001official thumbs up? Not yet? No. Not yet. I can wait patiently. Okay, we got the official thumbs up from our from our North Penn TV students. So, with that I will call this evening's work session to order and we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge to >> allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the [clears throat] republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, good evening everyone and I do just want to give a quick shout-out and thanks to our North Penn TV crew for their assistance tonight with tech issues and we apologize if there are any tech issues that come up between now and then. So, we'll move into our audience of citizens and I will start
002by reading the statement except I just had a tech issue and my board doc shut down. I can read it. Okay, Dr. Bauer will read it while I log back in. >> This meeting is being videotaped for the community cable channels and streamed live. Individuals attending this meeting and intending to speak to the board should be aware that they are being videotaped in order to meet the requirements of Pennsylvania's Sunshine Law. It is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the board during the meeting. To ensure compliance with this requirement is essential that those planning to address the board state their name and municipality. Members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to 3 minutes. As a reminder, the audience of citizens portion of the meeting is
003designed for residents and taxpayers of the district to provide comment and feedback on matters which are or may come before the board. It is not designed for debate or discussion with the board. When appropriate, individual school directors may choose to respond to public comments that have been made once the audience of citizens period has concluded or requests that a member of the administration follow up with the speakers after the meeting. This is in reference to board policy number 903, which Mr. Summers is going to shorten before our next meeting. Good evening, Mr. Lanier. >> [laughter] >> You just have to read it a little faster next time. Good evening, Jason Lanier, Lansdale. Um quick note, I just uh talked with Dr. Waters and get a clarification of of what I was mentioning before. It was
004title one employees and apparently it was a clerical thing and not a No one's getting laid off on Friday. It's just I apologize for the mistake there. Um but I do still want to talk about the budget here and it wasn't that long ago that the previous board was talking about and some of the members are still here trying to spend nearly half a billion dollars on a high school plan. And how much worse we would be in a financial situation. So, that's a benefit that everybody got that we voted that down. And in that regard, the budget on the renovation is is up from, you know, it was supposed to include mods and and uh and a transportation center by We're at 200, you know, 215 million, which is now up to 265 million
005dollars, if I'm not mistaken, for the renovation project. That's a lot of money. And when we look at that amortized out over the years we're going to be paying that back, we're talking 3/4 of a million billion dollars. That's a lot of money that we're paying out for a high school. And I'm looking at the different things that What do we get for that money? Are we being I mean, there are some bright really really bright kids at North Penn, but the the the aggregate I think is suffering. I think the kids and I mentioned this before the education equity shows that that has been a net detriment to the to the school district. The fact that we're doing Wit & Wisdom and maybe somebody here can correct me on this again is there's there's
006like social justice warrior uh in involved with the the phonics of of what Wit & Wisdom is supposed to bring back to uh reading. Why? Why are we doing this? And where is this going to end? I I I have a I suspect and I am I think you guys might know this, but um AI agents are are you know, that sounds like I'm not being uh conspiratorial, but the onset of of artificial intelligence tuned to a person's specific needs is getting stronger and stronger. And where all this budgeting is happening and we're going to have a hard time meeting the demand, that's going to get picked up in in in that uh by that space. Artificial intelligence is is going to end up replacing a lot of this. So, I think we need to
007kind of scale this to a a matter which makes more sense. Not keep looking at ways to find more revenue, but spending a lot less in order to realize why are we going to in you know, long-term uh debt the the citizens in North Penn school district. You know, making them upside down in a in a in a tax bill if you will to use a a car vernacular, right? When you you owe more than it's worth. And I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lanier. Okay, moving on. I'll move over to the solicitor's report. And I have no report this evening. Well, thank you for that. Okay, special education update. Yes, at this time I'd like to uh our two directors of special education, Dr. Allison Cookler and Dr. Melissa Bolden uh
008to the podium. They're going to give a update on special education and programming and some of the staffing and roles for next year. So, uh it looks like Dr. Cookler will be speaking first. Good evening. Yeah, good evening everybody. Um our first two slides just go through the mission and the vision because we want to remind everyone that all of the work that comes out of our department is anchored in our district mission and vision. Is the next slide. Thank you. Um we've talked in the ECI meetings over the last 2 years about the work that we've done to um build our special education continuum model. Um this is a lot of legalese from IDEA, our federal law, but we wanted to um highlight that it is required of us to ensure that we have
009a continuum of services and placements. Um some of this language can be a little intimidating, but really what it means is that we have to have um support in the regular education environment, in the special education environment, and sometimes outside of our school district buildings. Next slide. Particularly at the elementary level, these are the things that we've done, the major things that we've done over the past 2 years to expand into uh special education continuum. Um we've highlighted these things in ECI, but just to go through them briefly for you again. Um a new thing that we've done this year is ensured that students who need their math and ELA instruction in a special ed environment provided by a special ed teacher have that opportunity. We've also carved out the opportunity for case management to
