001new one just that bad yeah [Music] all right welcome everyone I call this special finance committee meeting to order we're going to start an evening with the Pledge of Allegiance 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 yeah all right can I have a motion to approve the minutes for the April 11th finance committee meeting please September second motion by Mr Stoll seconded by Mrs ramitch any questions all right seeing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed all right motion carries all right this is our one third fourth installment of Department level presentation third all right Mr skaraki I turn it over to you sir thank you this is
002probably my favorite finance committee meeting of the year because I have no presentations tonight I just get to introduce the speakers so this is awesome so we're going to start out with Dr Hart who's going to do the curriculum Department budget presentation and we're going to have two others in addition to Dr Hartwell Dr McKenna handling Elementary education and Dr Kim doing human resources so we'll start out with Dr Hart Dr Hart welcome okay great uh good evening everyone I'm delighted to be here this evening to provide an overview of the curriculum budget proposal for uh 23-24 school year so next slide please so I thought that I would begin by just providing an overview of our department I'm starting with our staff members and then we'll kind of transition into the actual kind of
003Crux of the work that we engage in so our curriculum supervisors that you can see secondary stem as Donna Dome secondary Humanities and ELD which is um English language development supervisors Rachel Early Elementary Ela and a reading in grade 7 through 12 or Nina fenstermaker Sean Arney is the supervisor for math science and social studies he is served as the interim principal at Inglewood now so Ron mariello has been fabulous enough to kind of serve for the remainder of the school year and Jackie giammarco is our professional learning and special area supervisor we have for amazing administrative assistants Taya garrahan Sue Baron Mary Jo Coyne and Peggy denninger we have a number of instructional coaches and content coordinators and I'll talk a little bit about the funding of those positions just a little bit who
004really do play an integral role in serving as the lead for professional learning opportunities and really working very closely with teachers coaching and one-on-one and small group sessions and with principals as well and so I won't read all of those names but the highlights are coaching and ELD both Elementary and secondary we have three coaches in our Ela Department secondary Early Learning which is really focusing in our grades K through two and then a fairly new position in elementary overall secondary and elementary math coaches which have been really important particularly in elementary because we are in second year of implementation of a math program without math specialists in the building they played a really important role in supporting that work technology as well as social emotional learning and inclusive practices so really important roles in
005our department I'm going to turn to the next slide show us a little bit of an overview of kind of the work that we engage in in curriculum Department uh responsible for all of the curriculum and content areas and grades K through 12 just making sure that all the choices that we make really align with national and state standards and making sure that our students leave North Penn schools ready for college or career opportunities as well as all the resources and materials that are needed to really support instructional practices we provide guidelines and resources for Effective instruction and provide the professional learning to make sure that we're implementing best practices assessments and integral part of our work as well and we do spend a fair amount of time really focusing on equity and access so
006we facilitate community and Family Programs translations and interpretation and just a number of access for other folks as well so the budget you can see kind of an overview of the budget that we have here and I just want to kind of just really quickly kind of give a really quick overview of just what we mean by some of these areas um so curricular materials and resources are fairly straightforward Staffing and salaries and benefits fairly straightforward as well as the department chair wages and benefits when we think about the line item around Equity it's really around materials books and resources some of that we're supporting some of the programs in school around Equity professional learning and some speaker series which we've been partnering with a couple of other departments in the Esser grants which really
007do focus on learning loss some of that money is around salaries for coaches our summer programs which I'll talk a little bit about in Greater detail in a couple of minutes our boost program which is really a building-based tutoring program responsive classroom which has really been focusing on SEL and PD for the science of reading and structured literacy our interpretation services that budget has has actually increased for next year due to the number of requests to ensure that as many documents as possible are translated so all our families have access to all the Flyers and materials that are coming home for All Families in professional development keynote speakers for our days of professional development allocation of funds for staff members who participate in professional learning beyond the mandated Flex session we've had to increase budget
008for that because we've less Flex time allocated for next year and not as much building district-wide opportunities for people to kind of participate in PD during the day these funds also are allocated for our mentors our induction supplies and general programming around induction for our new teachers as well as curriculum writing the RTL monies are really for coaches salaries and finally the title funds which is a pretty significant amount of money in our budget Title One and comfort offers salaries for three full-time teachers a full-time Title One assistant some hourly tutors resources and books for those schools that are Title One schools and there are seven of them our title two and Sephora funds really are around coaching salaries to really benefit and support the professional development that they support to really make sure that
009our district initiatives come to life and title III monies are really around summer programming family engagement and professional learning around supporting the families who are receiving ESL services so now that you have that I wanted to spend a minute or two talking about some of our overarching goals the first is really enhance our Core Curriculum and foundational skills to improve student achievement and provide greater access for all of our students and to really make sure that we provide the professional learning opportunity to teaching teachers and support staff to make sure that they're culturally proficient and able to really provide Equitable and inclusive instructional practices uh so with that I want to highlight some of the ways in which our funds are being used next year you can see in our secondary schools we are adding
010a couple of new courses which I'm very excited about also some of the money is being allocated there um you can see some of the new resources for existing courses as well so you can see that in business administration technology Humanities I mean you're not able to see it in math as well but we are going to be adopting a new math a resource for algebra one reveal which is proposed for next year as well next slide please so the big adoption in the Big Ticket item this year is really the adoption of a new Ela resource I mean you can see probably about two million dollars over five years we'll be making a final decision regarding that resource in the not too distant future me going to ECI next I guess next week to
