that's an approved district catalog such as a winter jacket or or the like that has been approved that they might be able to use beyond their third anniversary those

149are the mango major language items for teamsters and we'll move over to the act 93 for the financials to mr brecker act 93 some of the different changes with regards to the financial ramifications of the compensation plan is the increases based on the ratings unsatisfactory zero percent increase satisfactory one percent meets expectation two and a half and exceeds expectations three percent there's also the employee co-share contributions uh they'll be flat next year at 17 16 16 and six and a half percent will be actually a drop for open choice three with an increase of one percent each year for open choice one two and pos with a half percent increase on open choice three and rx dental envision will be increasing by one percent each year next slide you sir regina thank you mr bricker

150as you see here it's a compensation plan for act 93 members the the basic difference is as you know your collective bargaining agreements are an item of bargaining and negotiations the compensation plans is a meet and discuss meeting uh amongst either a board and administrative representation to the respective committee leads of the act 93 group of the major language items you'll notice this is a three-year plan we have extended the annual vacation payout they currently receive eight vacation payout days that has been extended to 10 vacation payout days there's been a sick day payout upon retirement revision so we have increased the sick day payout by five dollars for individuals and that's a would now be increased to 105 and if an individual has given us six months notification on their retirement we would increase

151that by an additional five dollars a day for the sick day payout this is very similar to the type of revision we made in the mea contract when based on notification of retirement we would then increase the sick day payout which will certainly allow the district to replace them and be able to look for qualified applicants in a meaningful amount of time ultimately the one item that is being removed from the act 93 contract is the short-term disability provision which was offering the administration 45 days of short-term disability for each year of service up to a total of 270 days of short-term disability uh the next uh item will be the confidential and exempt proposed plan for the financials and turn it back over to mr brecker very similar to what you saw with the

152team search the confidentials and exam proposed plan includes a two and a half percent increase each year uh the numbers will look very familiar two point six eight two point seven nine percent two point seven one percent and two point seven percent for users and social security factored in um we have the plan design changes which would and be half 16 and a half 16 and a half and seven percent increasing by a percent each year for open choice one two and pos and a half a point in open choice three each year uh the rx dental and vision will get a half a percent increase in the first year and then one percent each year thereafter next slide and now i'll turn it back over to mr regina thanks mr bricker as as some

153of you may know the confidential exempt group is our smallest group it's also our group that you would consider to be at the largest risk within the school district and what i mean by that is most of our groups the majority of our employees are covered by a bargaining unit they have association representation they have rights within that bargaining unit to retain employment or potentially bump or move to different positions as you know our act 93 does not have a bargaining representative but they do have provisions for those of professional employees within school code that allows them to move back into mea positions provided that it would fall under 1125.8 of school code which would be for any furloughs of positions they would be able to bump teaching positions that would have come after their

154employment in the district this group has no protection as we've discussed they are nine employees that exist as confidential or exempt employees not able to participate in any of our bargaining units and these employees have no no protection of that sort attracting individuals to these positions have been rather difficult these positions in the past have actually been paid even less than some of our bargaining unit positions uh within the mesbah agreement so it was important for us to make some revisions to this document to be able to entice some of our more experienced staff that would be qualified for a confidential or exempt position to attract them to these positions we didn't want to quite go the entire route of what we do with the act 93 agreement but we wanted to add some increased

155benefit the three major ones that we looked at one was an annual vacation payout and rollover the vacation payout will be five days of vacation payout and they'll be able to roll over five days from year to year there will be no banking so they won't be adding that on year after year but they'll be able to roll over five each year as many of you know on our act 93 we have a three-year salary adjustment where the superintendent can look at the county averages for specific positions and make a recommendation to the board to adjust a salary to be more competitive in the county this was not something that currently has existed in the compensation plan for exempt and confidential but it is something that we're looking to add to it at this moment

156in time and ultimately vacation days for new hires this was the one group that did not receive vacation days they had to earn them after a full year of employment we put them on the same rotation to be pro-rated uh pro-rated number of 10 vacation days within your first year so obviously the simple mathematics if you came halfway through the year you would receive five vacation days for that first year as many of you can can see the compensation plans are both on a three-year plan which will put them on the same cycle as our mea agreement and our teamsters is on a four-year cycle which will put them at the year after the mea confidentials and exempt and the act 93s and i believe that ends the presentation thank you doctor thank you yeah

157thank you mr regina and mr bricker questions for members of the board on any of the three uh uh groups the and just so everyone is aware the uh the uh teamsters agreement is posted to the website uh or to this agenda uh the other two uh redlined uh plans are have been submitted to the board for their their input and review um and uh once i receive feedback i'll i'll post them for the agenda uh it uh probably it'll go live at seven o'clock on on saturday evening so the questions from the members of the board saying no questions at this time thank you mr virginia thank you mr becker next on the agenda we have the msd legal expenditure presentation now mr becker thank you dr zurby tonight we're going to be a