010be specific to students who require emotional support or autistic support um at the itinerant level, um which means less than 20% of their day at each of the elementary schools. We opened five new elementary specialized classrooms. Those are our autistic support and or life skills support classrooms. We're working with Patton, which is the state's training facility on a two-year plan that will help us to enhance our emotional support programs. They are housed at Hatfield and North Wales. We also have two options for interim placement. Sometimes when students need more services than we can provide for them to be successful in our school buildings, we are looking for out of district placements for them and sometimes we need to provide something in the interim. So we have elementary North Bridge where we provide interim emotional support
011and we have a partnership with an ABA clinic right in Lansdale where we can provide itinerant autistic support. I'm sorry, interim autistic support. Thank you. We have also expanded our secondary continuum of supports. We've updated our curriculum resources for all of our specialized classrooms. When we say specialized classrooms, those are classrooms that would may support not limited to our students receiving autistic support, emotional support, life skills, multiple disabilities support. We have enhanced our transition process for our students who move from elementary to middle school as well as middle school to high school. Just increasing our communication, attending IEP meetings for students who transition to the middle school and the same for um moving from middle school to high school. Um we know that it is sometimes a challenge um for families as they may be
012nervous um about the transition and we want to ensure that we have the best understanding of our students we are receiving in the middle and high school. Um in addition, we've increased our or expanded our supports for students requiring functional, social, and vocational skills. Those skills you um we usually um discuss when students are tran- of transition age. In transition age, um our students who are turning 14 um and older during their um educational experiences. Uh we focus on what students will need, skills they would need to be successful as an independent or supported individual once they leave um K-12 education. We did um add a middle school specialized classroom in one of our buildings. And we are um working on improving each year a cohesive model for all three middle schools so that the
013supports, although they are individualized buildings, the supports that our students need to receive can be provided in all three buildings to the greatest extent possible. We are very proud of the professional development that we have been able to give not only our teachers, but support staff, administration, and our parents. And some of the professional development includes the disability inclusive curriculum pilot that we were working with the state to support us with. We also partner with agencies who support families as well and one of those agencies actually disabilities equality education DEE and the Peel Center is another agency that we work with to help support our parents. We continue to have professional development for neurodiversity affirming practices. We were able to have a book study on demystifying disability and we did that with some of our
014staff. We also were able to purchase that book for other staff members who were unable to participate in that book study. And of course we we always always work with our schools to continue universal design for learning professional development. Okay. Um it's important for us in a continuum model to make sure that we are really really still focusing on being inclusive schools as that aligns with our mission and vision. Um the Iris Center is Vanderbilt University's professional development hub. Um it's a great place for all sorts of learning in regard to special education. They provide us with a definition of inclusion. But what we want to highlight and expand and really be focused on is inclusive practices specifically. So a big piece of that is the sentence that's there. Forgive me for reading it to
015you, but understanding that disability is a natural part of the human experience is really the foundation of being in an inclusive place, particularly for people and students with disabilities. Additionally, the other four items under there, as Melissa mentioned neurodiversity affirming practices, but in addition trauma informed approaches and culturally representative teaching strategies, as well as universal design, they're really critical for a school to really feel like an inclusive place for all learners. Next slide, please. Um last year Dr. Hart and I had the pleasure of um providing opportunities for what we call work together Wednesdays um for our elementary staff. And um that's an opportunity for just 30 minutes once a month, roughly, for staff to be focused on a uh particular activity. We use the book High Leverage Practices for Inclusive Classrooms. And the really
016cool thing about this book is it was developed by members of the Council for Exceptional Children, which is a national organization, and they have identified 22 high leverage practices that fit into those four categories that you can see on the slide. So, for example, um organizing and facilitating effective meetings is part of collaboration. Um interpreting and communicating assessment information, you know, is part of assessment. Teaching social behaviors and providing positive and constructive feedback, that's part of social emotional behavioral. And instruction is a as a very long list, but using explicit instruction, flexible grouping, and strategies to promote student engagement are all examples, too. So, all of these things together are really critical in order for our schools to not only continue to be inclusive places, but to really be um well-rounded in being inclusive places
