NP School Board Finance Committee Meeting 4-7-26

001Yeah, I'm here. Got it. Thanks, Mr. Teo. Dr. Teo, excuse me. All right, let's call this evening's April 7th Finance Committee meeting to order. I'll be serving as the chair of this evening as Ms. Rudnick is out. And let's start off with the Pledge of Allegiance. >> [clears throat] >> 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. All right, first on the agenda this evening, we have the approval of the minutes from the March 3rd, 2026 Finance Committee meeting. Do I have a motion? So moved. Motion from Ms. Ramich. Second. Seconded by Mr. McBain. Do we have any questions or comments on the minutes? Seeing none, can I get a vote to

002approve the minutes? I. I. I. See any opposed? None seen. Motion is approved. Mr. Bell, if I could interrupt, I apologize. I didn't say since the meeting officially started that Dr. Teo is with us virtually, just for the record. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Yep. Uh next up, we have our items recommended for work session and action meetings coming up. We will start this off with our investment report, so I'll turn that over to Ms. Hauser. Great, thank you. Just struggling a little bit with my BoardDocs this evening. Um There it is. Okay. Uh So, the first item that we have before you tonight is the investment report. Um rates are ticking down. I think most of our rates have dropped below 4% at this point. Um this is just a impact of

003the markets overall and doesn't really have anything to do with where we're currently invested. Um we still have a couple of CDs that are hanging out over four and over five. Um but for the most part, our investment our cash um our interest-bearing accounts are below 4%. Um they're there for your review. If we can get a vote, I don't know. A motion. Wait. Do you want to vote on that? >> Yeah. Thank you very much. Do I have a motion to approve this report? Motion by Ms. Coin. Second. Second. Seconded by Ms. Ramich. All the Any questions or comments? All in favor? I. I. I. Any opposed? Seeing none, motion's approved. We'll now move on to the Treasurer's report. Um cash receipts for the month of February were 11.1 million. Cash disbursements for the

004month of February were 36.9 million. Uh ending with a total available funds at the end of the month of 207.9 million. Thank you very much. Can I get a motion and a second to discuss this? So moved. Motion by Mr. McBain. Second. Seconded by Mr. Resch. Uh any questions or comments? All those in favor? I. I. Any opposed? Seeing none, thank you very much. This is approved. We'll move on to item C, transfers. Um these are just our normal monthly budget transfers. There's nothing really of note this month. If anybody has any questions, I'm happy to field them. Otherwise, a motion and a vote, please. Thank you so much. Again, quick motion and second. So moved. Motion by Mr. Kaiser. Second. Seconded by Ms. Ramich. Any questions or comments? All those in favor? I. Any

005opposed? Motion passes. Uh next item is uh potentially more discussion, uh the approval of the selection of the Cornerstone Independent Financial Management. Ms. [clears throat] Hauser. Yeah, so if you guys remember uh I I think it was January. I think it was during the January um Finance Committee meeting, we had Cornerstone In- Independent Financial I always say their name. Cornerstone. We had Cornerstone present about being our Cornerstone Independent Financial Management. >> my glasses. I cannot see. I got it. Thank you. Um present about helping us um with our cash holdings because we sit on so much cash to truly to really try to make sure that A, the the safety of the investments that we're investing our cash in, the collateral is is strong collateral in the background, which I think um as the market

006goes right now, will be very beneficial to us. Um but also to make sure that we have our cash working for us in the most um efficient way possible. Uh the we did go out for RFP. Um I the same school district that recommended them, I had I borrowed their RFP. We changed a couple of things around to make sure that um the consultants were independent of the products that they sold. Um we had three respondents. The respondents were Cornerstone, um a group called Meter out of Ohio, and another group called Buckhead out of Atlanta. Um neither Meter nor um Buckhead had any public school district experience with the exception of one bond fund in the school district of Philadelphia. They did have um municipal experience, and there were other school districts outside of the

007state, but nothing working within the parameters of PA school code. Um so uh Meter was significantly larger than Cornerstone. Buckhead was a little bit smaller in total assets under advisement, um as well as employees. Um and it really on all fronts and I've been I included a memo to file for all of you in the executive content. Um Cornerstone did, even after the RFP process, still came out um both on price and and services offered, um came out as the preferred candidate. Thank you very much. Uh before discussion, do I have a motion and a second? So moved. Second. Motion by Ms. Coin, second by Mr. Resch. Um any comments or questions about this? Yeah, I do. I I did want to thank you. I know I thanked you privately, but I do want to

008thank you publicly for really showing the clear choice and the pros and cons. And I know this was a a new service that's going to be used for North Penn School District. So, I I really did appreciate um the time spent doing this. And I did want to acknowledge I think that did change the timeline of how you wanted to implement this service. I hope that it is still tremendously valuable. Um but I did want to thank you again publicly because I think it really did help me understand, again, serving as a new school board member, but it I I think just in general why the service was needed. So, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, Mr. Resch. Is there any way to after we use this service for a year, is there any way to

009check to see if this service is of value to the school system? I know it frees up resources, and and we don't really have that kind of expertise in-house. Right. Uh but I buy bonds all at Vanguard all the time. So, I We Well, we can't invest the way an individual can invest for one thing. Yeah. Um I think [clears throat] probably they would be able to provide us with um and and I think Amanda spoke to this in her presentation that they would be able to provide to us some benchmarking data to show had we just left it in our bank account versus what they did, what um what we could have what we've earned instead of what we would have just had if we had left it in our own bank account. I

010think some of the things that we also are not as tangible again as the quality of the investment and the collateral that supports it. Um so, I think that's that's an important component as well um to make sure that what's backing the investments that we're putting it in is is of of a a more conservative nature than than some than other some investments over another. Um I think the other component to this too that I just want to mention is it's not just having our money make money with us, it's also working with my staff um to keep track of cash flow on a regular basis to make sure that we're de-investing our funds at the best time rather than just going, "All right, next week we're going to issue $6 million in payments. Go

011ahead and pull it out." Well, maybe there's maybe I can pull it out tomorrow versus today and they'll be really able to help us make those timing decisions um a little bit better than than just "Hey, our check run next week's going to be X, so we need to pull it out on Friday." Yeah. I I just had a quick question. Are they Is there such a thing as a acting as a fiduciary for a for a school district? >> Yes. >> Is that what they are then? Um sort of, yes, because they will not have signatory ability. So, they will not be able to I may allow them to move funds between accounts at Univest, but they will not be able to move funds out of the district. >> Okay. Um or issue payments

012or anything like that. Right. >> Like I will I I will have as treasurer I will have signatory responsibility for any trades that they make. Okay. Yeah. >> Thanks. Mhm. One quick question just thinking about the timing now that we're delayed from the original sequencing. Uh does this give us sufficient time to invest some of the additional money that's coming in as we Will they be a part of investing potentially like the new bond proceeds and other things like that? >> Yeah, I I actually had a conversation with them specifically about those funds cuz I I don't I'm going to need some of those funds over the summer for cash, but I could probably put I'm probably only going to need about 20 million over the summer. I can probably put the other 40 million

013into an a vehicle of some kind until later in the fall. Um so, that's one of the things that we're going to talk about is also cleaning up all of our bond fund accounts because we have stragglers in a couple of other issuances, getting those cleared out, getting that money invested appropriately to make sure that I'm not By law, we're not allowed to make more in interest than we're um paying over a certain time. There's That's simplifying it um but just to make sure that that that we're taking care of that as well. Yep. Any additional questions? We have our motion and a second. All those in favor of the approval of the selection of Cornerstone Independent Financial Management to move to an action meeting. I vote aye. I Aye. Any opposed? Thank you very

014much. Um I jumped an item, so sorry about that. Going back to item D, the general fund year end projection. Yeah, I think this is my bad. I put it in the wrong section. This is an informational item. We don't have to vote on this. Um I'm happy to talk about it now or I can talk about it with the reports. Just want me Let's move down. We'll move it down. Okay. Yeah, so that does not need to be voted on. That was my bad. >> Great. We'll we'll come back to that when we hit informational reports. Thank you so much. Um moving on to the next uh items recommended for work session or action meeting is a 2-year extension with First Student to provide district transportation. I think we're on Parent Square. Oh, Parent

015Hey. Oh, I'm jumping all over the place. Yeah, yeah, you're Mine maybe an old version. >> That's just an old version. All right, Parent Square. Do you approve the selection of Parent Square to provide communications automatically into fair families. So, very pleased to introduce tonight Ms. Christine Liberaski, who is our director of school and community engagement, Mr. Bob Gilmer, who is coordinator of communications media. They're going to be talking about a communications platform. I won't go into any further detail because they will kind of share the process here and what we are looking to do. So, Ms. Liberaski, good evening. Thanks, everyone, for having us here this evening. We're really excited to talk about this new communications platform. I'm going to talk about a a little bit about the background, why we're here, and then

016Bob's going to take over talk about the costs, timeline, and so forth. So, let's dig in. Uh if you may remember about a year ago when we did our budget presentation, we said um during the 25-26 school year, we would be investigating a new communication platform um in an effort to have it in the 26-27 school year budget. So, that's why we're here and it's also we're here because of a lot of input that the district has received over the past few years. We were It's really important. It's a priority of the school district that our communications is top-notch and that we engage our families as best as we can. Number of things that we did was a communications audit, uh climate survey, a subcommittee for communications, and then just in in personal um conversations

017with people. All of the engagement efforts that Dr. Bauer does with our students, with our staff, with our families. Um and what we found is that we have a lot of communication vehicles um and I have a list there of our of our top ones with School Messenger being the one that Bob and I really um facilitate with. That's our emergency communication and our mass emailing notification system. But then our staff also uses a number of other products that you'll see there and and clearly there were so many places for our families to go for the information. It was a bit confusing. Um we wanted to make it easier, more equitable for both staff and for students. So, um Parent Square is our solution and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that