011be able to provide that as well so you're really able to see the teaching resources student books and then also some additional resources to make sure that students regardless of their learning profile are able to access the material that we have there as well and then the professional learning opportunities that will be embedded throughout the next couple of years so that's really a nice big chunk of our budget this coming year um the idea of kind of improving student achievement and providing greater access at all just want to kind of give an overview as I said before a number of the um programs almost all the programs that you'll see listed for this coming summer are really here to focus on learning laws as well as some equal access um so our kindergarten Readiness program
012second summer in a row really well attended last year so we're looking forward to expanding that this year we've had the spark program for a number of years as well we have a virtual enrichment program k-6 started in the pandemic people loved it and we're continuing it so we're excited about that the ELD summer program will continue to be virtual as well we have many families that travel and want to be anywhere in the world and still connected and so we have staff members who make that commitment uh secondary summer school and then summer Library as well we're adding um new dual enrollment course which we're excited about and as I said earlier translation services have really begun to increase because of the increase in our English language population we have over a thousand students
013who are receiving ESL services and 50 percent of them are beginners and so really we've got to be much more intentional and making sure that we're able to have um translation for their families for all the materials that come home whether that's in writing or even in phone calls and things like that as well and as well as for the parent engagement and family engagement and we're actually having an ELD family night tomorrow night so if you only have plans please come to the high school before or after the play and join us for that all right great um so I talked a little bit about professional learning and our goal to make sure that our staff regardless of their role of responsibility is culturally proficient and really able to implement really strong inclusive instructional
014practices um so the areas of focus will really be around social emotional learning and well-being we started a morning meeting this year in responsive classroom training we're going to continue and expand that this coming school year and then really kind of take going back and taking a deep dive into inclusive practices through an equity lens as we're moving forward as well we have our professional development sessions scheduled monthly to really focus on courageous conversations and Equitable instructional practices We are continuing to maintain our partnership with Barbara Moore Williams who serve as a consultant for a number of years serves on our executive committee for our CP and e-exec she spends a lot of time really working with our new teachers administrators and really facilitating some really great PD for us as well and then finally
015we're going to continue our membership through the Delaware Valley Coalition of equity and Excellence the conferences are outstanding it provides me and my role an opportunity to meet other Equity directors kind of along the east coast so I can bring back skills and really wonderful information to really enhance the work that we're doing as well finally we are very mindful in the curriculum office that we have to be very very thoughtful and intentional about the money that we are asking to spend and these are just a few of our Cost Containment strategies uh we try very hard to stagger the adoption of material and stagger curriculum review process so two years ago was math we're doing Ela this year science will be coming up later so we want to make sure we're not doing all
016that at the exact same time uh through the direction of Mr skraki we're very thoughtful about competitive quotes and bidding process for books and materials and we just want to make sure that there's really a blended approach between the hard copies and digital copies of the materials that we're using as well and at the end of every year we take really strong time into really taking inventory of the materials that we have so that we don't over order or under order and so we can make sure we have exactly what we need as well I'm hoping that was less than 10 minutes that's my presentation I'd be happy to answer any questions that anyone has at this time I have a few questions sure uh so um regarding professional development um I heard you say
017that there was going to be a little less building-based professional development for teachers and I just was wondering if you could provide a little more information about that so and I don't think I really explained that well so like our Flex time where we've had opportunities for we had 14 hours in the past we've kind of built into our schedule we have seven kind of moving forward right so if you want to get your seven hours taken care of early on and there might be other professional development opportunities that you want to have when that Flex time is um completed you can get compensated for that time right so before 14 hours right free part of a contract and then now it's only seven so particularly in a year where we're implementing new Ela programs
018new math and secondary we just have to allocate some additional funds for the P day so I didn't really describe that well so I'm glad that you asked that okay so teachers will not be getting less professional development in a year where there's going to be a new Ela program right correct okay um and there we go uh if I'm married Dr G so we have currently 180 student days and 11 professional development days um this year two of those 11 were Flex so teachers could get hours outside of the work day to count towards next year one day is flex and 10 will be prescribed by Dr Hart and her team yeah can can I assume and this might be for Dr Barrett one of those days would not be um I know we're
019talking about professional development teachers still have for example a day to get their classroom ready yeah none of that's been touched um or anything no or at least a day or whatever we've been giving them in the past yeah um regarding translation services I know you talked about I know there's been an increase in that um I was wondering if we've started to look at the option for um Tran in-person translation or or maybe we're already doing some of that and I'm not aware I know a lot of districts use transperfect in the phone because we need to because there's so many different languages but we could look at some of our um like languages that are um more present in some of our schools such as Spanish or Ukrainian or Russian um have we
020investigated that there are definitely times when we have in-person translation that definitely does happen some of the languages um lagunaraji for example sometimes a little bit more difficult a lot of the translation that we really have needed this year really around IEPs other really important documents um and that we just have not really trans really been in the habit of translating before so what are the Silver Linings has been while we've spent more money on it what we now know is that families now are able to really read and understand the documents these really important documents that are happening as well so yes the in-person does happen tons not necessarily I think we can look at increasing that time we're just talking with Mr saraki around just looking at um our current support around translations
