001okay youtube is live we're ready to go mr fusco the meeting is yours thank you mr gilmer uh welcome to our june finance committee meeting uh call it to order and we're gonna start 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 all right can i get a motion to approve the minutes from the may 20th special finance committee meeting so moved second motion by mrs stoll seconded by mrs ramich any uh comments saying none all in favor raise your hand say aye hi hi hi motion carries now i'm going to let the public know that we are making a little bit of a change here to the
002way in which we're going to go about our agenda this evening uh normally at this time we would have a opportunity for public comments we are changing the format a little bit and moving public comment only to the end of our finance committee meeting we are not going to take any action either on the items recommended for work session or action until the community has had a chance to give their feedback on items that they heard discussed during the meeting at that public comment opportunity at the end of the meeting in addition if you have public comments and no that's all i need to say at this point um okay so there's an opportunity for public comment it's gonna come at the end of the agenda so we're going to move right into the items
003recommended for work session in action uh mr skaraki turn it over to you sir thank you mr fuso good evening everyone i hope everyone is doing well thanks for joining us tonight tonight marks the last finance committee meeting of the 2021 fiscal year so thank you for your participation during the year i know many of you might shed a tear that this is the last meeting but you know we'll be resuming again probably not in july we'll probably look to cancel the july meeting but perhaps in august but thanks for attending once again we do have a very full agenda tonight and knowing that the work session is scheduled to commence at 7 pm let's get started we have a presenter tonight a presentation for the 2122 community education budget i'd like to introduce christine
004lebroski christine welcome thank you and well i want to thank everybody for having me here tonight to talk about the community education program and our budget for the 21 22 school year as you know we're uh the we offer programs to our community so i'm going to start with what um you'll see first is our summer camps which is start which will be starting um next next week um we have baseball basketball field hockey you name it we're offering it mostly are through our high school coaches and then we also offer enrichment programs you'll see stem baking theater music we're really excited um my executive summary you would have seen we had to close uh our community education program because of covid last spring we really we've tried to have some classes but this is
005really this is uh we hope to be in full swing this summer now if you look at our numbers we're at um 378 students registered for the summer as of june 1st our numbers are consistent in terms of sports for 2019 the last time we did have our summer camps we are seeing a slight decrease in our enrichment programs but we still have time um so if anybody's listening and looking for summer opportunities for their children please sign up then after summer camps we'll move into our regular sessions if you want to advance the slides so every fall and every spring we offer a multitude of courses from sports and fitness programs kids program continued learning financial literacy arts and crafts baking etc so uh pre-pandemic in spring of 2020 we had about 800 um
006students in our classes unfortunately we had to cancel those classes we were running about 100 of them we also had to refund the money to our students and pay our instructors because we had contracts with them so uh you know kova did not um was not our friend fall in winter we tried to have some classes we offered some virtual classes as you can see registration did not go so well same as in the spring we tried to hold some but i am happy to say that our gold card members did take advantage of some of these classes so we our eyes are on the fall and we have um our instructors lined up for for the most part and we're looking to offer about 75 classes this fall i mentioned gold card program i
007really wanted to stress how important this program is to our community so we have um over 2 members right now and these are people who live in the north penn school district who are age 60 or older they can enjoy many benefits and you can see them there so when you saw like on the on the previous slide our gold card members took these classes this means they took them for free or at a discounted price so those aren't our money making classes so we really need the rest of our community um to you know really begin to enjoy our classes again but the gold card is very popular program new efforts for 2122 really excited about this we did start this last spring but it had to cancel we started an ell class for
008adults we had a full class and we were helping our parents and to learn the english language but not only the english language but more about our school district so as part of our curriculum we're using north penn school district materials from our calendar to our program of studies and really trying to help them with the language but also learning how to navigate the north penn school district so we will we will be running that again um we're also looking at adding some classes to help our community understand the equity programs and professional development that is taking place among our staff i'm working with the curriculum department on that and also looking at relaunching a family and community engagement series which which is classes that our parents are asking for how to help their teenagers