158presentation on the legal expenditures for the school district next slide so over the past couple years i wanted to point out the changes in the legal fees that have been going on um using just the totals for now 2017 2018 went from 433 thousand dollars roughly to this year which we're spending about 1.24 million dollars obviously that's a almost three times the amount and a significant increase so we look at where that's coming from you have our general legal fees of a hundred and six thousand hundred seven thousand dollars in 1718 there are about fifty seven thousand um and so forth with the assessments and the other items as we go down through those i'll let you know that when looking at these things these items these totals are through april 30th 2021 based on

159what's been paid to date i think that's important to note that it's been paid to date the cost that we really want to look at is the right to know has increased 39 and the uh general legal has conversely reduced by about 46 percent and special education has reduced by about 38 the assessments have gone up and that's really just a factor of the that uh shannon dell has now gone into uh trial cases at this point in time so obviously we'd anticipate a large ramp up as we have an unusual event this year with regards to trial cases next slide yeah and before we go on i just want to make a clarification so as we go on you're going to see some numbers and the key aspects to those numbers is understanding that

160there's a paid number and then there's a build number so uh so mr bricker will be sharing slides that say build to date and slide to say paid to date our intent was to provide the most uh accurate and current information possible so that everyone understands where we actually are in this process so i just want to make that clarity so when we look at our the standard uh legal costs that we would anticipate year to year we have general legal assessment right to know in special education as uh mentioned and you can see in the chart the assessment and the right to know costs are increasing significantly versus prior year runs uh right to know has been increasing for each of the last three years special education has been reducing and then remaining flat

161and obviously the assessments as i said this year we are in litigation with shannon bell it's anticipated that those costs would increase next slide so what are the legal costs due to the homeowner what percent of this would make up if if we took it all from the real estate taxes what would this make up um so the right to know accounts for 1.1 of our legal of our cost for um real estate taxes all other legal expenditures including the assessments is 1.09 so it's almost a fifth it's 50 of our legal cost our total legal costs amount to 2.919 when you look at the uh what that does the right to know on in 250 000 house it's 39.79 of the legal costs are associated with right to now and conversely if you go

162across the other uh legal costs would be 39.37 um again 50 of our costs next slide examples of right to know typically uh our typical right to know request seeks information of items documents contracts or listing of items a non-standard request have 30 plus search items or items of a single request requiring significant additional scrutiny and at times legal support items that see communication between and among administrators and the board an example of a request uh the district for a period between august 10 2020 november 30 2020 spent a total of 335 on a right to no request from one person that cost included 189 195 dollars and 16 cents of internal district cost and seven hundred and 166 dollars and twelve cents of external legal cost associated with 29 separate right to know requests

163containing 886 individual search terms with an average of 30.6 items per request and twenty two thousand two hundred forty eight dollars and forty six cents per week expenses on the right to know from one person uh posting right to knows on the district some website the information based on solicitor feedback was we could put the data request name or requester types of record requested number of subparts and estimated cost to process next slide top five requests are based on the number of requests we have 72 from the number one requester then 22 14 11 and 3 from the number five most requested conversely if you look at the cost illegal again this is where dr zurba is saying this is actually the build amounts that come in from july 1st through april 30th those costs

164total and sixty 051.60 uh requester number one total seven hundred twenty five thousand fifty five dollars and sixty eight cents or requester number five totals four thousand nine hundred thirty dollars and twenty cents now request for one and her a request for five and request for five on the number account and the requests are five on the dollar to not have to line up i'm just giving you based on the rankings of those numbers next slide that is the last slide i'm sorry that is the last slide uh sorry about that some questions on this information yeah questions comments from members of the board i think that you know before before we take those it's important to understand that you know this is the most up-to-date information that we that we have available um it

165it certainly uh indicates that you know we have a very challenging situation in front of us and uh this is uh this is certainly not new information uh in terms of uh the board understanding uh the the fact that we've had uh some challenges along the way uh from as early as uh you know june july through through now but um in in every in every aspect uh the administration has made a number of different uh modifications working with the solicitor to a uh follow the the rules associated with the right to know process and by uh making modifications to one reduced cost uh to reduce effort um and uh we we have not succeeded to this point in in getting this uh under control so comments from members of the board at this point

166miss aubry elastanese yeah i think it would be worth finding out [Music] our law firm that handles our right to no requests also handles that type of input request um and services for other districts so i'd be interested to see um obviously a lot of that is privileged information but i'd be interested to see where methectone ranks in comparison to other districts using the same firm um i know anecdotally um from talking to the solicitor that we we are an outlier this is definitely an anomaly there is um something very unique to methachton and the types of right to know requests that are filed here um has very little to do with our law firm and it has very little to do with our process um but again i'd like to have the solicitor speak

167to that rather than just rely on on my recollection of conversations that i've had with the solicitor um i've been really reluctant to bring this up in a public meeting because i do believe in the spirit and the intent of the right to know law i think it's an important function of government that we can um have access to documents that we have access to information it's it's part of the checks and balances and i do believe it's important um but i also believe that there is an intent to right to know law that um that does not necessarily align with the right to know requests that we see in our district and uh and that i think is is where we run into a problem and i i personally have racked my brain trying