021and what are some things that we might need as we're moving forward so can we make an assumption that this might be um Dr Mr or miss mcgeeheim or as a doctor yet I know you're almost there I know you're almost there keep on rolling yeah um um can we assume that IEPs there's if there's a family whose native language is Spanish or Ukrainian that there's an in-person translation translator or there's transperfect yeah but we make an effort for an in-person or for I know sometimes they'll bring a family member um I think we know how important that is the documents are pretty complicated and it's difficult to have um to have a person on a phone translating for you I know sometimes we can't help it but I do think um that's important if
022we can even continue to investigate that further I don't know the cost so I'd want to know more about that um kindergarten Readiness this is a simple question um kindergarten Readiness is it it was started after full day kindergarten that's only about two years old so I'm gonna I want to turn to Dr Waters because my understanding was that we had a kindergarten Readiness program a number of years ago yeah and not in every school but TV yeah okay sure just kidding okay um yes sorry so yeah a few years ago um there were a couple of schools who received some funding um just from growth or proficiency um from State title schools um I just remember Hatfield was one of them and we were able to use some of those funds to do kindergarten
023Readiness and it was a few weeks we used an in-house teacher who happened to be teaching kindergarten at the school and she really just worked with them on you know like is it just Readiness just coming in how to sit down how to you know do some those typical procedural things that you need to learn in kindergarten so more recently we've been kind of brought it back and expanded it and so this year it's it's grown even more than last year and it is a really wonderful program that we're excited to continue to expand and it is open to all it's open to all kindergartners placed in buildings so that they have access to schools so they have access to those schools so if you live on one side of town There's a school over
024there and if you live on the other side there's one as well three I'm sorry okay and then I just have one more question the um thank you Dr Waters I thought that was important because anyone who could be watching should know about the kindergarten Readiness program it's a pretty big deal for our district our size to be offering a kindergarten Readiness program across the entire District that kindergartners can access to get ready for kindergarten I don't know who else so I do think I happen to know and it's not a lot of people just because I've been researching it recently and then last question is just SEL I'm wondering if we're going to hear more about it from Miss McGee Heim because I didn't see a lot in there about social emotional learning professional
025development is that gonna is that falling more into um special education if your materials or training as it relates to responsive classroom or restorative practices is that falling somewhere else I think it's it's both really it's all actually all we're all together working on it together I didn't hear a lot of M maybe I missed it so I was just curious where it was falling yeah I think in one of the slides I think it was the first piece to surrounding Universal responsive classroom I think it was the first if you go back what uh keep going back uh go forward go forward no no back like toward the um keep going keep going uh one more I think well that's kindergarten Readiness I think there's a yeah there we are social emotional learning well-being
026for all staff and students the morning meeting and responsibility I'm sorry yes no it's all right okay if you did someone else may have as well it's been really important for us and so I'm glad that you're highlighting that I would encourage folks to um watch ECI to learn more about the ELA program that we're going to adopt yeah and that'll be uh Tuesday night okay thank you all right great thank you I have a quick question if possible um I was just wondering if for the next upcoming school year within the curriculum um there are plans to incorporate a little bit more of aapi Heritage within the overall curriculum elementary through higher education because I know that like currently there is a lot of there's a lack of representation with specifically aapi and also
027overall minorities um so I was just wondering if that was a thought or idea yeah so it continues to be a work in progress even I think just today send a ton of resources to all of our staff members recognizing um that you know Asian American Pacific Islander month is in a couple of days and just making sure not only that we have representation but really accurate and a wide range of representation as well as we were looking at our new Ela resource the idea of do we think about through the demographic composition of our school Community do our kids see ourselves and so our hope is that kids will actually we we believe that kids will see themselves in much more accurate ways than they have traditionally I think getting to work with Rachel
028early and in the humanities around social studies and around English it continues to be a really important conversation and actually the one new book that's being added to the one senior course of the braid actually has a pretty diverse group of women in that text as well so not just Asian American women but also like just women in general as well so we are trying to be really intentional and thoughtful about the text as we kind of move through so my hope although you may not see all of it because you'll be moving on soon as we kind of move through the years my hope is if you've got younger siblings it feels very differently by the time they get to middle school and high school so thanks for the reason I appreciate that a
029lot thank you just one quick point on that Lauren Dr Hart and I met with make us visible PA and that's really their mission is to incorporate The aapi Voice into our curriculum and fully integrated into the curriculum as opposed to just a standalone course for example um so we've agreed to partner with them and they're going to help provide resources and run those through our curriculum department so it's definitely something we're working on I've met with them separately and then Dr Hart and I met with them as well that's been great and some of the resources that they shared I've shared as well so the idea of kind of you know big stroke and then also kind of individual stroke as well so keep asking that question thanks Dr Barrow many of us also
030met them at the international Spring Festival where they had a very strong presence so um it was really great connect to connect with them I then shared that with Lauren thinking so that she might be interested to bring that into the group too and some of her um advocacy that she's been doing I think so anyway so thank you great thanks I I have a question serious um because we have spent um some time over the last few years talking about um novels in the classroom and expanding the diversity of thought within that as well um but I am wondering like do we know I'm sure there's certain agency that teachers have in their own classroom to decide what novels they're doing with your class do we know how much some of these newer novels