009with stress how to help um the little ones transition from preschool into kindergarten but those those classes just to just to have parents talking and learning from professionals in the area and how they can be supportive of their children looking to cut our costs as always especially not knowing what our enrollment will look like next year we're looking at a five percent increase in our fees which is which is pretty normal and our and i should i should add and it's in our executive summary that we try to keep our prices very cost effective we just try to make money so that we can put it back into the program not replacing a second registrar so i had two um secretaries who are also the receptionists for the esc but um paid half by community
010ed one retired uh last summer and we did not replace that position since community ed was not in full spring full swing i don't expect it to be in full swing so don't plan to replace that as of now looking at targeting our mailing to cut postage costs so we we are meeting with our mail house to look at what zip codes are really the ones who are participating in our program and do we want to look at those areas um in our community that are are taking our classes instead of just sending blank to 50 000 households move we are looking to move our printing in-house to save money and a heavier reliance on emails and social media in closing um you know we the community education program has been around for more than
01150 years so it's an established program that's beloved in our community we've had setbacks before our we um after 9 11 and recession of 2008 we kind of had a similar um occurrence at what is going now but we know we'll bounce back um we're looking at what types of classes our community is really interested in um and we hope we hope to um to be there by the end of uh one one year from now we should be in a lot better spot all right thank you christine al do you have a question how do you get a gold card for the members of the public um you just you have to come into the esc because we do need proof of residency um but that's all you need to do there's a form
012that you fill out and we print it right that right there and then thank you you're welcome just a reminder for the committee that the community education is one of our enterprise funds similar to the extended care program and aquatics and school nutrition services so tax dollars are not funding this program and the goal is as christine mentioned to break even this is still do you have a question uh just a comment i really um like seeing the ell program uh mrs lebroski thank you for putting that together i think that's great [Music] all right so as we said we're not going to take action on this at this time we'll wait until after the public has had a chance to comment so we'll move on mr skraki okay our next presenter is marjorie scott
013marjorie is back tonight to talk about the 2122 extended care program budget marjorie was with us a couple months ago to talk about tuition fees for the coming year but now we're going to talk about the budget and at the conclusion of her presentation we need to have a conversation about a final number we had talked about a transfer from the general fund to the extended care fund to cover the deficit so we'll conclude the presentation with the discussion about that so marjorie welcome thank you and thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and speak to you about the program so last time that i came we talked a little bit about the program tonight i'm going to talk about registration that we started in may we got 300 families who were currently
014enrolled to re-enroll for the program and then we opened up registration on may 17th to returning families and to new families and we're above 600 at this point when i wrote the presentation we were at 5.90 we're now above 600 which is great and we've got more that need to return their paperwork we will continue to enroll new students as long as we have uh room in the program at certain schools as long as we can secure staffing and as other people who are enrolled make changes and allow for new families typically in a normal year before we went out uh on the pandemic leave there were 880 children and that was one of our largest years in some time and currently we have about 330 children using the program just to give you a
015frame of reference we also have seven weeks of summer camp planned and we have 36 to 48 children enrolled for most weeks we're looking at this as a rebuilding year so we are hoping to break even uh with a budget of two million and thirty thousand and those are based on the assumptions that we attend five days of school for a full school year that we have about 650 children enrolled the benefit holiday is going to give us a break on the benefit costs melissa is going to continue to be able to offer free breakfast and snacks to us because the free lunch program has been extended through the next school year and also based on the assumption that we will not be contributing fifty thousand dollars to the district so that is our budget
016in a nutshell and just a refresher for the committee the extended care program over the past several years i think it was four years ago we started a contribution of 50 000 a year to the general fund so that is not part of the budget next year however if there is any surplus fund available at the end of the year that's something that we can look to transfer back to the general fund at the end of the fiscal year so we thought it would be wise just to wait until the fiscal year was near wrapping up maybe next may in june and then make a determination if any of that money can come back to the general fund we are recommending a transfer of 1.5 million dollars from the general fund to the extended care
017program and that in addition to their cash balance will basically cover the liability meaning the amount of money that the extended care program owes the general fund right now so we don't want to show that receivable on the general fund books at the end of the fiscal year so the way to do that is to transfer the money to the extended care program it will show as an expense in the general fund similar to what we do with transfers of the capital reserve fund and then that way we can clean up that liability that the extended care program has to the general fund it's primarily for salaries and benefits during the year so 1.5 we think is is more than sufficient to cover that balance in addition to the existing cash balance all bills will