168to figure out what could we possibly do in terms of putting more information out there so that we don't have right to know requests um you know when a right to no request comes in for you know a presentation or a document that's discussed at a board meeting those are not the problems that that we're dealing with here those are not the issues that um that create this 867 000 problem um it's the request for any and all correspondence between um a board member and the superintendent between a board member and the the right to know officer um it's it's requesting every single email that is exchanged within the district month by month by month by month that adds up and and all of those emails need to be reviewed for sensitive information information that

169um legally cannot be shared with the public um and that that's what takes up personnel time it's what um what eats up these legal fees um it's with how we get to where we are here um and short of posting every single email that we ever sent to the district website which for the record i do not recommend or endorse by any stretch um i i'm really at a loss as to how we get around this because this is a one of those situations where the difference there's a difference between what you can request with right to know and what you really should request with right to know and well yes you're entitled to request our emails um but i questioned to what end um i i have yet to see this lead to anything

170productive um i i don't i have yet to see anything come forward where you know there was information that was in an email that um that should have been shared with the public that wasn't it it just it's not happening so i guess i'm just i'm at a loss and i'm frustrated um you know i look at that 167 000 and i think of how many teachers and textbooks we could we could pay for with that money um and it's it's a real shame to see that we've come to this thank you madam president uh mr mcguise yeah i just want to kind of go point by not point by point please uh a couple of questions so if you go back to slide four i think it was i had some questions there um

171so on average tim where was the assessed value was that like three what was the average assessed value for with acting do you remember about 350 000. so let's call it so every household in mathatton throws in 120 into the hat for right to know each year each year am i reading this correctly that's a fair estimate okay uh go to slide five please so the the average right to know request uh it it comes in with you said 29 separated right to know requests uh and of those 29 those 29 had basically 886 parts like is that what you're saying in this slide that's correct okay um so we'll get a right to know requests that basically sends us on a goose chase is that fair to say yes okay um and the posting

172the right to know requests on the district website this is what we're allowed to post moving forward we've kind of got this cleared and i saw kyle on the call earlier i i guess he was on he was on for this special meeting uh based on conversations that we had at the finance committee meeting in terms of uh you know how can we uh provide uh you know greater transparency to uh the challenge that we're having um it was suggested that we figure out what can we put on the district website that would help inform people um our solicitor then suggested these items here um it's certainly not limited to this but these are the ones that he suggested okay and that's something we're going to uh do we have to vote on that or

173we just kind of is that what tonight's discussion is or are we going to do it all in favor of putting this on the website well i think that um we don't have any items for voting here this evening but what we could do by the time we end our conversation on this on this matter we could make a recommendation uh so that the board president and i could put an item on the agenda for consideration about what we want to put on and how often and all that kind of stuff so if any member has a recommendation of how we want to address it it would be you know sent either either said tonight or sent before uh i would say before friday afternoon uh that we would have it to put on the

174agenda for consideration next week okay that's fair and just going back to this slide uh tim you're pretty explicit this is from august 10 2020 to november 30th 2020. and that's when we got the let's call it the 886 part exam that that's the time frame correct yes and i heard uh one of the questions from the last meeting you know say that it's about your appeals process it's about this it's about that and the other thing i heard is what are you trying to hide so could you go back to the slide that had the year-over-year bar graph and this is from 17 to 21. call it four years i don't even want to do the math of what we paid it's pretty ridiculous um if kyle were here i'd ask him but dr

175zurby i'm going to kind of put you on the podium um are we hiding uh with all these right to know requests any uh i don't know any kickback schemes revealed not that i'm aware of any pay-to-play bad contracts revealed not that i'm aware of okay uh any malfeasance anything we're hiding not that i'm aware of okay so basically over the last four years we've paid for nothing we paid for nothing well we paid legal fees that god and i hear you yeah play along that got us nothing it got us nothing and then we want to compare what we've paid on nothing and again don't get me wrong i'm not saying all of them i understand when somebody who lost a bid wants to know what the bid results were i understand that i

176support that when somebody who wants to know if someone working on the school is is paying prevailing wage because that's what they paid in their bid i 100 support those those are easy but if we look out on percentage basis we've paid for nothing and each year every household throws a was a buck 40 buck 20 i forget what it was in in the hat for nothing so this isn't about some appeals process oh by the way we have to go to those appeals so we can protect the district that's kind of the nine of us signed up for that that's part of what we have to do here so to sit here and spin it that it has something to do with the appeals process and not the root cause that we have 886

177part right to know requests in five months is ridiculous and for the record i want everything on the website i want names i want dates i want people to see what these goose chases look like so that's where i'm coming from so thank you for playing along dr zurby welcome i'm ms reese my only question and i i should have asked this or um when i looked at this earlier today or yesterday whenever you sent it um was i think we were given what the average district how many right-to-know requests they're given weren't or weren't didn't we have that somewhere but wasn't it like this is very unusual and the office of open records is aware that this is very unusual i i think uh what might be what what miss uh obviously said earlier

178uh without me quoting something that i don't have the figures in front of me it might be worth having as part of our conversation next week when our solicitor is on the call because if we provided that information to the board at any point in time it would have likely have been through him uh to you uh so that you understood the the the dynamics associated with the map and that's fair i just did want i i that's fair but i just i don't know if it's unusual the answer is it's it's we're in an unusual situation that's correct but maybe the actual figures i don't know i don't know what they off without my head and maybe and maybe it's not necessary you guys did a a nice job maybe there needs to be