018next. So, the selection process to get to Parent Square, we started in October 2025 and we wanted a cross-section of people who use it both in they use it as a communication tool for delivering, but also in receiving information. So, we had um teachers, we had support staff, we had ELL staff, we had administrators, we had parents, principals, um people in the communications department. Really, it was there was about 20 people um and I think we really tried to be diverse and and we were we were able to accomplish that. We met four times and we met with the top three vendors in the nation. So, they are School Messenger, who we currently have, Parent Square, and Finalsite. And during those meetings, the vendors demoed the product. They talked about about um all that they

019can do. We were actually in the in the product and um manipulating it and we got to ask questions and and learn a lot about it. We also um met with the vendors in in terms of what their pricing would be and got some costs together and we surveyed everybody who participated. There's actually some a number of people in the audience who were were in um the team itself and Parent Square um was the one that we felt best meet our needs. Um What does What does School What does Parent Square do that School Messenger doesn't? I like to say that School Messenger sends messages, but Parent Square builds relationships. With School Messenger, all we did was broadcast. Um Parent Square really is about two-way engagement and it's about the parent deciding how the the

020family deciding how they want to receive their messages. So, some of the things that um it can do, yes, it can post it can post and send messages, but it can communicate in the preferred language um um and it's built in two ways. So, you if um a teacher's communicating with a family, the family wants to receive it in Spanish, the parent will type in English, but it will come to Spanish in that parent. And then the parent will type in in Spanish and will come back to English for the teacher. So, it's it's really taking um what we currently have and blowing it up and making it um much much more robust. And then it has all the other um aspects that some of those other um communication platforms had from calendar events to

021sharing files to scheduling conferences. Um also, it's really important. It is emergency um communication as well. We wouldn't choose a product that wasn't as good or even better than School Messenger in terms of when there's emergencies. And we can also track engagement um to know how how well we're reaching our audiences. So, what do we think the result will be? Obviously, our goal is for improved communications, which is a district priority. Uh the platform will help ensure families um receive accessible, convenient, and timely information the way that they want it and when they want it. Um they will receive They will decide how they receive their information, whether that be by text, by email, by phone call, or by app notification. Um the built-in translation is our number one um one number one reason why

022we're going with them. We think it can provide much more than the other applications. Um and it will streamline the process for staff, which will save time for our staff and will streamline the process for our parents, which will save time for them. So, overall, we think it is the most consistent, responsive communication for the district of all of them that we received reviewed. So, now Bob will talk about costs and the timeline implementation if we were to move forward with it. Thank you, Christine. So, before I share the numbers, before we drop those in there, I think the other big thing is realizing where all our parents are at. That's a big thing. It's Most people are in their mobile device. Um and School Messenger was good at a short text. So, if you

023guys some of the parents here have gotten those short text, but you got to click to go somewhere else to get that information. So, what the text will do is it will take you exactly where you need to be, and it's also in the app. And the number of communications we everybody gets all day long. If you've got an elementary student, a middle school student, a high school student, you're staff member, if we have something going on in a day, you might get four, five, six messages. You might get a message from a coach. You might get a message from the teacher. So, you're kind of getting hammered from all different directions with messages. So, which one's the important one? Oh, North Penn's calling. Is this important? I get so many messages, I may not

024know which ones are the emergency messages and which ones are the hey, this FYI kind of message. Um another cool feature um Christine you need to bring up, but I think for me that I love the most out of, you know, translations and everything else in the tech is really cool. As a parent, it does what's called journaling. So, you can schedule your non-emergency message and let's say 6:00 p.m. every night, I get my messages. I'll look at my messages then cuz they're not emergencies. So, I choose Well, I could 6:00 a.m. in the morning. I'll get all my messages from the day before at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, and I'll get everything in that moment in time. So, that's what's kind of neat about uh for the parent part is not just the

025engagement with language, getting it directly on your phone, replying directly back if we ask for a reply back through your phone. You don't have to go through your app or go to your email or find where is the email address for my teacher? You can reply directly back, um but you can decide when you're going to get those messages. So, let's for emergencies. Emergencies, you have no choice. You get them. Yeah, you get the phone you're like, I will get my emergency early dismissal tonight at 9:00 p.m. Thank you very much. I'm ready for that. So, yeah, so emergencies are we we choose that, but every other non-emergency parent chooses that. All right, cost. So, just kind of giving you a perspective, School Messenger right now that we've been doing since 2006, I think we've

026been a School Messenger client, um and has been a really strong emergency communications platform. And in fact, when we first purchased School Messenger, it was a buy call service that we did. We paid for like two emergency calls a year. is what we did like, you know, we're going to buy you know, 26,000 calls, and that's two two major emergency calls. If we need another call, we'll buy one. Well, within 3 months, we realized that we if we have this service, we're going to have more emergency calls than two a year. We hope for it's not two a day or two a week to a month, but obviously it's it's changed because of the expectation of the instant notification. Really strong tool. Works fast, and that's why when we're looking at the other platforms, everybody

027had to work fast. We had to do those calls. When we call 56,000 phones in an emergency, that call is first pass. We call that is completed in 7 minutes. It then tries four more times after that the call if you've hung up on it or it didn't go through and those types of things. So, in an emergency, 7 minutes, 56,000 calls. So, all of these systems we look like looked at had to do that. So, knowing that that's the base, and that's not translations, that's not two-way texting, it's not journaling, it's not all the other pieces we've talked about, we spend about $25,000 a year for School Messenger for the notifications. So, with the extra features that comes with extra cost. And the Parent Square cost here is basically the 1,200 plus the 49

028four for year one. 1,200 would be a this year cost to get on board it, to start the data process, to get everything in place so that when our contract would end on July 1st for School Messenger, uh we'd be in place to have emergency notifications just like we had before and do our training over the summer for the additional features to our staff. Uh so, that's that's the breakout of those two those two pieces. School Messenger itself also does similar types of things. Uh we did not find it as robust. It doesn't do the two-way texting communications. School Messenger's two-way communication is through the app only and not through texting was at $54,000 to give you a perspective of where that number is at. Um so, that's that's what we were looking at when

029we made this recommendation. We're kind of in the same price range for all these different pieces. Parent Square just gave too many too too many features that were too important to us, including the direct texting uh back and forth. >> The community groups you didn't mention there. So, we talked about that, too. So, Christine you talked about journaling. That's on the bottom of that. I didn't talk about community groups. So, another nice feature for community groups. Right now, if you're in the community and you want a message from North Penn School District, you don't get it. Uh you have to go to the website, you go to social media, just kind of find out what's going on. One of the things that is was difficult in the past is there are people that are not

030school district employees and not students that need notifications like crossing guards, our local police departments. If we're closing a school, they need to know, you know, schools are dismissing. So, we we did a backwards kind of way of always trying to notify those folks, and it wasn't as clean. Uh what's nice is we can um allow anybody in the community to be a part of this. They can sign up for community notifications. That does not mean they get every single notification we send. They would get the notifications we choose that community would get. So, if it's particularly things for the school the community doesn't need to know about, that wouldn't go out. If there's emergencies or other pieces we want the community to know about, we will now have this ability to send it out

031to the community. They have to sign up for it. We don't have everybody's phone numbers in the community and all email addresses. They have to sign up for it. But uh one of the strong pieces of this is that it's part of the suite to allow any community member to sign up for notifications. This is where we talked about the cost again, kind of breaking down um where we're at. Basically, the Parent Square is about $3.80 a student the first year, and it's always based on student population, not staff and student. Uh year two, it adds 20 cents uh per student. Year three, it adds uh 40 cents. So, that's the three-year escalation on on the cost for Parent Square. Um what we're recommending is that we have done all this work with the community,

032uh with our parents, with our staff to really hone in to what platform we need. This is not a part that we're bidding out to say, hey, we're going to bid this as long as the part meets these specs, we're good to go. We really wanted to make sure we had a tool that met all of our needs. So, with um with Parent Square, and not School not School Messenger, uh we can use purchasing agreements, uh things like PAIU. Uh there's another group called TIPS. Um TIPS I learned about over the course of this year is and this is the the is the T Interlocal Purchasing System. Uh so, it's also cooperative purchasing uh agreement. Um and it doesn't require us to go out to a straight-up RFP. One of the things that will slow

033us down here is going through an RFP process, and then we would probably wait another year to yet implement this for another year, and we may not have the product we want to uh deploy to our parents anyway. Um so, the input the input process was important to us in making sure we selected the right tool, and the recommendation we have is to move forward cuz we've vetted all these other major vendors and cost comparisons against this. All right, timeline. We recommend that the school board considers this for approval. Um if it were this month, we would do data integration starting as soon as that contract's approved and moving forward. The cost for this school year would be $1,200. Uh the contract for the the 49 four would not happen until July 1 in next

034year's budget. Then throughout May and June, we begin our our training on the basics again on the emergency notification, make sure our admins and everybody that uses School Messenger now is ready to um use it in the same way we use School Messenger today. Uh after that, we would begin working with our front office staff and how we put together our newsletters. We're replacing Smore with the newsletter piece here. We didn't talk about that, either. Uh but the newsletters are part of Parent Square that replace the Smore newsletter. The Parent Square newsletter would replace that. And then as we got into the the fall, we would really look at operationally who needs the two-way communication. We're not talking about not using Talking Points that we use in several of our schools right now. Uh there