018be paid they'll really be nothing outstanding then at the end of the fiscal year from the extended care perspective and again then that 1.5 million the plan is for extended care to pay that back over the course of time we'll just continue to reevaluate the financial situation on an annual basis and hopefully we can be in a position if we do return to pre-pandemic levels we're probably looking at maybe three to five years for that one point five million dollars to be repaid to the general fund that says correctly for the benefit of those that are watching um just summarize again we are currently um not fully expending our entire expenditure budget and uh there would be some you know opportunity there to be able to do this expenditure without going over the total amount
019of the expenditure budget that's correct uh not counting the recommended transfer of 1.5 million we are projecting expenditures that come in roughly about seven and a half million dollars under budget this fiscal year so even with the 1.5 million dollar transfer we're still expecting a pretty substantial positive variance meaning we're under spending our current fiscal year budget mr scracky the proposal to uh transfer the 1.5 million dollars is not listed on our items recommended for work session that is an item we're going to need to vote for though is it not that's correct we would like to add that on and that would appear then as if the committee would recommending passing that to the full board on june 17th on june 17th there would be two separate items and one for the extended care
020budget and then a second item for the transfer from the general fund to the extended care program okay yes uh al um i know we discussed the extended care program at our last financial meeting extensively so i would recommend to the public if they have any concerns about this transfer that they refer back to the last financial board meeting thank you mr all right so you know other hands move along on our agenda okay thank you mr fusco next up we have budget transfers for the month of may they totaled 823 692.93 majority of these transfers stem from the movement of federal stimulus money to the appropriate budgetary account so we'll be asking for that to be moved to the june 17th action meeting as well once we get to that part of the agenda
021any questions on budget transfers okay hearing none we'll move on just to give you a final update on the status of the general fund budget for the 21 22 fiscal year mrs johnson is going to bring up a slide here in a second but we did have the proposed final budget approved in may and now the next step is the final budget to be approved on june 17th so we did make some changes to the budget however the recommended tax increase for montgomery county the 2.85 percent increase that's still in play here there's no recommended changes with that but we did tweak the budget somewhat and on the next slide we'll show you exactly where we are at right now so with a 2.85 percent tax increase we do have nearly a 5.8 million dollar
022budget deficit i think it's important to note that that is less than the current year initial budget even with our initial budget deficit this year of 6.4 million dollars we are projecting break even this year and that that is with that 1.5 million extended care transfer we just mentioned but i'll talk about how we can get close to a million dollar use of fund balance in a moment but basically we've made a net change in the budget since the proposed final budget resulting in an additional 572 000 added to the deficit that's a combination of additional revenue and also some additional expenditures the most significant expenditure stems from funding a a creative way to attract and retain substitute teachers and dr kim is going to be making a presentation later this evening at the work
023session to talk about that plan but that plan resulted in almost 600 000 in additional expenditures i do also want to point out i know i have a a state budget update later on tonight's agenda but there is talk in harrisburg it's heating up right now that it appears likely that school districts will receive an increase in basic education funding as was the rhetoric as of last friday at least so we did add 200 000 as an increase to basic education funding we kept special education funding flat but we did increase that basic ed funding so it could end up being zero it could end up being more than two hundred thousand it's it's unlikely that state budget will be passed prior to next thursday's action meeting june 17th on the next slide we talk
024about that starting deficit with the 2.85 tax increase 5.8 million dollars we do have 1.5 million in budgetary reserve in the budget so if that goes untouched that falls back into fund balance basically and and each year we shoot for positive variances meaning that we're conservative on our projections with revenue so we always try to get at least point five percent additional revenue above what we collected and that is certainly the case this year again and we also strive to spend point five percent of our budget um you know frees up additional money that can flow back to fund balance so when you take the revenue side and the expenditure side that can mean we could have a net under expenditure and additional revenues of 2.8 million dollars throw all that in the mix at