031are being used in classes in the high school is there like an inventory of that is there a feedback loop of some sort that and although I can say specifically off the top of my head the feedback that I've been getting particularly when I sat in um when Rachel early was on maternity leave I got to be her for a couple of months and really get some feedback from The English Department regarding the text that we've been um in court you know implementing over the past couple of years the feedback has been very positive I think some of the courses even some of the senior electives which really diverse voices very highly subscribed classes as well um and so I do think that some of the intentional choices that we've made have really been well
032received I think kids have been really excited and so you know if we have kids that are excited teachers get more excited as well but we know that it continues to be a work in progress I mean can we still add additional texts additional voices so that you know with students coming forward don't have the questions that Lauren had is it work in progress absolutely um do we have do we feel like we've made some good steps we have but we know we need to do more as well but if you want some data around that I'm happy to get that for you bring almost more not so much about the data but just about like a discourse to see like you know what novels are particularly seem to be appealing to students or you
033know which are being utilized which maybe not being so much utilized you know just curious about that that feedback piece more than yeah yeah I just wanted to add recently um we uh at our CP and the exec team we met with students at the high school just about a week or so ago uh with Dr Barbara Moore Williams and some of the questions that she asked the students did um talk about curriculum and the table that I happen to be sitting at students were talking about novels and seeing themselves and noticing a difference from you know what we have done in the past and I know Dr Lewis Campbell was there as well so I do think it's been positive and um I know Mrs early I believe just added another novel very recently
034um that is all about women and I think you mentioned that one so I think we are going in the right direction yeah that's this one right novel for women's voices is kind of what made me think about it yeah yeah okay thank you that any other questions this is it I promise um I think I heard that before I promise now yeah I wouldn't Bank on that promise as it relates to um summer school um we know that our special education our students with special needs have access to summer school based on the criteria that we follow and they work with their IEP teams and then students in Title One schools what's the how what is their criteria for them um to qualify how does that work do you attend spark yes um we
035really are looking at performance and just looking at kids who really need a boost in the summer so whether you attend a title one score or not it's really open to everyone it's open to everyone who's able to it's really designed to provide additional support for students who just need a little something to kind of keep them going through the summer okay thank you okay that was it anyone else all right thank you all very much thank you Dr Hart thank you Dr Hart just a reminder too for the committee and for those viewing uh online tonight those in attendance we do have the line by line budget detail posted in board docs for each of the three budget presentations tonight and our second presentation is Dr McKenna is going to cover the elementary budget
036all right good evening everyone thank you very much for having me tonight to present the department of Elementary education budget so the total budget for elementary Department of Elementary education is about 1.66 million um and just a note and I'll go into more detail in a later slide is a little over 400 000 of that budget uh is paid using Esther money so when thinking about Elementary in the North Penn School District it's important to remember we have 13 elementary schools and and Dr Hart mentioned seven of those being Title One schools and we're currently at uh just over 6 700 elementary students uh here in North Penn um and when speaking about the department one of my main roles is the supervision of principals um a little over half of our principals at the
037elementary level are either year one year two or interim principles so uh there are there's a lot of support and mentoring and coaching that uh is an important component of of my role as a director of Elementary education um that leadership development and professional development for our building administrators um and I know Dr Hart mentioned and really the three departments here of working very collaboratively with special education and Department of uh curriculum um in all aspects of teaching and learning at the elementary level um another component is the elementary Virtual Academy this year we partnered with the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit um with a program called Montgomery uh virtual program or MVP if you remember last year seems very long ago we actually ran our own program we had 18 teachers and over 200 students
038in our own virtual program last school year and as that year went on more and more students enrolled back in our buildings at the end of every trimester we allowed parents to come back into our buildings and by the end of the year we really had less than 100 students still enrolled in our own virtual program so the the cost analysis of running our own program at that point uh just seemed like there was a need to shift we did a survey over the summer with families who still had students enrolled at the end of last year in Virtual and through that survey it was really determined that there were very few families who still wanted to keep their their children in a virtual program thus the partnership with the mciu this year we have
039just over 30 students in elementary enrolled in our MVP program um kindergarten registration right now for the 2324 school year is just over 650 students that will continue to grow now and next couple months and over the summer looking at probably between that 950 and a thousand markets typically where we'll be at um over the past couple of years my department also I'm the Lea for mckinney-vento which are our children and youth experiencing homelessness I oversee that in the district uh all the transfer of attendances at the elementary level is another part of my department and I'm also the point of contact for all of our foster care students K-12 and run all of our best interest and termination meetings for our K-12 students list of our people who are within the department of Elementary
040education all of our principals are listed there our registration is a part of of my budget and also my department kindergarten through 12th grade registration so all students across the district Early Learning coordinator is kind of combined with our curriculum Department as well um I oversee the two home and school visitors we have within North Penn um I have an administrative assistant and although they're not part of my budget all the elementary school climate coordinators I meet with them monthly and provide a lot of guidance and Leadership for that department as well uh just other components of Elementary education our PBIS initiative I never heard a lot about that over the years we're finally in our 13th of 13 schools uh this year who will finish PBIS training through the Consortium through the IU that