035are teachers that use it particularly at Knapp, Hatfield, uh Rachel, I'm not sure what other schools use Talking Points. Oak Park. Uh with a high population there where we're not, you know, upending the apple cart on there, but we would be phasing Talking Points out once um Parent Square um came into effect. So, those who needed it first, we would train those people faster, but we're not getting rid of Talking Points in that scenario. I think a really a really kind of um last year when we had the fire at Hatfield Village, um we had a really difficult time uh communicating with our families there. Uh big language barrier and lots of people translating and trying to send things through Talking Points, and it was really kind of disjointed. Our staff did an amazing job

036of just running to the situation and standing at a bus stop to make sure parents knew where they needed to be and where their kids were. Um but this is one of those things where we're going to operationalize the training for those who need it first. And then after that, we will then talk about the ability for all of our teaching staff cuz this there's an account for everybody on our staff. So, every single teacher, uh staff member, coach can do two-way communication with parents and directly um reply back and forth in in their native language. So, this is our recommendation. So, we're looking to have you guys consider this. We'll answer any questions tonight. We'll move forward after that, and uh we're going to operationalize if we're re-looking at some other tools, we can

037do that again, but this is kind of our timeline that we're looking at for the next couple months. Thank you both so much for the thoughtful presentation. Uh so, that we can open up for discussion. Do I have a motion and a second? So moved. Second. Motion by Ms. Rammage, second by Mr. Kaiser. Um questions or comments from the group? I'll just throw out there real quick. Sorry, Mr. Kaiser. I just want to thank you both for leading the process. Extremely thorough. I know it took months, um but I think this is what's best for us. And Ms. Labrosky, didn't you share that this can also read to? So, so not only do we have uh many families that speak different languages, but we have some families where the parents are illiterate and this has

038the capability of not only sending it in their native language, but reading it in that language as well. Yeah, the principals that we worked with from some of our schools with the population for ELLs high was thrilled about that. Right now one of our principals every Sunday night will use our translation line to translate the upcoming events for the week and that has to go out individually to a number of families who she has identified as need need help in this way. She knows that's not all. This will streamline it immensely for her and hopefully more families will find out about it and take advantage of it, too. Yeah, I just want to say communication is always important and it's so great to hear what you're doing with this. So, it's it's a sounds like

039a great tool. I was wondering if if it has some sort of dashboard that shows any metrics about engagement. Yeah, absolutely. It'll It'll show all the engagement of where that's at, too. Is it in the two-way texting? Is it in the app? Is it email? And the the other school districts that use Parent Square what we said the parents are not even looking at the emails anymore, which is weird cuz I think as an old guy like I'm an email guy. I want my stuff in email. But because it's so instant and on your phone and the and your ability to reply back and deal with whatever if you need to reply, you can do it. You don't have to wait. Let me go to my email and go do this. Oh my god, I

040forgot. I got to come back. So, it'll give you all the engagement. The same thing with languages of what's going on with language, who's using what, where and when. And and the great thing is when with any parent, they can decide any point like I'm I'm ready for this or I'm going to keep it my native language or no, I want to keep it English so that I get stronger in it. So, it's their choice of what they get and how they get it. Now for us, there'll be a big implementation for our ELL families in the beginning so they understand that that this is here and how to use it and and make sure they that they understand how they can change their personal settings, we have all the we will have all the

041data on that. And that's one of the stronger things that I always enjoy the School Messenger is and some of you may have done this with me at some point cuz if you had a problem like I'm not getting my phone call or I'm not getting my email is that same data of okay, this is what happened. You um you hung up. It went to a voicemail. All that data of what happens with all these notifications we will get in Parent Square as well. And I do love that cuz I can say, well, actually unsubscribed from us on this date at this time. Oh, sorry. And it's it's really easy to fix. But again, let's talk about unsubscribe. Any emergency notifications, people cannot unsubscribe from any of those. It's just if you're like I'm tired

042of the newsletters, you could do that. >> Yeah, it'll be it'll be interesting a year from now to see any kind of results from that. That would be good. Thanks. I like the addition of of having community members be able to opt in and I'm going to say this without choking, but at the time that you implement this, I will have transitioned from a parent to a community member. So, I'm happy to pilot and test that and give feedback. So, count on me to help with that effort. But I'm wondering if we're going to link this at school enrollment and so especially for our English language learners or any others, it will they parents be able to have an instruction point at that time? Will the home language survey be able to be used as

043a tool to help guide parents in being able to connect those so that it's that the the enrollment and connection of families and engagement is a little bit more streamlined? Yeah, I don't know that it'll be at the it won't I don't know that we'll be ready necessarily currently even in this summer of when people enroll that we'll be able to also add that information. I I think that will help our enrollment as as we move forward. But part of the plan is in the fall then is is to particularly engage some of our our populations that have higher English language learners to start there and have those nights and work with our ELL staff and say like, let's get these folks in. You know, similar to what we've been doing you know, over at

044Knapp and our parent workshops, those kinds of pieces that we do with with um Who's over at Knapp that does all the Amby Murphy? All the great work she does. Those types of events that we will do in this fall to bring those families together. So, I can't say that it's going to be in August. What's first day of school? 25th, 6th, 7th? First day of teachers is 25th. 25th. So, the 26th everybody's completely on board, but that's our plan there in that fall as we roll through so that the goal is by the time we get to back to school nights, etc. that hopefully everybody's kind of been onboarded that needs to know that has a another language. I think too I mean they work they work with larger school districts than us with

045more [clears throat] bigger populations than us and they can tell us some best practices from other school districts, too on on what we can do here to make the implementation easier for our families. That's great. Thank you. Just a quick other side comment. One I do want to commend the whole community like the communication is right now strong and so the idea of continuing to invest in it and finding more robust ways to enhance it is outstanding cuz while it's consistent and clear, there's also a lot of it and it's comes in with various different names on the emails and various different people sending the text. So, I think an ability to really streamline that is really thoughtful. And my organization that I work for professionally implemented Parent Square over School Messenger back in 2017

046and we've never looked back. It is one of the better decisions that we made as an organization a long time ago and the one of the best features is the translation feature. Our families have really resonated with that. So, I'm very excited to see that as an investment that's going to be put into place early on to be able to support communications clearly to and from families to really build that engagement. So, that's awesome. Um I think that the staff training is going to be everything. How we build this into staff PD is going to be really critical. So, I'm excited to hear how that comes back a little bit later on. My only question really was the one place that you didn't talk about the maybe I missed it up there is the emails

047that come from Infinite Campus from staff. Is the intentionality that this will replace that eventually or is that also is that going to live simultaneously? So, they're continuing discussions. >> [laughter] >> So, so what I would say is um to me communication from one spot and one location and how it comes to you is most important. It's another reason why our data is one place for students and it's not School Messenger data and Infinite Campus data and those types of pieces that we that there's one spot. So, we talk about our staff training. I don't want to throw any fireworks out there, but the goal would be is that we're using the same tool and I think all of our teachers will want to to use this tool this way cuz it's going to make

048it much easier to communicate back and forth. So, so the answer is yes, when that is it will be as when we're ready for it. Totally fair. Thank you so much. Any other questions or comments? Thanks. I appreciate the effort just to echo what was already said. I don't want to repeat that or rehash that, but the accessibility with language is I think very big. So, I appreciate seeing that be taken to account as well as putting up side by sides of the financials. It makes it a more of an easy decision, right? Um and seeing the extra amenities. Curious about the community feature. When other community members sign up, if that gives them the ability to sign up for a variety of schools' messages or does that change what as a parent they're able

049to receive as well? Um So, I'm I'm not sure if they select schools. Right. Or is it by zip code? >> it's going to be if the user the the principal which it depends on on the on the group there. Or us as the district, we say this is a community message or this will also go to the community as a group. Right? So, groups could be ninth grade. Groups could be Knapp. Groups could be different groups. So, the community group we would select and send it. So, the way I think it does I can't I I'll get that for sure. Sure. Sure. >> don't know if they sign up for the schools. They may you may know in your app, actually. If you sign up for schools or if it's when I I don't

050think you have a choice to not follow your own kids. >> Yeah, you you you get signed you you you get signed up for your kids' schools, yeah. >> [laughter] >> I don't want to I don't want to follow my own kids' schools. >> you wouldn't be able to follow another school. And I think I think that's our choice, but I'll confirm that if there is a list cuz School Messenger's app if you've ever downloaded our School Messenger app now, you can sign up for notifications from schools. Mhm. And [clears throat] I'll get that I'll get Just yeah, just I I guess a concern from a safety perspective of seeing certain certain messages. Um And in all those scenarios, even if you say I want messages from Englewood Elementary School and you have nothing to

051do with Englewood. Um the user would have to decide that I'm sending that. Right? The principal say, I want this to go out to the community. Okay. When we send a notification. So, in any of those scenarios, they wouldn't just automatically get information unless we select a community group. Okay. Thank you. And would this also take like a uh And I think you kind of addressed this with the Infinite Campus emails, but like a I guess there is the capability of doing like a group or the user creating a group to sending out to a class or an extracurricular activity to notify parents or families if maybe a practice is canceled or something like that. >> we get really robust, that's exactly what will be happening. Right? And you can set that up to go

052to that notification. So, if there's a if there's a classroom party and everybody's got to bring something in or whatever notification or field trip. Um there's all kinds of features in there too that, you know, we're not talking about implementing at all at this point, but you can do forms and online pieces all through the the same place. So, I think as the strength of this app and the platform is rolled out to our staff, we'll be rolling in more and more of those pieces that are inherently in the product. And that all of those features are there. It's just a matter of how we onboard that into the staff. Yeah, it's all included in this package. And and one last selfish question um for talking points. Do you know when that may be phased

053out? Nope. Okay. >> [laughter] >> Curious. I will I will say when when it's appropriate. Okay. Okay, it's not there's not a hard deadline on that. >> Sure. Our goal would be that it is by the following year. Okay. By the next budget year that cuz we will be we're still in talking points for next year. Okay. I I would say the goal would be that we should be okay to not use it the following school year. Okay. All right. Thank you. Great questions. Any last questions or comments before we vote? All right. Uh we are now voting to uh move this to uh an action um future action meeting. All those in favor, say I. I. I. I. Any opposed? Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. All right. Next there Jess.