025this point in time even though the fiscal year didn't start even though you start out with a 5.8 million dollar deficit you know we're thinking of a use of fund balance of 1.4 million dollars is very realistic it's very manageable it keeps us in a good situation with our bond rating keeps us in that sweet spot that i've talked about before not too much fun balance not too little fun balance so we think this is a good pathway for the upcoming fiscal year that's basically the latest uh we're gonna lock in the budget on friday unless there's some material changes that come forward over the next couple days or new information or you know possibly a state budget but that's unlikely we're pretty much locked in at this point so any material changes we'll make
026any small changes will probably just pass on at this point in time so that's that's where we're at about a 5.8 million dollar deficit with that proposed tax increase for the coming year i do want to point out again for those residents that have a property as part of north penn school district that's actually located in bucks county you will see a nearly 18 reduction in your taxes and that's because of the state rebalancing that happens for school districts that have properties in multiple counties so 2.85 percent increase in montgomery county nearly a 18 percent increase a decrease sorry decrease in bucks county any questions on status of the budget okay hearing none i'm going to move on to the next item on the agenda that's the 2122 homestead and farmstead exclusion the homestead and
027farmstead exclusion is a deduction off individual property bills for those individuals that qualify you need to have a an application in with the county to be an approved homestead or farmstead and the state distributes gaming proceeds to each school district and that money then is used dollar for dollar for a reduction in those individuals that are eligible in their property taxes so in the 2122 school year north penn will be receiving nearly 5.2 million dollars in gaming proceeds and we have 24 255 homesteads that are eligible for a piece of that gaming money distribution so right now we're projecting that tax bill reduction to be just a little bit over 213 dollars 213 dollars now that number may change slightly between now and next thursday's meeting we do receive updates from the county uh some
028additional properties may be added to the list some additional properties may be reduced from the eligibility list but right now as of today it's 213.12 and two cents and that's pretty much in line with where it's been over the past two years so we will have a resolution then that's recommended with the final numbers for next thursday any questions on the homestead in farmstead and just for information too we do have seven farmsteads in north penn school district in addition to the homestead seven farmsteads okay moving on to the next item we have real estate tax assessment appeals initiated by the school district uh just a quick refresher on our school policy we do have a school policy dealing with school district initiated tax assessment appeals and it does call for a presentation to the
029finance committee and ultimately board approval in june on the list of potential properties it's board policy 3631 and it identifies that the school district will take a look at all property types that's important we do look at residential commercial industrial vacant land no single property is targeted it as long as that particular parcel meets our criteria it could be eligible for appeal so what we're looking for here is for properties that may be under assessed meaning that the individual that owns that property is not paying their fair share of taxes and we're trying to make the situation equitable considering that there hasn't been a county-wide reassessment in over 20 years the only way to correct assessments is if the taxing body files an assessment appeal and our policy indicates that the property has to have
030a disconnect of six hundred thousand dollars in assessed value or more for the school district to consider appeal so that's pretty substantial that you know we take a look at recent sales prices we take a look at market intelligence and if there's a disconnect between the current assessment and the fair market value assessment of six hundred thousand dollars that property is up for consideration for a district initiated tax assessment appeal there's an august first deadline and in the executive content and board docs we do have our preliminary list of properties for the upcoming year we do have 23 i'm sorry 22 properties identified mostly from sales activity over the previous years all meet the criteria of having a threshold of six hundred thousand dollars or more difference in their assessed value so we are not
031sharing this publicly at this point in time because the list is only a potential list at this point we are continuing to work with our property assessment solicitor rudolph clark just to make sure that those 22 properties there's no unique set of circumstances surrounding the sales activity or the assessment and once we have that firmed up the final list will be public and will be part of the june 17th action meeting but i just want to bring to light the timeline that we're up against the board approval in june the fact that we have 22 properties that have been identified all meet the policy requirements and again when we file these appeals the objective is to get the assessment close to where it should be based on recent sales activity or market intelligence and you've
032seen a number of settlements at the monthly board meeting many of those are in the school district's favor and that does increase real estate tax revenue for north penn school district to try to get those properties that are under assessed to get them properly assessed any questions on the potential real estate tax assessment appeals for the coming year okay hearing none we'll move on to the next item that is the 2122 general insurance package we did receive our final quote for the insurance for the upcoming year and this covers all of our property and liability automobile educator legal liability and our cyber policy and student accident coverage for the upcoming year there is a policy increase of approximately 10 percent about 58 000 increase to the budget that has been reflected in the numbers i