179a footnote or something that says the average in montgomery some we were just something so that you know when someone says well how come you didn't handle this better or differently it's unusual so it's like it's not like this is a precedent so anyway thank you for this and uh i you know i i kind of back everything let me just add just a little bit more to that so i'm assuming everyone can still see the screen um you know the the the evidence is in uh the line here from right to know in 2017-18 it was this cost and there were certain you know uh requests during that period of time uh compared to what they are now so the the numbers here speak for something is different and unusually different and i would

180reiterate that just that this is somewhat unique to our district right now uh mr navarrete david can you go back one slide said number two um i guess you know listen i think everybody looks at this and sees the same thing this is this is untenable just at a high level here i'm going to make a request that we keep this in front of the finance committee maybe maybe not monthly but at least quarterly at minimum so that we can keep apprised of where we are with these um i know certainly uh given the involvement i've had with uh the shannon del case that you know i know i'm up to speed on what we've spent directly on that legislation but i think that's important to break out it's probably also important to break out

181you know we had it we had a uh we had a lawsuit uh an injunction hearing related to arrowhead right um we wouldn't talk about shams uh we don't we need to know what the number is associated with that right i believe it was around i don't know fifteen thousand dollars or something that we had to spend related to that is that right that's just that's just some legal fuse that doesn't include my time and other people's time as well right that you were that you spent working on a on a legal case um instead of instead of on the future of our district so i think that needs to be broken out in this document for next week as well because it's important to see where this money is being wasted um if we

182go forward i'll come back to drew's point we'll go back to slide five and we look at non-standard requests i i don't even mind when and i shouldn't write i'll say this much as kim said before i think this is this is one of those things that's that's critically important for proper functioning while government checks and balances and honestly uh you know like kim i i don't want to go anywhere with this because i think this is one of the most fundamental things of the freedom of information act and the right to know laws across our country helpful information out of government um that need to be in the public eye so you know even when we talk about pulling uh emails over periods it's fine right i mean that this this is this is

183what needs to be done my issue with these requests that are coming in these multi-part requests is that they're no longer even about documents they're no longer even about you know an arrowhead or a budget they're now about the last request that was submitted the right to no requests about a right to know request that's about a right to know request before in some cases we have literally been on the third derivative of a right to know request and we're reproducing documents and they've all got to go through lawyers it is a colossal waste of our time and our resources and our money our taxpayers money as a district this disingenuous for people that come to these meetings and yell about wasting money when they are the source of the waste of that money let's

184make sure that we keep this in front of the finance committee because this needs to continue to be in the public eye we can do that comments miss gentlemen yeah on this slide and you alluded to it before about the hours and the time and the staff time yours your time your staff's time and so i i'm guessing that this um 189 000 is sort of an estimate of of staff time is that what it is but but can you just speak a little bit what i'm interested in hearing is is about it's about the time spent it's about what that does to the staff who is is you know focusing on this and not the other duties for which they were hired so maybe maybe mr regina if you don't mind just you know

185just giving us an idea of the the types of of people not names but the types of people that uh do work on these processes so it's you know we have technology people we have secretaries we view just give the board an idea certainly uh we certainly when the first one come when our right to know comes in of course it it goes through our office uh my eyes are honored or dr sergini's eyes are on it it goes to an individual that documents all that for us and people services a person that we use for half time to assist with the clerical support of right to know we utilize our technology staff for email searches and documents which could be embedded in folders that have existed over time based on what year we're necessarily

186looking for that document we utilize a number of our invoices that we pull we our solicitor invoices are paper copy so it requires us to go through the files of every paper copy that we receive in invoices which takes time out of tim's department to search for all the copies of a specific title based on the request we have individuals that are requesting items for uh student information and and so most of that has to be redacted but there are elements that we do need to share when it comes to certain information based on some demographic information that's more of a general consensus we have individ technology business uh the school buildings we have individuals that ask for schedules and things of that matter so it it really is all income all-encompassing of the district

187but i would say in the most part um based on what we're referring to our business office our technology office and and our right to know office it takes care of the lion's share of most of this time thank you and and so did and i heard you say in the beginning of when you were speaking that we have a clerical halftime employee devoted to the right to know that's correct that individual assists us with just clerical support as you can imagine when you see that many documents tracking that information has become exceedingly more difficult over time so it's been very helpful to have that individual with us and if i can just interject for one second liz say that that expense is not included in this summary is it not not it's not included

188in uh these numbers here this this is this is the last slide it's total legal class right to know build this is only legal cost building legal costs yeah on illegal costs thank you the the example here was uh what was an actual period of time as we indicate and uh we had a time study done on it and this is what the staff cost were internally a technology secretary administrative and and so forth for the associated request plus the legal cost yeah great thank you thank you for pointing that out other questions comments from members of the board so what i would what i would suggest then um uh i don't know if this is just mr mcginnis or anyone uh you know i wouldn't i would ask you to um either speak tonight