054Sorry. You close that? Next on our agenda we're now getting to our uh first student contract extension. >> [laughter] >> Miss Hauser. Button helps. Um There you go. So a couple months ago we voted to do a transportation um feasibility study on the transportation group. However, our contract with First Student is up. So, rather than doing a full 5-year extension because we are doing that feasibility study, we negotiated with First Student a 2-year extension of the current contract um with a 5% increase in each year. They will not be doing any capital uh replacements as part of this contract. They will still continue to use propane buses, but they won't be doing any capital they won't buy any new buses for the next 2 years. Um the other component of this we saw a significant

055increase very significant increase, extraordinarily high increase um from the MCIU on some of our transportation costs this year. Um First Student is able to assume about 15 10 to 15 of those van runs um for our special education runs. Um so, we are going to move those over too, so that is part of this extension as well. Um so, we will be doing um that's that's wrapped up in this number too. So, this is just a 2-year extension. I put the extension in the um public content and then just for your edification for our past information, I put the old contract and the old amendment in your executive contract. Um which it's all public. I just put it there rather than dredging up for the in the past. All right. Um so, I would uh

056ask for approval for this 2-year extension. Thank you so much. Do we have a motion and a second to discuss? So moved. Motion by Mrs. Ramich. Second. Second by Mr. Kaiser. Um any questions or comments about the 2-year extension? Seeing none, uh all those in favor? I. I. I. All those opposed? Keep getting startled by Mark. Um all right. Uh the motion passes. Um and then uh last is uh item H, assessment appeal settlements. Can I just interrupt? Can we go back to the Parent Square? I don't think we got a motion and a second before we you know I thought we got it before the discussion. Before the discussion. Okay, I'll go back to the notes. Thank you. Forgive me. I That's okay. That's okay. I would bet my second. Um Somebody for the

057challenge flag. >> [laughter] >> Go back to the recording. Um No, no, no. I uh We okay to proceed to H? All right. Miss Hauser. Um so, the last item that I have for your approval to move to action tonight is a tax assessment appeal for the property located at 2750 I'm sorry, 2262 Bethlehem Pike. It is 2750 Bethlehem Partners is the taxpayer. Um the overall impact for 2 years will be a $12,283 refund um and that we will lower their assessment. Um we will decrease their assessment to down to uh one by about down to $15,000. I apologize. I'm stumbling over my grid. Um so, this year it's it's going to be a two $12,283 refund. Thank you very much. Uh do we have a motion and a second to discuss? Motion. Most Motion

058by Mr. Resch, second by Mrs. Ramich. Uh any questions or comments? All those in favor? I. I. Any opposed? Seeing none, the motion passes. So, I am pleased to share that I was able to go into the booth, the replay booth. Yes. Um >> [laughter] >> I just pulled the video up on YouTube cuz we're live, of course, and the motion was by Mrs. Ramich and the second was by Mr. Kaiser. So, on Parent Square. So, >> is a replay challenge. Do you need a box or a So, Jessica Todd loses her >> [laughter] >> her challenge for the rest of the game. Excuse me, say that all right, great. Oh, thank you. Particular for accuracy. You know, next week or next month we're going to get you the box to put over your head,

059like the little thing that you made out of felt. Fabulous. All right, though that wraps up our items to be recommended for work session or action meeting. Next we have our informational items. So, for 26-27 budget updates, I'll pass it back to our wonderful CFO. Great. So, okay. Yeah, real quick introduction here. So, for those who have been familiar with the budget process in the past, all those viewers at home, we gave many many little budget presentations and we've had a discussion with this board about having more in-depth presentations from some of the larger budgets and then providing executive summaries for some of the smaller budgets. Miss Hauser a couple months ago gave an overview of the process in general, that was new. And so, tonight we have a few uh directors and administrators presenting

060to the board. I asked that during those presentations you just hold your questions till the end cuz it's very likely they'll hit on those questions throughout the presentation. And just for time's sake, I did ask our presenters to be roughly 10 minutes. Mr. Gilmore, I know you're in the truck now watching and this camera's looking at me. You failed you failed at 10 minutes, Mr. Gilmore, as always. All right. So, with that, Miss Hauser, please take it away. Thanks. So, we're going to have presentations tonight from the curriculum department, the technology department, and our benefits director is going to have just an overview of our benefits for you guys for the year and where some of those rates are coming from. There are also executive summaries included for the human resources group human resources department.

061Um and then I and the school and family engagement department, which is Mrs. Liberasky's department. Um and then I will go over kind of wrap it up at the end with where we currently sit as of tonight. Um where some of the things that we're thinking about going into May when we will start to ask you for um your approvals for things. Um in general, um I want to thank my colleagues for coming up to talk about their departments. This is a little different, like we said, than we've done it in the past. You'll notice um when I talked and I think it was February that I said transportation would present this month, too. We got a little behind with our negotiations with First Student, so transportation will be um I'll have them speak next

062month um to the transportation budget. So, with that, uh curriculum, you want to go first? Okay. So, you may recall that Dr. Hart was our director of curriculum and Mrs. Rachel Early last month was approved as our new director of curriculum. Dr. Hart kind of put the budget together because she was a director at the time, but Rachel has certainly been in the department for quite some time, so she's going to co-present. Dr. Hart. Uh we are delighted to be able to provide an overview of our budget for the 26-27 uh school year. Um so, um I know there are a few of you who are participating in this presentation for the very first time, so we want to provide a little bit of an overview of the curriculum department. Um you can see that

063both Rachel and I are assuming new roles. Um our uh department is comprised of a series of curriculum supervisors. And for those of you who've been part of these conversations, you will see there've been some shifts um in roles and responsibilities. Um so, Donna Dome, who's been a secondary STEM supervisor for a number of years, has transitioned um into the elementary science. She and Sean Arney did a lot of work um in the steels um standards and the work of really making sure that we had greater alignment K-12, and so she's held onto that. Uh Nina Fenstermaker has um expanded her role um into K-12 um ELA. Uh Jackie Gianmarco's remained in a similar role. Um and Rebecca Russo um was assuming Sean Arney's position, held onto STEM um aspects, but also has really taken

064on the social studies K-12. Um and then Deeper Richardson will transition in um to really focus on world language um and our ELD services. Um when Rachel was in this position, um she had secondary humanities and the ELDPs and you can even hear from the conversation we had about Parent Square that the needs of our multilingual community has really exploded over the past 8 to 10 years and we really wanted to make sure that we had one supervisor who was really focused in that area um as well. Um, you will see our administrative assistants that are listed there. Uh, Donna Coyle, new to the team, uh, taking the place of um Tanya Garehan who uh retired last week. All right, great. Um, so another big part of our curriculum department that we're really proud of

065our instructional coaches. Um, you can see they're listed just the various um teachers who who assume these roles in the various areas um of responsibility. Um, one of the things I do want to highlight and we'll talk a little bit about this as we get into the budget. Um, a number of these uh roles and responsibilities are actually paid for through um federal funds, uh, ready to learn grant as well. Um, we all know that that money um we have it at the moment all subject to change and so we know there's a possibility that might be some shifts for next year. Um, but we do want to highlight where we are and if things are kind of as they are we'll be able to kind of think about these roles in a very similar

066way for next year um as well. Um, one of the things very often we think about curriculum, um, I really want to take a moment or two to kind of talk about what that really encompasses. Um, and so when we think about this term of curriculum it really are like the documents, um, our national standards and all the curricular resources and materials. Um, historically that were like textbooks, uh, but now um in a digital age we actually have quite a amount quite a number of resources that are digital. Um, we spend a lot of time partnering with the technology department just to make sure that those materials are easily accessible in lots of different ways as well. Um, we also are um very very mindful of really spending time thinking about college and career readiness

067um and the experiences um that our students have in our elementary, middle school and high school really preparing them for life after that as well. Um, a lot of our focus is also on instruction. It's one thing to have the materials there um but the instructional practices really make uh the content come to life um and we want to make sure that we're meeting the diverse needs of our students and thinking about our instructional practices in really intentional and thoughtful ways and the idea of even just professional development, uh, reflecting on best practices, current research and providing a very different opportunities for various staff members, not just teachers but para-professionals, um counselors, nurses and lots of people who are working with students in very different ways to receive that professional development. Um, and finally just

068idea of just focusing on assessment. Uh, we want to make sure that if we are using great materials and we're thinking about instructional practices, are students learning the skills and content um and knowledge that we hope that they will and we have a variety of curriculum-based assessments that we use. You can see about 500 of them. Uh, they are included in LinkIt which is our online platform to really be able to kind of track that over time. Uh, we also um are monitoring student progress. Uh, we've used i-Ready math diagnostic as well as our IXL benchmark. Uh, we've been using STAR um assessments which we'll talk about at ECI at our next meeting next week um just as a way for us to be able to see where students are, see if there any gaps

069um in learning and ways in which we're able to make sure that students are making the progress that we hope that they will. Um, the other important part of our role um which I think sometimes people don't always think about is just the idea of how do we strengthen our relationships and connections with families. Um, if anyone who's spent any time ever working with me I'm clear that the schooling experience is for families, not just for children. Uh, we talked about the idea of communication being really important. That's a family component, right? Uh, we want to make sure that our families um understand what's happening in school and also feel connected uh when they walk into school and if they're not in the building they feel connected in what's happening for their children as well.