033shared earlier the largest portion of the increase is due to the fact that we did have an appraisal completed by the insurance company basically valuing all of our building and contents and it did result in an increase in the total amount of insured content for the school district and this has been phased in over a two-year period so the more that you are insuring with respect to the value of the building and the contents it stands the reason that the higher the insurance premium you pay so that 10 increase we have this coming year is in part due to that increase in the appraised value the second piece is we did experience a sixteen percent increase in our cyber liability policy uh it's so it's less than uh or i should say it's a little
034bit over two thousand dollars but it is a sixteen 16 increase and we were told by the carrier that that 16 increase would have been a lot more most other entities are experiencing significant increases in the cyber policy due to the recent cyber attacks many of those have made national news many of those have been at a national level high profile organizations governmental entities and so forth but we did indicate on our application for this policy that we are underway with our rfp process and we're very close to making a recommendation to our board for our risk assessment analysis with respect to our security our network security so in fact we're hopeful that we will have a recommendation at the june 17th action meeting so were it not for the fact that we are very
035close to having that study completed we probably would have been looking at a much larger increase in that cyber liability policy and to my knowledge we are the first school district that will be embarking in that sort of network analysis and cyber risk analysis so as dr elaine has mentioned that many districts are looking to see what north penn does and you know that's probably good advice for other districts to embark on that project that will help reduce their cyber liability expenses as well so this is another item that we will be asking for the board to take action on on june 17th one other note on our auto policy we had an about 11 000 dollar increase on our auto policy uh the claims have been pretty stable over the past year the 11
036000 increase was to a large degree to the fact that we are replacing a lot of our older vehicles scrapping our older vehicles and bringing on newer vehicles so newer vehicles have a higher value and that results in higher premium as well any questions on the proposed insurance package for the upcoming year okay next item we have is the business office operational items this is an annual approval that we seek each year and this basically stem the history behind this is in years past both the july and the august finance committee meetings were canceled and sometimes the action meetings in july and august were canceled also so this particular resolution this proposed resolution stems from that when there were no meetings it was basically to give authorization to the chief financial officer that if there
037were any bids that needed to be awarded we could notify the finance committee have a three-day review and then proceed with awarding of those bids even though there might not be a board meeting for another month or a month and a half the same applies to purchases for the coming year basically this resolution says that if something was budgeted in the 2122 year we can proceed forward with that particular purchase again in the absence of any finance committee meeting or board meeting and the third component to the resolution is we can continue to make budget transfers that's part of the 2021 audit if need be prior to any finance meeting or action meeting so it's giving the chief financial officer myself the authority to take the action that has really been authorized by the board
038through the adoption of the budget and budget transfers and then at the subsequent action meeting we will simply have these items ratified at a subsequent meeting so there still will be a record of action it just may come after the fact for some of these items question about business office operational items we can trust that you won't be ordering yourself a tesla or something like that mr schrocky if there's a propane tesla maybe but okay next item we have is discussion about senate bill 312 and senate bill 552. this there's some proposed legislation and those two senate bills deal with two types of right to know request and senate bill 312 deals with right to know requests that are made by commercial entities that are clearly making the request for profit purposes so that particular
039senate bill would allow the school district to charge that particular organization for our time and effort to fulfill that request right now as you know we are not permitted to charge a right to know requester for anything with the exception of a photocopy but quite frankly since most of our material if not all of our material is in digital form if it exists in digital form you can't charge a requester so i think it's been at least a year a year and a half since we've charged anyone for copies senate bill 312 though would allow those commercial requesters to be charged i can think of one in particular one commercial requester located in florida asks for our complete vendor list the address information of our vendors they also ask for every purchase order the school
040district issues with the vendor information the amount and so forth and it is used they are a marketing company they use it for marketing purposes exclusively and they make that request of north penn school district on a quarterly basis so we can't charge them for that now we would be able to charge them if senate bill 312 would move forward into law so you know from a personal standpoint you know the ability if that organization is using that information for their profit i think that's very reasonable that we should be able to charge that organization for our time and effort to fulfill that request the second senate bill is senate bill 552 also dealing with right to know and this is basically establishing what is called a vexatious requester the school district would have the