189and say exactly what we want if you want something on the website or if you want to you know compose your thoughts and get those to uh the madam president um and we can then discuss them on friday when we we do have a normal meeting and decide how to you know to compose the the agenda item if there is one needed uh i that's that's it yeah go ahead i was gonna say it's it's late and this is a lot um so i think your idea of us sharing with kim individually and then having a little bit more of discussion next week because there's not as many presentations next week right okay well then let's do that and we'll make sure that uh kyle's prepared to uh speak to what what uh what i

190think was suggested he talk about in terms of comparison between other districts that he serves is there any other any other questions related to this matter saying none uh i'm going to move back into the work session agenda next week we have the m awards we have the math acting award of excellence and we have retirement recognition uh we'll have reports and uh but before i go on too much further here uh i want to i'm just going to stop sharing a screen for a second and just bring a matter to your attention and i'm actually going to read from a letter that i sent to the superintendent of north penn school district on may 17th of 2021 and it reads as follows dear dr curtis dietrich and the north penn school district community as

191superintendent of the methacnyl school district i want to take this opportunity to apologize to the students players family staff and fans of the north penn school district and the methachton school district for the unprofessional behavior displayed by a mathactin volunteer coach during a men's varsity lacrosse game on friday may 14th please know that the matter has been addressed and the behavior of the mathakton volunteer coach in no manner reflects the values of competitive sportsmanship nor the values of our methectomy school district community i further wish the very best for the north penn school district and the fact that school district lacrosse programs for the remainder of the school season if are there any questions on on that matter uh i think that's been you know uh rather pretty public at to this point um certainly

192there's been some uh uh news stories put together uh from uh the uh the north penn area uh we we uh we addressed the matter uh immediately uh and uh i want to thank uh dr sojini dr speedwack and mr regina for their their support on getting to uh the end of that particular matter uh because uh of because of the type of matter that it is there's not much else i can say other than uh i i i'll try to answer any questions if you haven't at this point in time miss purdue are you able to um speak to how the matter was addressed i mean i know you sent the letter off but what else did we do are you able to speak to any part of it mr regina unfortunately uh it

193would be a matter of personnel that i wouldn't recommend that we speak about it at the meeting tonight um i'm sorry miss purdue i know that's not the response you were looking for i just know it's been a topic of discussion and even yesterday it was the topic of many discussions and i think i know i know it's confidential but i think there's ways to still bring it so people know how some situations to a certain level how things are being addressed because we can't say it's just being addressed because i don't think that's sufficient all the time i don't think we can use that all the time to say it's being addressed right a letter was sent out but is that it is i just i and i'm just speaking my opinion i just

194don't feel like that's enough to say what's addressed i i understand that and and i i don't disagree with your comment um i i i can't i i can't give a way to say what i what you want to hear that that is going to not keep all of us out of trouble and that's i i just can't you don't have to i do just want to let's just say let me just say this um i could i can say this that uh this this this will this should not happen again uh with this individual of that that i can say uh that's as much as that's as much as i'll say mr winners yeah so let me just ask a broader question so a volunteer coach is something that i don't i didn't i

195guess i probably should have known but i didn't really know that we had those before so i wonder what jurisdiction we have over volunteer coaches and is it something that we're going to look in a broader sense and i don't mean to ask you know there's probably a great value and drew could probably correct me on on how it's used in all types of sports i understand that but i'm just curious when i heard volunteer coach i makes me wonder we're in like a no man's land around uh what we can do as a district from a responsibility yeah so so the the volunteer coach is similar to the volunteers that we have and the approval process that we have for other volunteers in the district um and we have been using uh volunteer coaches

196in a number of different sports but they go through the approval process uh you know do all the uh the background checks all the things that are required to become a volunteer in the district and uh they are subject to all the rules associated with uh the being a volunteer and uh you know they are subject to then the removal of uh their right to be a volunteer if things might occur that require us to remove them other questions on the on the matter seeing no other questions um we move back to the agenda and we see that there's some advisements on on this uh agenda for uh your your review we'll take public comment on board action items uh we'll we'll do all those matters fiscal items mr bricker thank you dr zerby this

197month for the board's approval we have the list of bills treasurer's report budgetary transfers a motion for the insurance carrier to improve the insurance carrier and premium of 226 102 provided by willis towers watson this reflects an increase of twelve thousand eight hundred twenty dollars from the prior year we also have the extension of the key center agreement which will be to approve the amendment for an extension of the agreement with keystone royalty buyers for a term ending august 1st 2022 and to be clear it is only an extension there are no term changes with regards to the keystone agreement any questions from mr bicker on any of the fiscal matters see no questions move on to matters of personnel dr sojini thank you dr zurby good evening for your consideration this month we have

198the following personnel items two resignations professional both of which are for retirement we thank mrs gail brown for her 28 years of service to the students to methachton school district and mrs michelle synod for her 35 years of service to the students of the thacton school district and we wish gail and michelle both all the very best in their retirement we have two resignations classified one of which is for retirement up coming in august we thank mr benny horn for his 20 years of service to matthachton school district and wish him well in his retirement we have one employment administrator to recommend that after a search process which included four rounds of interviews incorporating members of a multitude of stakeholder groups across our school district community i'm pleased to recommend to the board of school