041final school is York Avenue and then next year all of our 13 buildings will have participated in the training and will be in full implementation of our of PBIS program um also uh really on the parent community community liaison for really anything pertaining to Elementary I mentioned 13 schools 6 700 students so um also any questions or any really matters pertaining to Elementary I am that person that liaison and also I meet with the elementary secretaries on a regular basis and provide some guidance and Leadership for that department as well the majority of the budget for Department of of Elementary education really is salaries and benefits and you'll see some of those um individuals listed there um the other components that um I can speak to is um are substitute secretaries to assist with District
042registration over the summer um although we don't need this as much um when our our Dev Vasa who's in charge of our registration as you can imagine registration over the summer in a large District like North Penn uh can be cumbersome at times so when she's absent or needs time off we provide some uh salary or pay for our sub uh secretaries to fill in her role at times we also have nurses who read through any new registration across the district over the summer mainly for kindergarten but also for other students we have moved the kindergarten assessment protocol process back into the buildings it used to be done at the district office level and now we have staff across the 13 buildings who can doctors kindergarten assessment protocols with all incoming kindergarten students and we
043pay for those staff to conduct those they are done either outside contractual hours before or after school we also have some buildings doing it actually right after the year ends so you know that first week in the next week in June after the school year we'll have staff conducting those with all incoming kindergartners intervention tutors is a big chunk of the budget in that area 125 000 we have allotted for the part-time staff who we call intervention tutors they work they are certified teachers who want to work part-time and they support students and individually or a small group in the areas of math and reading we also pay for transportation mainly in in District transportation all of our buildings go to the are finally refurbished planetarium at the high school so we pay for schools
044to travel there on a regular basis and also um all of our music programs we pay for busing to allow the students to attend rehearsals in different buildings and bus them to other buildings in the morning as well the last thing is we pay for all of our ensembles and music programs um those individuals who work outside of contractual hours uh my budget pays for those individuals as well I discussed the intervention tutors again supporting math and reading across all of our 13 buildings music professional activities funding uh for our Ensemble expenditures for our elementary vocal abandoned Orchestra and also again I mentioned the transportation supporting the in-district travel mainly for Planetarium and transporting students before school for music programs as well next slide thank you the I mentioned Esther money in the beginning um
045and really two main areas that we're using Esther money for next school year um from this budget are the elementary Virtual Academy I mentioned we partnered with Montgomery County Intermediate Unit um and that will pay for tuition for those students who are enrolled in that as I mentioned we have about 30 students probably expecting around the same next year although I could see a we could see a smaller a decline as we move forward uh post pandemic hard to tell but that's we'll probably see a continued decline in those numbers and we also um started with kindergarten assistance this year in some of our elementary buildings and uh the plan is to use extra money and continue that program into next school year as well supporting our kindergarten classrooms we also have very small amounts
046of money in the budget for mileage for um all of those individuals who move school to school within the workday home and school visitors myself our early learning coordinator minimal amount for supplies mainly for registration books and periodicals to support our professional staff especially our principals when we have professional books that are important for them to read especially over the summer looking at doing some book studies and then professional development could be attending some conferences uh and or paying for those individuals to attend specific professional development that we have allocated for their Department and that is it for the elementary education um budget does anyone have any questions I was going to say did someone turn off a month it wasn't me playing a trick on me um my question was um if you can
047go back to the last slide you have um professional development you were talking about conferences how much is that line item how much is that yeah so there's some money for a couple thousand for myself for example um we send a lot of staff to the PBIS conference every year um the annual pde conference um actually I'm attending the the national Elementary principles conference this summer so there's some money allotted for me we also have some money allotted for our early learning coordinator um our principals actually use their building-based budgets to to attend conferences but there's a small amount for me to pay for um certain staff also um could be conferences and or like online trainings or money if I want for some of our staff to attend that but it's only a couple
048thousand dollars in my budget and each summer are we actively reaching out to the students who are involved in MVP um to you know kind of recruit them back to the district kind of ask them you know what would help them because first many of them they ended up there because of covid and just kind of stayed there so are we Act actively at reaching out are the principals who is kind of or who's overseeing that so myself also the counselor at York Avenue due to that school being fairly small she also helps with the elementary families through MVP I have actually just been sending communication regarding pssas and them taking them in our home buildings but yes I reach out to those families on a regular basis I'm really their point of contact um
049but I will you know some many of those families have been really have been in in school as well but for certain circumstances have moved to MVP this year um so yes we will reach out to them I also have an initiative to reach out to our Charter School families as well to again try to bring them back that's been a little more challenging to reach out to those families um but that's also important to try to bring back as many families as we can um obviously it's a cost savings for the district district and that's how much per student MVP uh it's about 14 000 per student for the year much less than charter school which is significantly higher than that so um that that's why we we try to partner with them um
050to work with the nciu and do we similar to the other things that we do look at other um service I mean there are there's VBA through Chester County have we do we look at them as well because MVP is completely asynchronous they'd actually added asynchronous component this year um which is not all day um but they have about and that rotates per day about an hour of synchronous Monday through Friday and it switches subject area per day so they just added that this year um but yes yet we actually um had a some people in the other day for some other who I mean there's a lot of programs out there so I was trying to figure out what works best I'm also looking for a short-term option which MVP has kind of worked