017for all of our students. Next slide. Um In short, all of that work that we just highlighted for you in just those few minutes still falls really nicely into what the the district's special education core values are. I won't read them all to you, but you can see from what you're seeing up on the screen that the things that we've discussed are all falling here nicely. Next slide. As we review our core values, the needs of our students, um and feedback, our data um has prompted us to make some changes in how we are supporting our students. And we have are moving in the direction of um creating a program specialist role that will support our students and our district, our families um as we focus on our core values which include inclusive practices, um
018and that continuum of education that will ensure assist in ensuring that our students have what they need to be successful. And that looks differently as we know for individual students. And this program specialist role, we just want to highlight um some of the main actions that um or and supports that the program specialist um will need to do for us. And these are some of the characteristics um and roles of the program specialist. So, a program Yeah, thank you. The program specialist um roles um really are for individuals who have that strong ability to um support, to provide professional development, to provide assistance, to mentor, um and to be a part of school teams to support our students. And here you can see more details of the program specialist role. In order to provide this
019support, and one of the things that I, um, did not mention is the, as we review the needs of our district, we see a need for the program specialist role and a need to increase our special education teachers, getting more teachers in front of our students. And in order to do that, we needed to reallocate, um, certain positions within the district to ensure that we could have this program specialists, the program specialists roles, and increase the amount of teachers who are supporting our students. The There are three program specialist positions, um, for the district. An elementary program specialist, a secondary program specialist, and a K-12 low-incidence program specialist. Okay? Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Bolden and Dr. Cookler. So, uh, just to be clear, there there's no action being taken this evening on
020this. It's really just informational to kind of share the reallocation of some of the positions. Uh, so, we are taking some of our, uh, coaches, inclusion facilitators, and putting them in the classroom, and then having more a district-wide approach to the coaching model as opposed to building-based approach. Um, so, just wanted to share that, and who better to give the details than our two directors. Um, but at this time, if you have any questions, otherwise, just want to It's just informational. >> [snorts] >> Just a quick note that if anybody was interested in any more details, specifi- specifically about our special education numbers, uh, those were present in the ECI presentation in January of this year. So that's on YouTube and ready for perusal if you so wish. Thanks, ladies. >> Thank you. I also
021did fail to mention, I know Dr. Bolden used the word reallocation many times, but if you watched our previous meeting, which was just a few moments ago, we talked about there are no additional roles this year. So staffing is neutral in the instructional realm. So this is a reallocation. This is a repurposing of some of our positions. I had just a comment, but thank you, Dr. Bolden and Dr. Kugler for for explaining that to us and also your partnership in the ECI meetings. I think evidence by the previous meeting of exactly what Dr. Bauer referred to of having a flat staffing model for next year and still having the increased need for students who have >> [snorts] >> or in special education program or who have IEPs or 504s, those children still need to be
022accommodated. And I appreciate the creativity as well as the hard work to try to make that happen with minimal waves, I guess, but still keeping the children at the forefront of the need for the change. Um And I I just wanted to point out I appreciate you pointing out the extra care needed for transitions. I have family that went through the North Penn School District special education program, probably outdated information in my mind, but those were times of tremendous stress for my family. Um and I know that's that that is not unchanged. I think those periods of transition are stressful for a child that's not in the special education program, but I think there's extra care and finesse that's needed for for the students that you're taking care of. Um And I also your focus
023on inclusion um and what that what that can mean for each student. It's very It could be a very different situation for each student, but it's about meeting their needs. And we all have very unique and lovely children in our district, and it is a challenge to flex to meet what they need for their inclusion in their education. So, thank you. Thank you. So, thank you both Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Mr. Shiba. Sure. Hi, I just want to say thank you for the work that you do. I know that it's it's so important for uh this vulnerable community. Um and it it is it can be um it takes passion to be able to to continue this. So, I I commend you for what you're doing um and also appreciate you continuing to look
024to improve the programs. Um my comment is mostly just I would love to hear how I want to hear how um this reallocation kind of goes forward. I know that um with this population change can be difficult um and so um I would be eager to hear how how um you know, the administrative changes um unroll as as uh as this moves forward. So, um yeah, I I look forward to hearing and um and good luck. We'll be back. Thank you. Thank you. Um thank you both so much for being here tonight. I do want to just reflect that in my years of board service, I feel that the area of special education has meant an opportunity for me to learn about the benefits and supports of inclusion um and our students. So, thank you
025for that and thank you for leaving us with this thought that understanding that disability is a natural part of the human experience. Um and really what you all do is make take difficult services and make them as accessible as possible and appreciate it. Um I do also just want to share with my fellow board colleagues that the book that was mentioned demystifying disability, a copy was shared with me. As So, thank you for sharing it. And I always believe that good books and good reads are worth sharing. So, I'm more than happy to share my copy. Would love to pass that along and keep the learning going as well. So, thank you. Thank you so much. I do have to share I mentioned in a previous meeting one earlier this evening that I had the