199directors for approval mr william branic for the position of director of technology mr braniquez for the past seven years served as the director of technology for the archdiocese of philadelphia school system which encompasses 17 secondary schools four schools of special education and 102 elementary schools prior to serving as director of technology mr branick served for nine years as the principal of monsignor bonner and archbishop prendergast high school and mr brennick has presented both locally and nationally on topics related to school leadership in the digital age he holds a bachelor's of arts degree from penn state university a masters of science degree from newman university and a certificate in cyber security from the massachusetts institute of technology and we're excited to welcome him and look forward to his innovative technology leadership we have one employment classified

200which is in the collective bargaining unit this is an already existing fully budgeted position that became available as a result of other movements within the teamsters organization we have one change of status administrative once again after a search process that included four rounds of interviews incorporating representatives of multiple stakeholder groups across our school district i'm pleased to recommend to the board a change of status for dr jamie graveneys officially from supervisor of secondary special education to the position of principal matthachton high school dr gravinis has served as a professional educator in the methachton school district for the past 17 years most recently as the interim principal of mathacton high school since february of this year dr gravinis began her career at methachton as a teacher of english before becoming a school administrator and serving in

201the positions of high school assistant principal and then supervisor of secondary special education she holds a bachelor's degree from saint joseph's university a masters of science from villanova university a doctor written education from gwynedd mercy university and a superintendent's letter of eligibility also from gwen and mercy and we look forward to dr gravinis's continued leadership at the high school we have one change of status classified this is a replacement position based on a retirement one uncompensated leave professional one uncompensated leave classified and then a series of supplemental contracts as outlined on the agenda the first three are identified as retroactive the freshman baseball coach involved an in-season coaching resignation that had to be addressed the approval for cheryl piper and kathy thompson to serve as nurses at the senior prom this coming friday is identified

202as retroactive because the prompt takes place between the work session and the action meeting of the board of school directors the remainder are for future worker positions and this includes the recommendation of miss tori rosa for the position of girls varsity swimming coach once again after a series of interview rounds directed this time by dr spiwak which included multiple stakeholder groups including student athletes and parents i'm pleased to recommend to you ms tori rosa for the swimming girls varsity swimming position ms rome rosa rather is a lifelong swimmer having swam competitively from childhood through the collegiate level at indiana university of pennsylvania she's coached for the past 15 years including directing them effect and aquatic club for the past six years and we look forward to many years of ms rose's inspired leadership with our

203student athletes as varsity swimming coach although not on the agenda this evening we have completed the interview process for the position of varsity football coach i'll be working with dr spiwak and our hope is to put forward our finalist on the agenda for next week so please stay tuned for that we have one addition to the classified substitute list and three volunteers to add to the list of approved acting volunteers for your approval backing you dr sojini questions from members of the board uh ms um i'm gonna work my way up but you answered my high school football question so thank you because i had heard that you were close and so we we could it looks like hopefully it'll be on next week right that's what you said okay that's right so that crossed

204that off the list um i wanted to acknowledge um dr graveny's just i knew you know i was not part of the interview process um as i think i was pssa facilitating um during one of those days but anyway um i knew that she she had worked her way through um my facton but but to hear 17 years i just as an educator love to hear that we kind of you know you you want to help your your your uh staff grow and that's a perfect example from assistant to stepping into director of special education and then stepping in for you so i i think that's exciting to see our a staff member grow um in our district so that's nice to see on the agenda um mr branic did i miss probably start oh

205july one i missed that okay so um july one there we go and the other one was uh i wanted a question based on doctor you don't have to move up uh dr uh zurby's advisement you know sarah kane another methox and alum woohoo moving from arcola to um uh the high school so you know we we're waiting to hear about the uh foreign language changes at arcola how it's going um it's already a challenge to fill those positions so it's nice that miss kane can move into the high school and fill that position but now i'm worried about filling arcola that doesn't i'm thrilled for miss kane so that adds a whole other level because that person needs to be able to handle the hundreds of middle school students and that schedule of you

206know every other day and those kinds of things so i assume we're working hard on that we are miseries we've actually already begun the interview process for both the french and spanish teaching positions and we are moving into the second round next week awesome thank you so much for everything this busy uh busy uh night for you thank you miseries other questions for dr seugini on personal items ms drummond i just want to thank you dr sergini for just sharing a bit about the candidates credentials and bio at you know here at the work session just so we have a sense i just wanted to i thought that was nice thank you ms drummond any other comments questions uh for dr sergini going once twice all right we'll move on to the next time curriculum

207uh dr walsh i know there's nothing on the agenda do you have anything to comment on tonight no doctors are nothing at this time okay i just wanted to give you an opportunity to speak thank you the policy policy uh uh mr regina no major additions here uh or major changes to the items probably the largest one would be policy 231 with social events and class trips uh we've extended that to seven to 12 which was once a nine to twelve restriction but all others were mine minor modifications to all the other policies thank you any questions for mr regina on matters of policy seeing none under other no no gifts or trips uh we we've been advised by the uh solicitor that uh the election of the board treasurer and the election of the