051with us a little bit this year but one of my concerns has been that typically you're paying per semester half of the year at a time and we have some needs at times for a short-term solution or short-term virtual options so if they can't offer that it's asking me something that we're going to continue to explore if there are other options out there okay just wanting to kind of make sure that even those 30 students they're North Penn students we want them to get even though we're I know contract working with someone we want them to get the best possible education that they can get asynchronously so or I would hope that there would be if I was a parent some type of synchronous part of that so yeah I think it's something we should
052continue to explore yeah and there is and um obviously the always say the best instruction is you know in person if possible um but just so you know we do monitor their attendance um there's they also offer where students are not doing very well in their programming they offer additional synchronous tutoring through MVP so if they are at a certain percentage on a completion of assignments there's additional tutoring that is synchronous that is offered in addition to the our synchronous that's already off of each day so back on slide nine their um budget items being covered by Esser money so for the kindergarten assistant well once the Esser money has been depleted will that continue it's a great question um we're going to continue to monitor their effectiveness and and their role within the buildings
053um and then that will be a conversation that we have um we do have them listed really as classroom assistants although their main role is going to be supporting kindergarten as we know Legacy costs and and you know the the level of cost that would be continue moving forward with these positions we do know overall classroom assistance is an area of need when we look at our elementary level so as we look at those that their role it might not just be specifically for kindergarten but supporting overall classroom assistance so I think it's just going to be re-looked at um as as far as after uh you know next school year when Esther money is not able to used and I know I've mentioned before I'm real interested in the the the um positions and
054some of the programs that were initiated because we had Sr funding and I really would like to know once the Esther Esther money is gone what are we keeping and what aren't we keeping I'd almost like to see that documented to understand um what you know what pardon me why we need it why we don't need it and what's what's the safety net going forward thank you I agree yeah and we we had a smaller we had an amount this year and we're you know really looking and Gathering feedback as far as their how they're supporting you know kindergarten classrooms and we'll continue to look into that even further next year yeah thank you in our final presentation for this evening is Dr Kim covering the human resources budget Dr Kim welcome good evening sorry
055I'm looking at the clock because I was told we should be ending soon so there will be time for transition and I know that Dr McKenna is going to give me the look or from behind so I'm trying to be very mindful so again good evening and thank you so much for having me to present a general overview of the next fiscal years budget for the human resources department um so often when people ask well what does HR really do in a school district and um you know I do often respond that HR Team Works to not only recruit hire and retain the best candidates to join our learning community at North Penn but we also provide supports and services to our staff and we also work with other departments to create a safe workplace
056and learning community where our staff voices are being heard and they feel respected so that they can continue to be valued staff of our district I'm sorry this this previous talk please thank you um so this slide may look familiar to you um it's you know the key studies that I think is important to highlight you know the role of an HR um Department in the school district certainly investing in human capital is important which really Studies have shown improves organizational performance the effectiveness of the teams and the employee retention as well um so that also applies to our school districts the recruiting and the hiring process to build and maintain our staff is critical especially when we think about our district Mission which is to provide a safe learning environment and so that our
057all of our students can have positive learning experience when they're with us and organizations that attract and develop strong employees by prioritizing recruiting investing in professional growth opportunities and building positive workplace cultures lead to again greater you know climate culture and effectiveness of our organization and so to continue to build an effective ahre system we you know as a team review and study and Implement proven practices that best meets Ever Changing needs of the district along with the labor market so while we're no longer conducting contact tracing of coveted cases thank goodness we are working to support employees who whether it be the result of a covet or not are having difficulties managing their own self-care um so sometimes they do need to take a leave of absences so we address that and also provide
058reasonable accommodations to our employees who may have special needs as per the Americans with Disabilities Act we're also handling many reports and complaints of conducts that require investigations to ensure safe environment for all um next slide please so it's a simple demographic data of you know we are um supporting 18 Schools staff that are within the 18 schools and three District buildings which includes transportation and so when you look into that we have approximately 100 and 1450 administrators and professional staff along with teacher substitutes and we have approximately 360 instructional support staff and substitutes and it's about 680 that are non-instructional support staff and substitutes so in total approximately 2 500 employees served North Penn School North Penn School District students and their families and learning community and please note that while they include substitute
059staff across all employee groups they do not contain data for casual or seasonal employees including intervention tutors that Dr McKenna had mentioned or summer work staff or coaches and extra duties and we currently have approximately 280 substitute teachers and of the 280 106 are guest teachers so that is a significant number um while we have done a great job of recruiting and hiring substitute teachers again many of them are guest teachers and some of you may have read a recent newspaper article that really spoke about the 21 22 Pennsylvania Department of Education data analysis of teacher certification issues again 21-22 school year was according to the pde a record low number of teacher certifications had been issued 4220 graduates of Pennsylvania teacher programs earned the teaching certificates and if you add 881 teacher certificates issued
060from out of state graduates that's a total of 5101 teacher certificates that were issued so again it was a record rep record low excuse me interestingly however while the teacher certificates issued to the teacher program graduates were record low the number of emergency teacher certificates that were issued were at record high 6366 to be exact so we recognize that teacher shortage has not eased up yet but we will continue to speak and recruit our you know folks who are interested in education and we've done that recently with current high school students and I believe Miss Lauren yo was in attendance we're hoping that she will become an educator soon so again we're trying to elicit a lot of interest in for folks to younger folks in particular to pursue education next slide please um I