041opportunity to petition the office of open records to ask for the determination if the school district feels a particular requester is a vexatious requester so what makes a requester a vexatious requester well that is going to be in the eyes of the office of open records ultimately it's their decision but there are some parameters and some of the parameters can be things like how many right-to-know requests did this particular individual make in a particular year what is the nature of the request how much time does it take to fulfill the request did the requester make any kind of comment when the right to know request was delivered have they made any comment at a public meeting about the right to know process all that information can be submitted to the office of open records as
042pretty much presenting a case why a district may feel a requester falls into that category of fixations and if the office of open records would concur with the district's request the district could refuse any right to know requests for a period of one year for that individual now in north penn school district would that apply to anyone i don't know you know perhaps we do have one individual in the school district that has submitted 35 requests so far this fiscal year that's a pretty large number but in addition to that that individual has made certain comments when the right to know request was dropped off that may put the individual in a category of a vexatious requester when comments are made that i'm submitting this request because mr scracky needs work to do this weekend
043that's pretty much a mockery of the right to know system and i feel that probably would qualify for a vexatious application to the right to know office to the open office of open records so i did present to you tonight for your consideration a resolution basically a board resolution similar to the one where the board approved a resolution supporting charter school reform this is a resolution supporting senate bill 312 and senate bill 552 again the ability to charge commercial requesters for the school district time and also the ability to identify potentially vexatious requesters any thoughts from the committee yeah can i have the policy yeah so i just want to make clear that like this is not an attempt like we still want to be as transparent as possible it's just that um we would
044like to not have mr scracky's valuable time um used for requests that are really just they're not for any specific purpose right i could read off some of these and i think people would agree but um you know i just think um mr scracky's time is very valuable and mr skraki it has to be the one to go through all the requests right because there could be something sensitive in an email or whatever that um needs to be redacted or whatever so it's not like it's a test that can be handed off to somebody else to do um you know it has to be done by mr scaraki so i just i i just want to make sure that it is this is not an attempt to not be transparent we definitely want to be
045as transparent as possible we just don't want to be bogged down with um requests that really are more harassing than anything else so mr scratch is it in your opinion that the vexatious request is gonna be a very high bar to set that it's unlikely that many folks are even gonna necessarily you'd have to be pretty egregious i think in order for them for them to determine that it was vexatious and the conversations i've had with you that was the impression that i got is that accurate exactly exactly because the goal of the school district and the goal of the office of open record still is what mrs stoll just said to maintain transparency and accountability so this is really for those individuals that are making requests that really fails to serve a public purpose
046and that's right that's included in the language of the resolution so i'll give another example we had a request as you know for emails it resulted in the review of 000 pages of emails that would not be something that would qualify an individual as a vexatious requester now if the individual made 40 such requests during the year that might be a different story but one request for email that results in nineteen thousand documents that will not fall into that category of vexatious requester in my opinion uh but it's really for those individuals that are using it you know i have a sentence in here some requests are made by requesters the individuals that are using the right to know law with malicious intent to intimidate harass or punish a public agency wasting taxpayer resources and
047i think we do have one situation like that with some comments that are made when these right to nova requests so i think mr fusco and answer your question i think it'd be very very rare that a that we would even make application to the office of open records to deem an individual vexatious and secondly i believe that threshold is going to be very very high for the office of open records to concur with the school district that an individual does fall into that category the other point i'd like to make is even after we go through all this to get someone identified and banned they're only bad for a year so they can come back again and again we're gonna have to spend the resources to ban them a second time if they keep
048up with the same practices so we'll lose money either way thank you i do want to note that the one set up senate bill was introduced by a local senator senator mensch was one of the co-authors of senate bill that is the one dealing with commercial requesters any other discussion on the resolution and the two senate bills okay thank you for your consideration we'll move on now to informational items we do have another federal stimulus update by mrs johnson again this is a report that we are going to do on a quarterly basis so we thought it was important here at the last meeting of the fiscal year to give you an update with the total amount of federal stimulus money that we're going to be receiving what has been spent and what is accounted