070So you can see um highlighted on the slide um a number of school-based family programs and events um for schools that are Title 1 schools, lots of opportunities in other elementaries as well. Uh, we've talked in various um arenas around our community and district-wide programs and events particularly around even specific families um who might need some needs, um have particular needs. Um, we've established our grandparent and kinship um caregiver group um just because we have a growing number of grandparents and family members who are raising children um and we want to make sure there's a community for them. Uh, one of those um things I've kind of learned um in those conversations is that things that we sort of take for granted um are really adjustments for many of those families and we want to

071make sure that we're able to strengthen those connections. Uh, we've talked a lot tonight about translation um and interpretation services. Um, if you think about the number of families who served 8 or 10 years ago, 450 students perhaps, we have over 1,200 students who are currently receiving um ESL services and that's not necessarily multilingual families who are not receiving those services. Um, and so we really want to make sure that the things that we're doing families feel a lot of access. Um, the communication piece is really important but even coming into schools, being able to participate in conferences. If I have a question about what's happening with my child, what are we able to do as well and even just um even just resources. So that's been something that's really been important as well. One

072of the things I'm really jazzed about um and Rachel really took the initiative is to have a Spanish-speaking cultural liaison which we were able to kind of add into our staff this year. I cannot begin to express um the incredible difference that she has made um for our staff, for our families and for students. Um, the idea of kind of having been a North Penn student participate um in the ESL program, the idea of this sort of insider-outsider perspective, meeting families where they are, um really talking about the schooling experience um in just such an incredibly empathetic way um has been something that's been a huge asset. There isn't one staff member who's worked with Daniela who has not said, "I'm so happy she's here. What did we do without her all those other years?"

073So that's been a huge um asset. And then finally our summer programming. Uh, we recognize that um 179, 180 days are important but we have a number of students who really benefit from the bridge between one school year to the next um and so that summer program for our high school students very often um is around just kind of making up some work, um holding on to some skills or even doing some advancement. We also have our Spark program which really allows us to provide some additional support for students just to make that transition to the next year a little bit smoother and I always love our kindergarten readiness camp for our children who are coming to kindergarten and we want to give them a little boost to get us ready as well. So with

074that um just want to provide a little bit of an overview of what our curriculum budget supports. Um, you can see here delineated that the vast majority of the money of our $10.5 million um really is on our curriculum materials and resources, sort of the hard copy as well as online platforms, um our salaries and benefits and you will also see the line item really focusing on Titles 1, 2, 3 and 4. Uh, and for those of you who may be watching who may not necessarily uh be familiar with those um funds, they are federal funds. Um, Title 1 are really um for um elementary schools and now this year middle schools um who have a high number of students who um are eligible for free and reduced lunch getting additional services, um staff members

075to support to give students a boost and be able to kind of make sure they're having the most productive productive experience in school. Um, our Titles 2 and 4 really do focus on professional development and our Title 3 um is really around meeting the needs of our multilingual learners as well. Um, you can see additional funds that are professional development and induction which is probably the most robust induction program I've ever seen in 35 years. So we're really very fortunate to have a really strong team um welcoming new teachers and not those necessarily new to the profession but new to North Penn in such an incredibly thoughtful way as well. Um, trying to see if there are other things you'll see department chair wages and benefits, um the interpretation services um that we are kind

076of increasing again um as time goes on. Uh, I think I've been really excited about the fact that we've met special education teachers and supervisors really using those um services in ways they had not necessarily um in the past as well. So kind of gives you a little bit of an overview. If you're someone who's looking at the pie chart, uh, we recognize that a couple of those line items aren't necessarily represented there um but you'll get a general idea of really how the vast majority of our money is spent um in curriculum. What did I forget? Anything? All right, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague and friend Rachel Arley. Thank you, Dr. Hart. All right, can you hear me? Okay, good. All right, so Jess, you did a wonderful job. Just

077to kind of wrap everything in a bow. Um, just looking ahead to next year our areas of focus. So of course, rigorous instructional experiences. We want to make sure we're enhancing student learning, obviously achievement. Um, and Dr. Hart did a great job of highlighting those high-leverage instructional practices that we really want to continue on our professional development plan. And then our highlight of our professional learning which for those of you that watch ECI, we had a presentation on that a little like a few weeks ago at this point in time. But our big focus this year that I think was really, you know, needed was data-driven decisions and professional learning communities and we're really starting to see the fruits of that labor and hoping can take to continue that moving ahead to next year. Just

078looking ahead, enhancing our core curriculum at elementary based upon our data. We'll be enhancing word study in our upper elementary grades. We've good data to support that that is needed. And then as Dr. Hart highlighted, we have our elementary math learning coaches that have really been doing a lot of work on productive struggle, discourse, and questioning and data analysis based upon our, you know, data needs. And of course instructional planning and pacing. Just looking ahead, we do have new adoptions based upon our curriculum review cycle. So next Tuesday at ECI we'll be bringing those titles to that committee. So you can see them listed there. We do have that on a cycle just to make sure that we're containing costs and that we're reviewing all of our resources on a regular basis. So just looking

079ahead, we have our upper elementary English language development newcomer resources, American history three, AP European history, Japanese one and two, precalculus, and physical science. And there is also reading at the bottom, but I believe it's cut off, but I'm sure it's up there for everyone to see. Another big part of our team is professional learning. So just again highlighting some of the focuses that we'll be looking ahead to next year. So that's social and emotional learning for well-being for both our staff and students. And staff encompasses more than just our instructional teachers. Strengthening that connection between data decision-making and of course student-centered practices and equitable instructional practices. How are we making sense of the three of those? Supporting our the needs of our multilingual learners, which has been an ongoing theme tonight. And of course

080making sure that our professional learning is based on our school goals, district goals, and the feedback that we're getting from teachers after every in-service or professional learning session. And just to highlight and again next week we have another presentation on our summer program. So if you're really interested, feel free to tune in. But a little preview. As Dr. Hart shared, our kindergarten readiness camp that occurs in August. We're fortunate enough to have our ELD elementary program and spark program together at Knapp in the summer. So we have almost a whole school there. Virtual K-6 program for elementary for parents that want to engage that way. So just another opportunity. And then our secondary summer school. And we've talked a lot about translation. So all of the ways are there. I just wanted to highlight we

081do of course have a phone service, a video service. And one of the great things that we've added in the last year that we're continuing to update and you may have seen at any of your schools is we have handheld translation devices. They look like a phone, but it's just really great for those short informal conversations. They're at every home office in the high school. Just because, you know, sometimes it's just late for a dentist appointment. We don't have time to schedule a translator or pick up a call. And they've been a real game-changer that we're continuing to make sure that we have everywhere needed in the district. And just to close out, we're really mindful of cost containment strategies. So we always want to make sure our inventory is accurate, that we're making sure

082all of our titles are updated on an ongoing basis. We're getting competitive quotes, utilizing bids when necessary, and then having that blend of physical text and online resources. And that's all we have. Thank you so much. It was a wonderful presentation and great to hear about all the exciting things that you're bringing forward for next year. Especially loving the idea of moving towards more data-driven instruction and really working with staff to bring those new math and literacy strategies to fold. So it's very exciting. Um love to open it up to the group for a few sets of questions. Also acknowledging that we've got some fabulous additional presentations to come down the pipe. >> [laughter] >> Just want to say real quick as a as a veteran member of ECI, this curricular team top to bottom

083is absolutely the all-star team. They do tremendous work and people don't realize how often things change in curriculum and needs and standards, but they're always on top of it. And if anybody has any questions about any of the many bullet points in the presentation, I promise there's an ECI meeting somewhere on YouTube over the past couple years that will give you all the information you need. But thank you very much again for your work, Lisa. Any additional comments or questions? No, just say thank you. And I know that we're going to be getting to know each other a lot more in the ECI meetings [laughter] in the future. And I'm just want to say I look forward to it. Especially I noted, you know, special care some of the items that you included in this

084presentation. But I know in the future agenda items are coming from requests and I appreciate it a lot. It's our pleasure. It's our pleasure. Think of tonight as a preview to next week. So thank you. >> what I was That [laughter] was That was the feeling I was getting. I'm like, okay, okay. I'll I'll hold tight for that. Thank you all. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. Okay, moving on with our next presentation, we'll have Dr. Chris We will have benefits. Nope. Technology. >> [laughter] >> Dr. Chris Landers. With her very last presentation in the North Penn School District. >> [laughter and gasps] >> Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And appreciate the opportunity to present the budget to you this evening. There is a lot of information in here. So certainly

085we'll have time for questions at the end or if you think of them later. I always like to start out with an overview of our budget in terms of a theme. And so for next year, looking at AI, that was something we started to talk about last year. But also thinking about unified communications, which seems to be a theme. As Ms. Liberosky also talked about that. We'll be talking about that in our budget as well. So we really have two main parts of the technology budget. One being our business technology support side, which is not just supporting the business office, but all of the business functions of the district. So anything that needs internet, it's in the business technology support side. Certainly cybersecurity as you can see there at the top. And then supporting all

086of our informational systems. So that includes student information, finance, online payments, state reporting. On the other side of that, we also support not only the internet, but also backup our our communication system. And then I really stress here the collaboration with departments because we work very closely with every department because technology touches just about everything right now. On the instructional side, we have multiple components that staffed in our department. As well as I would like to highlight, you know, again our collaboration as Dr. Hart said, with the curriculum department in terms of the assessment software, the rostering pieces that we do to support how all those applications get to students. And then last but not least, our family tech support. So if you're not aware, we actually have a family tech support line that is

087supported by staff in our district Sunday to Friday. So the only day we don't really do tech support is Saturday. Although I think some of our staff do check mail just to make sure our families are supported. And that's so that we can make sure that students are ready to go for the start of school if there are questions. So supporting over the weekend has been a new addition in the last couple years and it's I think really helped our families. So our staff is a total of 41 people and of a number of different divisions. Our core team consists of leadership from the multiple divisions as well as our network staff. We have two learning coaches, which were also referenced from curriculum. We have the administrative technology team who supports our data systems, our

088student information system, our e-finance system, and then all of the data flow pieces, our link it data, any kind of uploads we need to do our data support for any of the other departments in the district. Our tech support specialists are unique team. They're really our ed tech team. They work very closely with our coordinator of ed tech as well as our learning coaches to do push in support in our classrooms to really help get to those deeper levels of tech integration, not just substitution, but redefining what we're doing in the classroom. And then last but not least at all, our tech assistants who are in every building, boots on the ground every day in front of teachers and students to really support what's going on with all of the technology that we have available.