061wanted to highlight that one of the things that HR also works on is being part of goal number three for the district on cultural proficiency and Equity action plan we are implementing practices and promote an increase in hopes to increase full of diverse applicants to for to apply for positions and hopefully you know that it will result in successful employment as I've noted earlier that record low issuance of pde teacher certificates and hiring diverse candidates are certainly becoming more challenging than ever before however we are continued We are continuing our commitment to increasing our staff that reflects our student demographics and that of our community I think it's really important that our students see folks that look like them and for our students also to learn from books that may not look like them as
062well sort of like the mirror and the window concept and we have participated in various diversity job fairs this year and uh again we have the usual the mciu but also ddcee and Temple um has also um facilitated a diverse job fairs as well and certainly they're not the only ones we attend because recognizing picture shortage is everywhere we've actually spent a lot of time just attending a lot of job fairs and um interesting enough Dr Bauer had asked me do they really result in positive outcome for us in hiring and honestly statistics have shown that that's not necessary I have not seen that it has resulted in you know lots of hiring uh professionals however if we don't go out and actually advertise our district as a really welcoming place for everyone um I
063don't know how else we could at least at least that's a really concerted effort on our end but we're looking at it um next um slide please so the budget view overview of our HR department is as you can see on the screen it is a pie chart so many of you know that the District budget primarily consists of salaries and that's not really any different for HR as well as you can see at approximately 5.75 million dollars that have been allocated for HR budget it's Prime comprised primarily of salaries benefits and including tuition reimbursements and degree Improvement which is more commonly known as salary advancement and support services for various employee groups including Software System to support the HR work that we do on a day-to-day basis um and so HR budget reserves this
064again um salaries along with Social Securities and retirement benefits including unemployment compensation that's also included in benefits as well as you can see the large largest portion is allocated to substitute salaries at approximately 2.05 million dollars and compared to last year there is this is a slight decrease in the substitute cost and space on current expenditure we don't want to allocate too much money but also not too little so it's just trying to look at our current expenditure and allocate accordingly and the proposed budget shows slight increase in benefits um actually not a slight but somewhat of a notable increasing benefits and degree Improvement and legal services um and if you could go to the next slide it shows you a little bit more in detail so the total Bud a proposed budget for HR
065department is for this year's um is increased by 16 360 dollars it's roughly about 10 percent for um so that is in reference to the benefits I should say so it's going to last compared to last year it's about 10 increase and it is for sub teachers and support staff and some staff in my department as well including myself um and you know typically when there's an increase in salary um there's a corresponding increase with benefits as well and for degree Improvement uh again no more commonly known as salary advancement we have increased additional two hundred thousand dollars yes it's quite a lot and more than what we had anticipated and that is based on current expenditure we typically have allocated um last year was 250 000 however we've added more base again on the
066expenditure and that is um additional two hundred thousand dollars again hundred thousand dollars for elementary and hundred thousand dollars for a secondary level just so that we have sufficient funds to provide for salary advancement and we have increased the legal expenses as well for Legal Services um we've increased from fifty thousand dollars last year to 250 000 and as I've shared before we've received a significant higher number of reports of Title IX and one might wonder again the community that's listening in might wonder well why is that such a significant increase a lot of it has to do with we have really um spent quite a bit of time training our administrators and key um District employee groups so that when they expect that it's a Title IX they do report it and when we
067receive such reports we are obligated to investigate and gather information do they all result in an actual formal Title IX not necessarily but we do need to investigate that it that does involve our Title IX coordinators working with our solicitors to you know gather additional information and if it requires investigation we have partnered with our solicitors on that and also recruitment and tech services we have increased that slightly because again that is due to increase in service fees with technology and tech services um next slide please lastly all departments you know you've heard every Department working um trying to be fiscally responsible and HR does as well we identify the staffing needs of the district and available resources and we strive to maximize our resources um to enhance the district efficiencies and Effectiveness and in
068addition we work to achieve cultural proficiency goal three of implementing practices that promote an increased pool of diverse applicants for pools across all employee groups to enrich the learning experiences of our students so um and lastly I did note that yes not not only do we want to recruit and hire them we also want to retain them that's just as important so any questions I think I did okay Dr McKenna any questions okay I realized I we have too many for transition but thank you so much thank you and I'm on the wrong one second all right that is going to do it for our budgetary presentations for the evening our next item on the agenda is our student rep update I believe yes good evening everyone um today is very short and simple I
069was just gonna debrief you guys on the online payments this past week we did utilize the online payments um that I suggested back at I believe it was the December meeting um that was used for senior prom tickets which were 85 dollars everything has been going smoothly there hasn't been any complaints with the extra credit card fee that is coming with the online payments um and a lot of students have utilized it and voiced that it is much more comfortable rather than bringing in several hundred for the prom tickets um we are looking to expand this whether this is into allowing clubs to also use the online payments um or if we're gonna expand it on into middle schools within the district we are looking to expand it but overall it is working very well
070thank you Lord any questions all right then we're gonna move on to audience and citizens thank you this meeting is being videotaped for Community cable channels and streamed live individuals attending this meeting are intended and intending to speak to the board should be aware that they are being videotaped in order to meet the requirements of Pennsylvania Sunshine Law it is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the board during the meeting to assure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the board State their name in municipality members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to three minutes as a reminder the audience is Citizens portion of the meeting is designed for residents and taxpayers of the district to provide comment and feedback