049for in the upcoming years mrs johnson good evening thank you uh so tonight we did want to provide another update on the status of the various federal funding sources that have been awarded to north penn school district to adjust the challenges of covid19 we discussed the status of these grants in april um so we're just going to highlight the changes since that last presentation through preparing the final 2122 budget we were able to identify additional staffing and summer programming costs that were able to shift over to the federal stimulus funding and taking taking those changes into account that has resulted in esther 2.0 available funding being reduced to approximately 250 000 and sr 3.0 is now down to 7.88 million dollars so as we discussed before we'll continue to look at ways to use those
050funds to optimize the needs of the districts and the financial needs of the district as a reminder the district has received a total grant award value of over 17.6 million dollars for the general fund for extended care since our last update we have received the coronavirus response and relief supplemental appropriations funding which is ninety three hundred dollars per child care site and we have thirteen of those here at north penn so we received a total of a hundred and twenty thousand nine hundred dollars in funding this funding does not have to be used for reimbursement of expenditures instead this can be used to offset revenue losses experienced due to reduced enrollment during the 2020-2021 school year i'd also like to remind you that a portion of the office of child development and early learning 2.0
051grant had to be returned due to the um limited eligibility cost of the grant it was quite restrictive in what was eligible and what we were able to charge back against to that grant so we did have to return a portion of that grant we are providing a summary of expenditure categories and the status of funds remaining for each grant this slide has been provided before and there are no major changes in categories since our last update and as i had stated at the beginning we have identified more costs for these grants but they are already within the categories that we've previously reviewed now we did provide we did receive some guidance from pde on how to handle the american rescue plan esser funding which is our esther 3.0 grant so pde is recommending that
052the district strategically plan to meet our short-term and long-term goals of our schools which we will be doing with with the remaining with the funds we've used and the remaining funds and pde is also recommending meaningful engagement with stakeholders for updating and planning the health and safety plan as well as our plan use for the funds and i'll talk briefly on the next slide regarding the anticipated time commitment needed for meaningful engagement and the meaningful engagement further supports another pde recommendation to communicate with transparency pde further recommends using research and evidence-based interventions and activities with the use of these funds and acting having the district act in a manner to remove barriers and increase learning opportunities for our students they also recommend evaluations of progress to aid in providing continuous improvement so what does it
053mean for meaningful conversation meaningful engagement and what would that mean from a time commitment when pde recommends meaningful engagement in developing and communicating plans for these funds there is a time commitment that our district is expected to experience and it's anticipated that the district will need 40 hours of time to develop a plan and communicate that publicly an additional 30 hours for consulting with stakeholders and those stakeholders are community members internal stakeholders and families and students a variety of stakeholders across the district and finally another 10 hours in ensuring the plan is made accessible for review so there is a significant emphasis from pde and ensuring that all stakeholders are provided an opportunity to engage in the plan for use of these funds and with meaningful engagement we'll be able to meet that pe expectation
054if there are any questions regarding the status of any of our federal grants or the uses or the time commitment i'd be happy to answer them at this time this is all your hand is up sorry i just forgot to lower it before seeing none i think we have mr casa thank so the question that i have uh as and this is why i appreciate the quarterly updates but uh i i'd like it just a refresher as to why we can't put all this money into the budget now and and you know address our deficit and what we're looking at through you know why do we have an approach that takes us through 2026 yes so each of these grants has very specific allowable uses we can't just use it for any old thing that's
055in our budget so we do have to be strategic and and aligning costs that are normally in our budget and any additional costs we're needing because of our coveted response so we do have to make sure that we are adhering to the eligibility guidelines for each of these specific grants thank you i just add to that too mr casa we also you know mrs johnson mentioned about being strategic we want to be very careful that we're not using federal funds for ongoing reoccurring legacy expenses too because when the funding dries up then you have what's called a cliff it's called the funding cliff meaning that you're still left with that legacy cost but now you have no funding to attach to that cost so we're trying to be very careful with that and that's something