208board secretary need to take place uh this month so we have added those to the agenda any questions about either those two items saying none the next item we have is employment contracts and plans and these would be the items uh listed the board does have possession of the red line uh the two outstanding red line agreements and if i get some feedback before uh friday i can have those um you know answer whatever questions needed and then post these uh live uh for uh saturday at seven o'clock the health and safety plan update so uh uh this really is to is designed to address the uh the summer work uh for all our adults uh but it also takes into consideration the fact that some of our work as adults also means that we're

209working with students during the the period of time periods of time in the summer uh so with that said uh the summary of this is is that uh we want to be able to provide uh for under the cdc uh recommendations uh that vaccinated individuals could indoors and outdoors be required to not mask or social distance as it's currently outlined by the cdc but in the instance that we are working with students and primarily we'll be working with students at skyview upper elementary school and dr walsh in some of our elementary schools will be having kindergarten uh the kindergarten program correct that is correct yeah so those in the instances that we're working with uh children the children will we're recommending at this time that the children be masked uh and we maintain the three

210foot distance and the adults uh be masked uh with the and the three feet distance so that's on for your consideration for next week it's a it's a lot and and i and i wrote it in a way that also allows us to uh to implement this uh and implement something that will that if it does change in the meantime um we can consider the change and and implement it appropriately as as an example we got called into a meeting i want to say we the superintendents of montgomery county have called them a meeting friday afternoon uh with the montgomery county department of health and they were letting us know that you know they're they're following the pa department of health and the cdc recommendations and and the whole masking thing was about ready to

211to blow and you know we had to make a determination at that moment in time whether or not we were going to stay the course uh or you know try to figure out who's vaccinated who's not vaccinated who's willing to stay in school with unvaccinated people with vaccinated people with mask on or miss mask off and i'm sounding a little ridiculous in my comments but that's exactly what all the that's what i was spinning around everyone's head uh because you know how do you how do you manage that that chaos um and and still maintain uh your progress forward uh towards the end of the school year are there any questions on the health and safety plan update ms reese um i'll make it quick but i think we all understand why this is in

212place you know we we understand children you know are still at risk and things like that is the is the thought that the adults wearing the mask is that more do we in respect to the fact that the children are wearing masks um it's it's what it's what's actually what's what the county's recommending uh that's yeah i i i your point's well taken i didn't consider it that way uh i i basically what i'm what i'm suggesting is what we're being told we ought to do no that's fine i i have not been able to keep up with all the requirements and so i'm glad you as superintendents meet with people to help you and i know i'm glad we have cheryl pfeiffer to to help us so that's fine i just i think we

213all understand that this is what for now has to be done until we're told otherwise i just was i just was you know we all know that adults right now are in a different position than children but that doesn't matter right now because we all work with children so thank you yeah you're welcome any other questions or comments on this matter all right and then uh then i'll turn the meeting back over to madam president for dates on board members calendars and the rest of the agenda thank you dr zarby um before we move forward um i just had it called out to me um in looking at the agenda we are missing our second reading policies um it looks like we have all the policies for our first read but we do have meet

214some that were on the agenda last month that should have been moved to a second read this month so if we could we'll make those corrections uh for next week's meeting sorry about that no that's okay let's uh we have some keen eyes on our board keeping track of these things that was miss home by the way i imagine sorry i didn't mean to call you out i guess i just did huh i just wanted to make sure i was looking at the correct version all good we can fix it for next week thank you miss hall um all right so we have our dates for board members calendars does anyone have anything for old business anything for new business all right so courtesy of the floor we required members that wanted to make comments

215during courtesy of the florida pre-register if you would like to speak please raise your hand four minutes and introduce yourself with your name and municipality so first up i have mr john andrews mr andrews whenever you're ready uh john andrews lower providence the uh i want to address some comments to uh how prepared we are to vote on full day kindergarten i did a study uh over a year a year and a half ago relative to full day kindergarten i found out that the worst school district in the state in harrisburg after they switched from half-day kindergarten to full-day kindergarten there was no improvement in pssa scores in grade three and then we have one of the best school districts nearby that switched from half-day kindergarten to full-day kindergarten and that's the radnor school district

216the first two years of grade 3 pssa scores there showed a significant drop in the number of advanced proficient scores and and basically a small improvement at in the below basic and significantly when they studied the children in kindergarten that were the young in the youngest month 61 of those students needed special education activity uh so that puts a question to uh is age five to to to get into kindergarten the right age in newton massachusetts there was a major upheaval because the teachers something like 45 kindergarten teachers addressed the board with major problems in in their full-day kindergarten activities they were expecting too much from the students and that received national attention in several major magazines and the they had a uh some kind of a booklet describing the the kindergarten course program it

217was i don't know like 40 pages long that uh you know it seemed like an an overriding emphasis on on acronym academic proficiency and the superintendent ended up quitting or retiring or leaving and locally here there's talk about the social and uh economic uh or not economic i'm sorry the social uh emotional and academic aspects uh and the academic uh uh then another word was used cognitively but i think that one of the big issues in kindergarten is developmental and when you see a uh when you look through the the ice in a pond in the in april or march or april and you see pollywogs swimming around they're not like the frogs that they turn into in subsequent months so i i think that when we had t1 and if anyone doesn't know what