089So we have six main areas that we support in our budget. And first and foremost, I'd like to highlight cybersecurity. It's not the biggest item in our budget, but it does continue to grow. Really appreciate the board support over the last couple years in that area because it's something that we need to really be on top of every single day. Some of the other services I already mentioned, so I won't repeat those. But we do also budget for engineering support. So even though we have a a highly educated team, sometimes we need to reach out to that really high-level engineering support just to help us with some integrations and some changes over in our systems. So high-level overview of our budget. It's a little less than curriculum. So I didn't realize that. So I was

090like, okay. But still pretty big. You can see there those are the five main budget areas that I wanted to highlight this evening that are cost the most and I believe are kind of most important for what we're doing next year in our district. Student Chromebook replacements. That's one that you'll typically see many years in the budget. We are proposing 4,000 this year. We went a little light last year. The reason for that is the devices are changing as AI comes into play. All of our devices really to run well with AI need 8 gig of RAM instead of four. So we're proposing 4,000 this year to get all of our secondary students up to speed with the device and then we will be recycling those devices that come out of those grades to support

091our K-6 population. So they'll have a longer life. Won't need as much investment next year. Our district-wide phone system is a pretty big ticket item, but it also includes a lot of components that will need planning throughout the year. So this is not a project that will be completed over the summer. Rather the planning will start. And the implementation will be phased in with a full rollout coming like at the end of next school year. One of the reasons for that is while we would like to be a little more aggressive, we also have to recognize the fact that it's getting harder and harder to get equipment in a timely fashion. A lot of equipment has been back ordered because of all the delays of the companies who are now building all these AI servers

092and they're taking all the RAM and they're taking all the parts. So we want to make sure that we have phones for all of our staff by the time this project rolls out. But it's critical that that money be in the budget this year so that we can get all those pieces in place. We'll be moving on with our Chromebooks, devices reimagined, cybersecurity is essentially the same, remaining the same, but continuing on with the work with our VCISO. I know I spoke about that before at the safe schools meeting. And then we will also be it's a smaller ticket item also supported by e-rate, but uninterrupted power supplies are critical because all of our network closets right now don't have batteries. So if we lose power in a building, all of our networks go down.

093They'll come back up, but the hard shutdown of that equipment really makes it have a shorter lifespan. So we are proposing to invest in that this year. So these are some more details about all the line items in my budget. For the sake of time, I will not go through those line by line for you, but you have this information and can refer back to it. One of the important pieces I'd like to point out with infrastructure is that we do use e-rate funding. So that saves a lot of money for us on the internet side and this year will also be on the UPS side because those do qualify for e-rate as well. Maintenance contracts, we have a lot of those. Our biggest one at the top is Infinite Campus, but includes a lot

094of pieces. So it's not just the database, but all the other pieces that go along with that to support all the different functions in the district. And just to address the home language piece with the parent communication, we are putting a custom field I believe in right now that will be able to be used with registration as registrations are coming in so we can identify that home language and be prepared when we're ready to roll that out with the communications. In the digital systems licensing, one of our biggest contract is ClassLink which you can see at the bottom. That's our rostering software. So that makes we make sure that all of our students can get all the applications that they need. In our hardware refresh, we did already talk about that. So you can just

095see the the district different pieces listed there. >> [snorts] >> Our projected refresh cycle changes every year. And so it's really hard to project because things change. One of the big variables in the next couple years will be the high school project and what timelines we need to be making sure we're working on in terms of putting in switches and the support that they will need as they're moving through different areas of the building. Last but not least, cybersecurity. We continue to move forward with a lot of different pieces of cybersecurity. We don't have any new monitoring tools proposed in this in this budget. We are currently under contract with our cybersecurity vendor for the next couple years as well as for our EDR solution for I believe two more years and that is a

096state contract. So when when that comes up for renewal, it may be time to look for additional products there. I spoke a little bit about the engineering support. This slide just lists all the different pieces of engineering that we support through that funding in our budget. And then last but not least, the hardware the save cost saving measures that we use. We do bid our hardware. Our Chromebook bid actually opens on Friday, my very last day. So that'll be exciting to see what what cost they came in with. But we do a lot of other renegotiating, using consortium pricing and where we can using our staff. We do not purchase the warranty anymore for our Chromebooks. We do in-house repair of our Chromebooks. We purchase cases which we have found to be more cost effective.

097They're only $30 each. The warranties that we used to buy were $120 each. So we saved a lot of money with moving that repair in-house. And that is it. Did I make it, Dr. Bauer? 10 minutes? You know what? After 35 years, you can take as long as you want, [laughter] Kristen. With 3 days to go. So yeah, you did a great job. Thank you. To second that, this is just a continued demonstration of just the thorough proactive strategies that have I've been really impressed with over my short time getting to watch you work. So thank you and thank you just for your incredible service to our students, families and staff as a whole. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any questions about the presentation? Wonderful job. Thank you so much. >> [applause] >> Now

098we will welcome Ms. Jenny Schmidt to the stage to talk about benefits. >> [applause] >> Hi, good evening. My name is Jenny Schmidt and I'm the benefits administrator for the school district. We're going to start right off. I'm going to go over kind of the fact that we self-fund our insurance and how self-funding works. So just as a quick overview, fully insured coverage or traditional insurance coverage the insurance company pays all the bills, the insurance company keeps all the profits. The monthly cost is fixed and the risk for the employer is low because they know their costs up front. But we're self-funded at North Penn. And so what does that mean? That means that the claims come in and we pay the claims as they come in. Some months the bills are high, some months

099the bills are low. So that may like it's variable, so that can be a little bit unnerving. You can't really plan it like that. But it also means that there's no profit for anyone to keep. What we keep are the months that the bills are low and then we do have some offset for the risk because we have stop loss coverage. So then this just kind of walks through the self-funding overview that we take about 12 to 24 months worth of claims experience. We look at that claims experience and then we model what we think our future claims are going to look like. Based on that, we have more than 500 lives, so we are fully credible. So there's no need to add anything else into those claims. Then we add trend which is the

100industry term for medical inflation. So we add trend that says, "Okay, these claims that we've predicted is what's going to happen in the future. What's it going to look like when we're paying for them 12 months from now?" So we add that cost and then we add stop loss coverage onto it. Our attachment point for stop loss is $325,000. So any claim that comes in for a member that exceeds 325,000, we get reimbursed from the stop loss carrier for. So then this just kind of highlights the difference between how a self-funded group works such as North Penn versus fully insured. And a lot of it's really the same. You take the claims history and then you model your future claims. The difference being 500 is the point where whether or not it's feasible to go

101self-funded or you need to stay at the fully insured level. So less than 500 lives, the insurance company is going to take some of their overall book of business and add those claims in to get them up to a credible point. So they add that in, we don't have to. Then you add again your medical trend in and then they add a pooling charge where we have stop loss insurance. They have to add a charge in to cover any high claims and those are usually capped at $100,000. When you're self-funded, you can set what you want your stop loss point to be. So a lot of smaller districts have their stop loss attachment point at a much lower level than North Penn does. So you add that um into the pooling charge or the stop

102loss charge, you add that in and then the fully insured company, they add in another percentage to cover margin, operating expenses and their profit. And that's really where the big difference is. We don't have to pay that margin. We don't have to pay for their profit or their operating expenses. All we pay for is an admin fee. So then from there, the employer decides once they see that, that tells them what the renewal should be. The employer decides, you know, what type of plan changes they want to make. Our plan changes are dictated by our contracts, what we can can and cannot change. And then through that, we participate with SEPAS which is the Southeast Pennsylvania Area School Trust to buy our health insurance. That is 17 Montgomery County school districts and they have a

103combined approximately 9,500 contracts and a contract being the employee and their dependents. So, the advantages of being part of C past are the IBX administration fee because that is based on volume where North Penn has about 1680 contracts, we get the benefit of the 9500 contracts. So, our admin fee is lower. Our medical is still and prescription drug everything is still underwritten at the group level. So, they only look at North Penn's claims to determine what we think our renewal should look like. None of the other groups play into that, but we do get the benefit of the large group with our stop loss. They look at those full 9500 contracts and we play, you know, the law of large numbers. So, that helps us with the stop loss, but every group is allowed to

104elect their own attachment points. That's how I said like some smaller school districts would have a lower attachment point. And then we pay a dollar per contract per month to C past for a consultant consultant and broking fee broke consulting and broker fee. >> [laughter] >> And that pays for WTW to do what Willis Towers Watson as our broker and that's really that's a good deal to have that for a dollar per contract per month. So, then when we look at our renewal coming up for July 1st of this year, the renewal came in at 14.6% and that is being driven by medical and RX trend in our experience. The most recent 12 months of experience was you know, 32.2 million and the 12 months immediately before that was 30.7 million. So, that's a 1.5