071on matters which are or may come before the board it is not designed for debate or discussion with the board when appropriate individual School directors may choose to respond to public comments that have been made once the audience's citizens period has concluded or requested a member of the administration follow-up with the speakers after the meeting all right folks the floor is yours anything my name is Pauline brachio I am in Tomlinson Township I um was very this was very interesting I've never seen a finance committee meeting before and what I noticed in all of these budgets is that there seems to be a lot of Superfluous money I think you could um tighten it up a lot and I know how to spend that money that you can uh squeeze out of all of this
072money that's being run here now um I am still pushing for cameras in the classrooms you have surveillance cameras in the Halls and probably other places but I think every single room should have uh cameras in them especially for special needs children who are non-verbal because things happen to them in the classroom and they cannot go home and tell their parents and I personally know that this has happened uh with a neighbor's child so um again I'm just asking that you consider cameras in the classrooms teachers should not have an objection to that because if they're doing everything above board then why would they care and there is no uh it's a public school there's no guaranteed privacy in a classroom so um if they're not doing anything wrong the teacher should have no issues
073with it and neither should any of you and I'm sure you can find the money because North Penn School District is doing very well uh credit to Mr Skokie and again I I think that it's something that's terribly necessary because this special needs children treatment of them has not gotten better in the 22 years that since when my daughter was here my daughter was not special needs but I observed other children who were special needs and how they were treated by teachers so um from when I started coming here in December of 21 that's what I heard from parents it was about the masks and it was about special needs children and how they're being treated so I think there needs to be a lot of observation going on when it comes to these children
074and that's all I have for tonight thank you Mr brachio you were less than three minutes but we're having technical difficulties so I'll I'll give the one minute warning on the three minutes for any other speakers no you were under so you didn't get the warning you're good you just give me the high sign I'll pay attention um Jason Lanier Lansdale uh had a had actually a couple things I also wanted to talk about the health center but I promised Mr sharaki would not be financially related I will set that aside because we we spoke in depth about that um I did have a question sort of a standing question regarding um the the implementation of of SEL Equity Dei CRT whatever you want to say can anybody and I've asked a number of you
075can any of you point to a situation where it's actually benefited the students where it's been successful in its implementation whether it's been an increase in performance of Education because it should be a simple one right I mean assuming that you're doing something that has shown positive results but I have yet to hear that and this is going on over a year now so that that would be great uh if you could actually let me know where that is um Also regarding uh employment uh I I looked at there's 44 vacancies I think on the on the uh website showing um job listings uh and all a bunch of them not all of them I should say have the statement ability to support cultural Equity diversity and inclusion I asked what that meant what does
076that mean how does a potential hire know whether or not they meet that guideline simple question I don't know why it can't be articulated why an answer can't be articulated um and somewhat related to that I don't know if you guys have been reading up on uh chat gbt in the in the yeah yeah there's going to be in the next few years um customize teaching profiles online teaching profiles geared to the kid individually so your your need for teachers might be resolved with artificial teachers coming up in the in not too distant future just FYI you can read it yourself uh regarding the health clinic um my one of my questions I've asked a number of times is is uh whether or not students would be involved and I've heard no no students won't
077be involved students will not be permitted unless they are of course under the appearance plan who happens to be an employee of the school district and I've heard the administrative say that I've heard Mr schrocki say and I believe them what I question is whether or not the board means to keep that idea whether or not they want to in uh allow students to to be treated at the facility and I say this because in California I don't know if you've read what they've done in California but there are health clinics on campuses and they perform abortions and hormone treatment Therapies in those schools Mr Fusco shakes its head and all that that doesn't happen it does happen you can read about it and it's happened quite a bit throughout California if that's not going
078to happen in our health clinic in three or four years why don't you send a sign a resolution saying it won't happen be simple shut me up please I mean I'll just say it's not going to happen can you sign a resolution saying it's not going to happen I could sign anything you want see me if there's a meeting you guys put a resolution out for a number of things you can't put a resolution for that I mean it's a little ridiculous but um I mean I I just said it's on camera it's filmed it's documented it's not gonna happen and your time is up thank you Mr linear Vincent Altieri Lansdale Pennsylvania I'm going to save my comments for the action meeting about the high school proposal meeting last week very disturbed about the
079referendum and um I'm just I'm just gonna say I'm just gonna you know as I ponder that I re-watched those meetings it's just unethical to me how you're going to propose this to the community um and it kind of brought me back to a comment that was made to Jason Lanier a few minutes ago when he was ridiculed for filing over 50 right to notes I look at it the other way why should anyone have to file 50 right to knows I mean I haven't filed any right to knows I came here with an open mind almost two years ago asked to be heard I was ignored You Know My Story by now you put my daughter in a position where she was told to be vaccinated I was ignored so I'm gonna run for
080school board as a parent with zero political agendas okay this isn't DC politics games you know I went to a um a Township meeting where there were nine Democrats sitting on the board and it was amazing how that person Denise Hall ran the meeting she got input from the community the community may or may not have agreed with her she said action approved they had one person say approved asked for comments from the board asked for comments from the citizens the taxpayers and then what they did was they either approved the second time when I get on the board we're going to have conversations not like Mr Casa talked about when he sat here thank you and said we're going to have isn't this beautiful no we're really going to have conversations just like the
081conversations that I have with the community members and I'll explain where I came up with a one billion dollar number when I get a chance to speak at the Action meeting but all you had to do was listen and you don't want to listen anyone else okay seeing no one uh kind of a motion to adjourn so moved second uh we're gonna need a few minutes Bob yeah we're going to take a five minute recess to get our technical prowess in order all right thank you everyone