218that is i could i could answer that but when we had t1 wrap it up please it uh i think it it aided the children who developmentally weren't doing well in kindergarten and that was something like 10 percent of the student population thank you mr andrews next i have brian earnshaw uh thank you brian erschel our providence um first uh dr jeannie when you went through the personal items that was a lot of fantastic information there you answered a lot of the questions i had explaining why some items were retroactive the purpose of supplemental contracts that was just very informative and i appreciate that um on the full day kindergarten discussion um mr winners commented that there'll be like maybe future cost savings if full day kindergarten is implemented and mr navrat also commented that

219you know taxpayer could benefit by you know increased home values um increased assessment values etc can either of you quantify those or is that just an antidote anecdotal belief that you have um and if you can't quantify it are any of those numbers built into mr bricker's projections um regarding the writing request i'm glad to see that it's you know finally be considered here we are a month and a half ago in the fiscal year and it's just now being addressed uh i know that ms aubrey larp ms aubry larcenia said that you know you became aware of this in your discussions with dr zerby early on um i wonder if you brought that information to the board uh did any other board members see these costs in the financials that you get monthly um

220ms aubry law opportunities did you take any actions if not why if yes what was done as far as the top five requesters has the board or the administration spoken to them directly or met with them they try to understand why they're making so many requests and try to explain to them what costs are being incurred to get to the root cause of the problem um you know i think that that might help i will tell you that i think part of this might be self-inflicted from the standpoint of the board of the administration i know i was trying to get information on legal fees seeing all the costs in the list of bills and it took a right to no request to get the information um nobody answered my questions at these meetings nobody

221responded to my emails uh at one point i think mr bricker said you want that information to follow right to no request so that's what i did and i got a copy of the presentation you know fifty percent of what was presented tonight um in advance of being posted to the website so i was able to see that but i had to file a right to no request to do it and if you would have just answered my question i wouldn't have found it right to that request um the other thing to take to consider is you know these costs are gonna continue you know is it it's cheaper to hire a paralegal to be your right to know officer somebody who knows the law can address this you might spend hundred thousand but you're

222gonna save seven hundred thousand um you know it's just i don't understand be posting it to the website i don't know what that's going to do whether you're trying to shame the requester that would be like me if you're not answering my question posting your individual cell phone numbers on the or somewhere so people can call you directly to get an answer i don't think i don't think that's appropriate i don't know if there's any privacy concerns there but i think that's a bad idea i don't think that's going to get you anywhere um so i think you got to come up with some other acts and try to get these costs under control like meet with the top five requesters answer questions you get via email answer questions at a board meeting and if

223you have to hire a person you know you might just spend something on a salary but it's going to cut 700 000 legal costs it's just you get started thinking about how can you address these costs you know rather than you know and i didn't hear anything like that discussed tonight and i know mr mcginnis you got angry you know and so forth mr neverett is concerned that's great but you know you got to get to the root cause of this because it is a waste of money and has no educational benefit whatsoever thank you um and that concludes our courtesy of the floor um do we have any closing comments from the board now i have a couple of things that i would like to address mr winters uh i'd like to address the

224full day kindergarten i do not have a financial number i think that if you were if you listen to the context of the conversation that we were having it was for both comments that were made tonight it was around the social emotional and not the academic aspect of the kindergarten and it was that it was setting the stage for them to be lifelong learners at an earlier stage with matthackton's influence and ability to provide the interventions of the children not ready for going into kindergarten as early dr euker did a fantastic job of explaining what if you were listening to the conversation why we were doing this and the context of it was so the 1.3 million dollars that i mentioned and some dollar savings i do believe there will be a dollar saying can

225i quantify it no because it's based on the context of of what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it so i cannot give you a number you got me but i think the context of what we're trying to do and the dollar savings will come i believe and at the very least even if there is no dollar savings i believe most importantly the reason we're doing this is we believe this will be more allow our students to be more successful to go through a full day kindergarten and have 13 good years of the fact and then become you know lifelong learners their whole life so that's the context i can't give you the math and i stand by not being able to give you the math thank you thank you mr

226winners um i did also want to speak to the right to know process a little bit um the question was raised whether or not we've spoken to the right to know requesters i i i know mr bricker named the top five in his presentation but it i mean it was really pretty clear that it was the number one that was the issue um and yes we have had direct one-on-one conversations with this request to try to address this matter um we have had we've tried a lot of different avenues i will say that um and the question was raised about you know requests for presentations and um you know information that has been sought through emails and sometimes the information that is thought through emails is much more specific um than the things that we

227have available to us readily as board members and sometimes the most expedient way to do that to address those questions is through a right to no request those right to know requests are not the problem the cost of those right to know requests is minimalist it's not what's what's driving this cost um and driving this this expense um you know it's as we spoke about earlier it's the right to know requests that are to mr navarrete's point you know the third derivation of a write to no request where the requester is looking for proof that we received their right to know request proof that we executed the right to know request proof that we received that right to no request and um and so on and that those are the the problems that we're dealing

228with um so i i guess maybe that wasn't made clear earlier but hopefully it is now um so if anyone has anything else to add or not mr mcginnis do i have to adjourn thank you mr mcginnis everyone have a great night