105million increase in medical spend over that period of time. And our plan current to date is running at 106% of the budget of the renewal rates that we set for last year. So, you add all of that up and we have some high claimants in there. We have a 14.6% increase. And then this slide just shows you over the years our medical and RX spend how you see that claims have been climbing up. The very last bucket is only July to February. That's why that one's so short. We don't have a full year in there. And then this is our rate history for the last 5 years. 21-22 we were still in the pandemic and people were delaying care and I think that really plays a large role in why we're seeing such large increases

106this year on last year because people delayed care and that has a negative impact. So, then you know, we do offer a comprehensive benefit package to all employees working 30 or more hours a week, medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, employer paid basic life insurance, their FSAs, disability the whole the whole package and anyone enrolled in our health coverage has access to the North Penn health care center. So, then when we look at our labor agreements, the teachers the NPEA contract, we are entering the final year of it. So, we're starting the 2026-2027 school year is going to start July 1. That's the last year of that contract. So, then they are going to go into contract negotiations for next year. And so, just a couple of things about what the things in that contract. Both

107NPEA and the ESPA contract say that North Penn will contribute 83% of the core plan cost towards the employee coverage. So, this slide shows the cost of family coverage for the core plan, the buy up plan and the buy down. And what you'll see is that we pay the same amount. It's 83%. So, if an employee goes to the buy up plan, we pay 83% of that core plan and they pay a little bit more. And if they go to the buy down plan, we pay 83% of that core plan and they pay a little bit less. And then within the contract everything is set around that core plan. And then there's language that says that the buy down plan cannot be more than 5% in its actuarial value. It can't be more than 5%

108less than the core plan. And then there is language in the contract that says July 1 of 26 office visits increase for both primary care and specialist office visits across all three plans offered increase by $5. So, the PCP and um specialists are going to go up by $5. And then when we looked at the actuarial values of the plans when they came in at this year's renewal, we were able to make a couple of tweaks to the buy down plan to get that spread up to 5% so that we're still compliant to the contract, but we're you know, it's helping save money. So, you may be wondering at this point well, what's an actuarial value? So, just real quick that's a financial appraisal that identifies for a standard population the health care costs that

109the plan is going to pay and the corresponding percentage that the employee is going to pay through some combination of their deductible, their co-pays and their co-insurance. So, if we look at the core plan, that has a 95 actuarial value. So, you could expect the employees for all the claims that come in, North Penn is going to pay 95% of the cost of those claims and the employees are going to pay 5% through a combination of co-pays, co-insurance and deductibles. And then just looking forward in addition to the contract negotiations that are coming up July 1 of 27, we are going to have to include mental health coverage at the primary care co-pay level. Currently mental health is covered at the specialist level and there um are changes that are going to be more stringent

110on health mental health parity. So, we're going to have to bring office we're going to have to bring mental health coverage down to the primary care level, but that's not until next year. Under the Affordable Care Act, North Penn is compliant with all the ACA regulations. We offer coverage to 95% of our full-time employees. Our coverage meets the minimum value. It meets the affordability standard and we report all of this to the IRS every year. Then for the health care center, you know, we don't yet have 2 years meaning from July to June, we don't yet have 2 years worth of claims data. So, we're it's not it's a little bit too early to prove out some of the benefits, but what we know right now is that 53.8% of our eligible employees have used

111the health care center. Of those 53%, 55% have a high or moderate biometric risk. And if that 55%, 68% have improved their condition since the health care center opened. You know, 94% of our employees are satisfied and like the health care center of the people using it. And 73% of the visits happen within 24 hours of them being scheduled. So, you know, it is a good recruiting tool. Employees are using it. They like it. It's improving their health. We know that it has reduced absenteeism from looking at our sub rates from before we started until now. And you know, frankly children thrive when they are surrounded by happy successful adults and one of the ways we get there is by making sure they have access to convenient affordable health care. So, then lastly our benefit

112platform. We're moving to a new benefit platform for an enrollment system for July 1 is going to be our plan year. Open enrollment this year is going to start May 1, run till May 18th. We're moving to a new benefit platform called Beacon. It's sponsored by US US enrollment services. It's both HIPAA and SOC 2 compliant. Their website meets the web content accessibility guidelines. It's going to be a smoother enrollment process for our employees. It has advanced technology over EAC which is the legacy system that we were using. This provides multilingual support for all of our staff. You know, there's a little there's some savings about $8200 a year. Really the win here is the better experience for our employees and the multilingual support. And that's it. I don't know how long I took. I've

113worked on. Do we have any questions? Thank you so much for the thorough presentation. You distilled a very complex program into some very digestible slides. So, thank you so much. And I was just speaking 2 weeks ago at a conference about the importance of running a self-funded medical program at a at a organization scale of this size. You're actively through this complexity pushing resources back to our students. So, thank you for the hard work here. It's great. Any questions from the group? I'm going to exercise some mild self-control and limit my comments and questions. But I do want to I do appreciate the level of detail that you were able to put into a shorter presentation. Would not mind chatting later, but I'll save everyone else the the pain and I'll I'll limit this. But

114thank you so much. And I also that the actuarial value for our employees. I know it's a obligation, but that's kind of amazing. I just want want you for the update and the um in connection back to the health center um and I I hope that your presentations are always so helpful and I I think like Mr. Bell said, you make a complex difficult topic very digestible um for both us and the community. But I think including that continued data and look at the health center is an important add um to your updates and I just ask that you keep that um going for next year and in future years um and I just really do appreciate that. So thank you. Any other questions from the group? Wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you.

115>> Thank you, Jamie. >> [applause] >> Okay. Miss Hauser. Do we really want to talk about budget? It's not enough. I think uh so next Miss Hauser's going to just give a preview. I had said to the board earlier this evening that we'll see uh preliminary final next month uh proposed final, right? Proposed final next month. Uh but this is just kind of an overview just to give you uh kind of the status of where we are heading into next year's budget. Miss Hauser. Thanks. So um if you want to move to the next one. So I'm just going to give you a quick overview of some revenue, a quick overview of salary and benefits where we sit currently, um the other objects that are involved so non-personnel cost, and then a quick look at

116where that puts our fund balance based on an audit of last year the ending numbers last year rolling them through the projections for this year and moving on to next year. Um I'm not going to ask Jess to flip back to the other slide cuz we're already here, but um the projection of where we are coming out for the current year, um originally we were budgeted to come out at about a $9 deficit. Um it's looking like that's going to be about a $1.7 million deficit, um which is 8 million to the good. So that's it's still a deficit, but it's 8 million to the good. Um and then as we walk through this, um I before transfers to capital, I think that our preliminary budget is is in positive territory. I think we'll probably

117break even before transfers to capital for next year, which was very similar to the story of last year's budget. So before your $15 million transfer to capital, you were sitting at a at at an $8 million surplus. After that after that transfer, you were looking at your that's where the $9 budgeted deficit came from. We're kind of in the same boat again this year. Um so before transfers, we'll as we get further in the presentation, we can talk about that. Um looking at next year, the state level numbers are numbers that have been posted by the state. Um uh so wrapped up in that 7,000 I'm going to come back to local in a minute. So the 7,000 um the state has posted their proposed basic ed funding, their proposed ready to learn, and their

118proposed special ed funding. So those those three numbers combined with our um FICA um and PEASERS reimbursement is uh where we get to the 74 million. If you'll notice year over year, we're pretty flat. Um so the there is not much gain in our state in our state budget I'm sorry in our basic ed subsidy in the state budget, nor our special ed subsidy in the state budget. Um our special ed costs are definitely going up way more than our special ed subsidy. Um our federal revenue, federal revenue is is coming down a little bit. Um most of that is related to changes in in the title structure. Our title's fairly flat year over year. There's a little bit of carry forward in that number where the just for everyone's edification, title budgets are I'm

119sorry title grants are granted for a 15-month period and sometime so you can you have 15 months to spend it, but we try to budget it in a 12-month block so we make sure that we have that we're spending it as we should throughout the course of the year. Um some of that carryover is in that projection number, so we're trying to spend some out in the current year. So that's why there looks like there's a reduction um even though the the grants themselves are staying about the same. Um so back to local. Um I built in a small increase on interest income. Um although that looks like it came down. I I so I built in an increase in interest income over budget, but it's not as high as the projected for this year.

120The projected for this year had some months that we were up over 5% and I do not anticipate that happening for next year. So we're probably going to sit somewhere in the 3.7 to 3.9 range next year if rates hold. Um so it's more than budget from 25-26, but it's going to be less than what we actually pull in this year. Um Fees are about the same. They they kind of come and go. Our IDEA pass-through, that's pretty steady. Um I Our projection I for this year, I think that number is low because we haven't because of the um delay in payment at the beginning of the year from the state. So my projection software I think is a little bit off. So I'm going to look at that too before the before we do

121the proposed final so I can get a better feel for where we're going to end 25-26. Um the big piece here that impacts everyone with revenue and the biggest chunk of our revenue of the 350 is 262,000 I'm sorry million of local real estate tax. So this reflects a 3.5% increase, which is the index. We are not asking for exceptions um for this year. Um that 3.5 also has in it um I went very conservative because we have currently about tax assessment appeals either issued by us or issued by taxpayers with a couple of very significant landholders. Um so I tried to go a little bit conservative with those landholders um to make sure that, you know, we don't over budget revenue in these next couple of months before some of those cases come back

122in. Um so we're working through that with um multiple parcels and we'll um we'll have better every month brings better information. Moving on to salaries and benefits, um which is the next slide. Um Oop. There we go. So salaries and benefits, I'm going to look at my screen cuz my eyes don't work up there. Um right now, our projected number is about 160 million, which is about a million eight off of what we budgeted. Um next year, I'm having that increase is going to 166. All of that right now that you see up there is based on contractual increases on current staffing levels only. I do not have any growth in there yet. So we are still having those conversations. Growth of positions will be determined by um continued conversations at the administrative level about