026chance to be at the Capitol Building today in Harrisburg for Advocacy Day. But this is a new meeting and probably more people watch work session. No offense, Ms. Hauser, on finance meetings. But that said, we had the opportunity to go meet with different legislators and advocate on behalf of PASA. And I was with one of our local representatives, State Representative Cerisci, with a few other superintendents. And the main priority of PASA this year is more support from our state government in special education. And so we're in his office for about 45 minutes having a really good fruitful conversation. And I came out there was a knock from his assistant like kind of saying, "Hey, your next appointment's here." And I came out and there were two people sitting in chairs in the waiting room. This
027is in Harrisburg today. And one of them was a former president of our Special Education Alliance. The other was her son who went through our post 12 program. His name is Kevin. Kevin was sitting in the Capitol Building with a button about disability rights advocating. He's 25 now. And he was so happy to see me. He's like, "That's my superintendent." So, it was so heartwarming that we were there advocating for special education. And then a North Penn grad was waiting to meet with the representative after. Really, really cool. And I had no idea he was going to be there. So, thank you for the work that you do. Thank you to Kevin. I'm not going to say his last name on record, but people know Kevin. So. You and Kevin are amazing advocates and it's
028time for us to fill in the gaps. So, I do think Kevin is probably being able to speak with that lived experience is probably one of the best voices, but we need to raise up his voice as well. So, we will be joining in those efforts as well. So, thank you for that. You're welcome. Thank you both. >> Hey, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, moving on to the superintendent's report. >> Yes, so first I have the consent agenda, which is much shorter than usual. We have contracts and gifts to the district. >> [snorts] >> Okay, do I have a motion and a second for the items as listed? Motion by Mr. Rush, seconded by Mr. Chiba, or did I do [clears throat] that in opposite? >> that right. Okay. Any comments or questions?
029All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay, moving on to the non-consent items. First, I recommend approval of the personnel items as per the attached. Do I have a motion and a second for the personnel items? So moved. Second. Motion by Mr. McBain, seconded by Mr. Bell. Any comments or questions? Okay, seeing none, all those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay, next we are seeking approval to advertise the proposed final budget for the fiscal year 2026-2027. The final budget will be presented and voted on in June 18th. So, do I have a motion and a second to approve the item? So moved. Second. Motion by Mrs. Rodnick, seconded by Mr. Kaiser. Any comments or questions? >> I'll just note for this meeting's record that we had a 40-minute
030presentation in the last meeting about this proposed final budget. So, if you're looking for more detail, of course, watch previous finance meetings or the meeting just before this. Great. Really appreciate your efforts, Mrs. Hauser, on preparing the budget and preparing us to get to almost this point. Okay, any other comments or questions? Okay, all in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Next, I recommend approval of the tax collection supplemental information resolution as per the attached. Okay, do I have a motion and a second? So moved. Motion by Mrs. Rodnick, seconded by Mr. Kaiser. Any comments or questions? Just one comment is it was mentioned in the finance committee meeting that the um the second page of the resolution has a reference to a particular date, July 1st, 2024. That is instead should
031will be revised to July 1st, 2026. Thank you for that clarification. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Uh lastly, I recommend the approval of real estate installment resolution as per the attached. Okay, do I have a motion and a second? So moved. Second. Motion by Mrs. Rodnick, second by Mr. Bell. Any comments or questions? Seeing none, all in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. That concludes my report. Thank you, President Rammage. Okay, we do not have other business on the agenda, but I am going to offer two updates. Um I do just want to acknowledge that this is teacher appreciation week um and do want to give a shout-out to all North Penn school personnel and all of those who are supporting teacher appreciation activities. So, special shout-out to
032our students and to our home and school associations and others who are stepping up to say thank you to our teachers. Appreciate that. So, I want to say um in support of Mrs. Rammage and this is certainly not an indictment on you, but I have made the mistakes of offering recognitions before and then I get nasty grams the next day because I forgot people. So, um I think Friday was Principal's Day, we had School Lunch Hero Day, we had Teacher Appreciation, um there's another one. Uh Nurses Appreciation is this week. >> School Bus Driver and >> School Bus Driver, yes. So, you're not going to get everyone, Mrs. Runge. >> I did say, for the record, >> all school personnel because there is not a single person who works in our district who does not
033touch the lives of our of our students. >> You got that right. >> And everyone has incredible value. Um I also do want to just thank the board for their contribution to the North Penn Education um Foundation online auction, which is live now. So, place your bids and I I believe it runs through the 9th, but I could be wrong. Um we'll check Facebook. I tried to do that and could not multitask during the meeting well enough. So, um but please um make your contribution. It goes those the the grants that the Ed Foundation makes goes a um it goes a long way to supporting teacher innovation and student need. Okay, um I believe that is all. So, do I have a motion um to adjourn the meeting? So moved. >> Okay. Meeting adjourned.