123need across the district as well as what additional savings we may or may not be able to to push through the budget. Um and for attrition, it could be leaving positions empty or it could be replacing people that are retiring at a higher dollar with somebody with lower. So we've got both of that in play. FICA's FICA. It's 7.65%. Um PEASERS this year is going up is going down actually from 34 to a whopping 33.59. So we will get all of whatever that is. I'm not going to do the math on the spot. Um a little bit of savings. As uh Miss Schmidt talked about, our medical and prescription are going up 14.6%. So that's reflected there. And all of our other benefits, I built in about a 2.5% increase. Um so uh holding tuition,

124tuition reimbursement has held pretty steady. Um so that I pretty much just carried over year over year. Um but other the other benefits that fluctuate based on wages, we've taken up about 2.5%. So our total personnel costs for next year um are looking about 200 272 million dollars. No. Maybe. Doesn't like you tonight. Um so the other the other way that as I talked last month or February when I talked about how I like to look at the budget in the beginning by object. So what the the on what's what are we spending money on? So we talked about people. These are the other things. So purchase professional and technical services, those are things like um outsourced doctors, lawyers, um those kinds of professional services. Um so we're um the the the increase there, the

125$6 million increase there, um is mainly related to outside services. And I think there was also if you look down at the 500s, the 500s came down 3 million. Um we looked at that and we think we put tuition because they were outside school somebody the the the folks that entered the budget put it in right now is at the 300 level. It should really be down in the 500s. So that's one of the like I said, preliminary budget, we're working through these things. But the offset is almost exactly the amount of um non outplaced tuition services. So kiddos that we can't educate here, not charters, but kiddos that we can't educate here. Um purchase property services, it's a little bit of an up kick. Supplies, most of that's inflationary. Um I would say that

126all of our departments um and schools did very good look at looking at their supply costs for this year, and if they didn't spend it, they didn't budget for it for next year um within reason. You know, if there's certain things that they buy on a cycle, that would be the exception. Um other objects, that 800, that's where your um uh print some of your principal payment is, and then your your interest and your principal are in the 800s and the 900s. Um so, all together, we're looking at about a $20 million increase in total expenditures year over year. Most of that is living in your um salaries line. So, bottom line then, before transfers to capital, our budget last year was coming in at a surplus of 6.2 million. This year, we're looking at

127a surplus of 1.6 million before transfers to capital. Um most of that is again related to some of those real estate assessment um down ticks that I'm budgeting for and the increase in our medical costs. So, those two pieces together are kind of a double whammy. Um so, before our capital costs, we're looking we're still looking at a positive budget, but I you know, anything under 2 million on a $300 million budget is really break even, right? So, um so, that's we're really looking at a break even budget before capital costs. So, the 15 million that we're suggesting moving to capital, um this is outside of the six the 60 million bond is not reflected here cuz that's all going to live in fund 30. This is only fund 10. So, the 60 million for

128the project that we're borrowing um is not reflected here. This 15 million is really general fund money that we're going to use um for both the high school project and any other capital projects. That's going to leave us pulling down our our capital fund balance by about $13 million. Um so, I'm estimating that we're going to end this year with about 60.3 million in capital. We shouldn't have to touch our unassigned fund balance. Um we'll just be touching the committed to capital fund balance. Um and again, the same thing for next year. The intention though, back when we started this whole project, was that we would slowly use those committed capital funds towards the high school project. So, we will continue to do that. So, at that at this point, some of the assumptions that

129we're working with right now, again, [snorts] this reflects allowances for the various tax assessment reductions that we've been talking about. This does include about $500,000 in um rebates at the 80% of state values. It does not include right now the 100,000 in volunteer rebates because when we when I come back to you in May, I'll have a better analysis for you um and I'll send it out in a weekly update as well um of where we stand currently with this year's tax rebates for um based on income and what the layering in of the fire department and where we want to look at state the state income levels and the state refunds for next year and how that's going to affect us. Um expenditure assumptions, again, this does not include any new positions, including we

130think there's probably be about a million dollars in special education staffing that we may need to layer in over the next month um to offset some of our early intervention that's coming in. Um This reflects our current energy expectations. Energy in the last 2 weeks, energy in the last 2 weeks. >> [laughter] >> Um the good news is I've I've been following CNN all night, so it looks like, you know, we took a 2-week delay in anything that was going to happen tonight, so maybe the markets will rebound tomorrow. Um technology spending, um we talked about all of the things that Dr. Landis talked about, they are built in um to the budget, but those supply costs as well have been very volatile. Um the I'm curious to see where the Chromebook bid will come

131out on Friday. Um and lastly, like I said, we used 15 million from fund balance to offset the transfer to capital. So, that's kind of where we stand. Um my my method of doing budget, I kind of take all the personnel and I look at the personnel and staffing and and payroll numbers and I'm doing the math on that, and uh Mrs. White, who's in the audience, um has been working on the 300s to 900s and working with department heads to make sure that they've put things in the right place and that we're balancing out and that they've considered this, that, or the other um for the various departments. So, um we you know, teamwork makes the dream work, so we're getting there. Um and now we really go into we've collated everything and now

132we really start to analyze and dig into variances from last year to this year to projection and and and really programmatically, what are you trying to accomplish um and is this the right budget for you? So, that's kind of where we are internally in our process. Does anybody have any questions for me? Concerns? I have lots of concerns, but >> [laughter] >> It's a very thorough presentation and uh a great position to be in to so early on in the process. So, thank you for sharing this update. Any questions from the group? Outstanding. Um any other uh updates on the budget tonight before we pass it over to our wonderful student representatives? Nope, I'm good. Hi guys. Anything to ever present this evening? Yeah, totally. >> [laughter] >> Learn lots of new things? They totally

133pulled the bad straw. Well, thank you so much for being here as always. Um with that uh Miss Houser, I'll turn it back to you uh for any uh financial report updates you want to share. Um in the interest of time, I'm going to allow them to be self-explanatory for the month. Again, we usually seem to run out. Um they are just updated reports. I talked about the the biggest component would be the um like where the year-end projection that we talked about. Um you can take a look at that in relation to the budget presentation. If you have any questions, please just feel free to call. Great. Thank you so much. Before you read, do you want to see if anyone wants to make public comment? Is there anyone in the gallery that would

134like to make public comment this evening? All right. Um individuals attending this meeting and intending to speak to the committee should be aware that they're being recorded. 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 committee during the meeting. To assure compliance with the this requirement, it is essential that those planning to address the committee state their name and municipality. As a reminder, the public comment portion of this meeting is designed for residents and taxpayers of the district to provide comment and feedback on matters being discussed at tonight's meeting or matters that may come before the finance committee. It is not designed for debate or discussion with members of the committee. When appropriate, committee members may choose to respond to

135the public comments that have been made or make a request that a member of the administration follow up with the speakers after the meeting. Members of the audience are asked to limit their questions or comments to 3 minutes. Evening. Good evening. Uh Jason Lanier Landsdale. Um wow, [clears throat] a lot of a lot of information to digest there and don't have a lot of comment to say on some of the information cuz you got to kind of sit down and and dig into it really. Uh make make sure you any questions would form. Um but I do have some sort of overarching uh thoughts on a couple of different things. Uh one would be for our the high school build, that's that's a big project and the amount of money that we will be borrowing,

136I mean, we're going what, 3/4 of a billion dollars in in lending borrowing to pay for this project. And I know I don't think there's malfeasance going on, but there is a problem when when this is such a complex building project interfacing with a lot of municipalities, are is anybody here really qualified to deal with that kind of kind of uh interchange? And I and and Mr. Ramet made this point um at one of the meetings saying, we're building a bridge in Talamanca and Talamanca's making us pay for it, but Talamanca's required to do that on their own. So, I don't know why we're bank paying picking up the tab as a district versus why they aren't picking up the tab. Don't know the correct answer, but maybe some sort of ombudsman who can kind

137of look at things at a big picture. I know Mr. Slaughter does a lot in terms of managing the construction, but making sure we're doing the things that that make the most financial sense. This is sort of similar to what you have uh Cornerstone doing. It's not that you can't do it, it's just that it's labor intensive and sometimes it might be better to have somebody who has an outside view on things and knows where to uh you know, poke at the the soft spots and on on the requirements from from municipalities. Um So, I I would like to see that sort of thing. Uh regarding the health care clinic, again, boy, this seems we've had this health care clinic discussion for a long while and the intended purpose was to reduce insurance premium costs.

138That has not happened at all. And it might serve a lot of sort of so some sort of benefit psychologically to to people and such. Wow, I mean, we're a million dollars short on on on their budget and it's costing us a million dollars to run that thing. And I think a lot of the satisfaction comes with what's happening. I mean, I know you they can do prescription drugs there and whether or not we're picking up the full tab for those prescription drugs, that's that's a big chunk of change, especially with what the the the uh prescription drug du jour is which is Ozempic or those related uh uh medicines. Those are expensive and we're picking up the tab on that. Of course they'd be sat- Everybody would be satisfied, right? So, I think we

139really need to look at whether or not this is a the what the cost-benefit analysis on the the health care clinic is. To me it doesn't It seems like it's a loser. We Our insurance has gone up phenomenally high. And that was made we took on this project is with the intent of of keeping that at bay or reducing it. And I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lanier. Are there any other public comments? Right, with that uh for a quick summary of items that are moving recommended for moving to work session or action meeting, we have uh items 3A, 3B, 3C, 3E, 3F, 3G, and 3H. Did I miss any? Stah, did I miss anything? I don't think so. Great. All right, our next Finance Committee meeting is uh scheduled for May

1405th and with that do I have a motion to adjourn? Second. Adjourned. Just need 5 minutes to reset YouTube. Great job, Mr. Bell. You did it.