056that many school districts back around 2010-11 with federal stimulus money got themselves into trouble they were funding ongoing personnel costs primarily with federal money and when that money dried up they had a significant cliff a significant deficit they needed to fill so we're being very careful to set ourselves up so we don't run into that situation where we have this fiscal cliff when the money is no longer available thank you great details okay the last informational item we have is just a little more detail about the 2122 state budget late last week i was hearing numbers for basic ed funding ranging from 200 million increase to 1.25 billion so we did add that 200 000 into our budget it'll be interesting to see where this all falls out what we're being told through passbow is
057that the increase in basic education funding is being tied to senate bill 1 and senate bill 733 and i'm sure mr mcbain will be reporting on these at next thursday's meeting in the legislative update but these are two very important bills both opposed by psba and passbow senate bill 1 was introduced by senator martin from lancaster county part of it is a charter school reform proposal but includes no fiscal reform no fiscal reform so the word i received late last week is that the house and senate won't take up any discussion about charter school funding reform until the fall so it looks like that is off the table for now again things can change pretty quickly the house and senate are back in harrisburg to bring to conclusion the 2122 budget so things can change
058but the way things looked as of last friday is charter school funding reform was not going to happen for this upcoming year which is very disappointing and in senate bill 1 the reform proposal that's included actually takes away a school district's ability to authorize a charter or to deny a charter that would actually happen at a state level which is very concerning and another piece of that was to provide a tremendous increase to the education improvement tax credit program i believe that was a 250 million dollar increase senate bill 733 is even more concerning this was introduced by senator ward blair county this creates an education opportunity account scholarship program so for individuals students that qualify that attend a private school what this means is that they could use our state subsidy our basic education
059funding to provide that scholarship to a student attending a private school so it's basically taking public school money to fund private school attendance and passbo did an analysis statewide what the potential could be the potential cost for each school district and this would happen through a basic education funding deduction so their estimate at north penn school district was 2.9 million dollars that there's a potential of 2.9 million dollars flowing out of north penn school district to fund these scholarships so obviously 2.9 million dollars stripped from the school district for private school attendance is very very concerning and both of these bills are moving very quickly i believe they're both out of committee now and if you can reach out to your local legislator regarding these that would be appreciated but again hasbell and psba both
060oppose these two senate bills mr arrest did you ever hand up yes um as i understand it when we pay for charter schools and we pay for these uh scholarships they're all coming out of all taxpayer dollars right they don't get paid by the state and if these bills get passed we have to raise taxes in our school district in the north penn school district the the pasvo estimate was an additional 59 for every property owner to fund what's being proposed in senate bill 733 with these they're basically vouchers i mean that's what they are they're vouchers it's referred to as a scholarship program with their vouchers private school vouchers so in essence harrisburg would like us to give up control of being able to make determinations about charters fund vouchers to the tune of
061millions of dollars in exchange they want to give us about 200 grand that's what you're suggesting uh that is what's being proposed mr fusco yes and that's why we need new leadership in harrisburg mr fresco i may i have a question with um and this is for mr mcbain or uh dr dietrich or mr skraki uh what goes along with the voucher program is also a lack of accountability we don't know what the outcomes are for those dollars i don't believe that has changed and we also don't know whether there's any means testing or what the threshold is you know we could be paying for families who can already afford this um that that's also a fear that i would have uh for our school district dollars saying 59 on average a household that should
062be the headline not 2.85 percent i think that's this community needs to focus on that's a bipartisan issue mr costa that sounds very similar to charter schools doesn't it there's taxpayer money funding it and there's no accountability there's no transparency and there's poor student outcomes very briefly let me chime in real quick i understand that as legislation is written right now a person could take taxpayer money from the public schools and put it into a 529 savings account for their own children is that correct that's accurate very interesting thank you for the details there if they could do that why wouldn't anybody everybody do that right i mean that it's the great fleecing so to our our dear constituents in north penn pennsylvania is 45th in the country that's with the latest census numbers 45th
063in public education money but we're going to throw our dollars through at harrisburg and never see them come back again and we're only going to get diminishing returns it's a clarion call for action and you know this should not be a political issue in north penn this is something that anybody who wants to serve the public on school board should be shouting from the mountaintops i'll be up there with you together the community needs to work together to change this and i have a number of talking points on both senate bills i'll be happy to forward to the committee perhaps we can even share those on our our website but there are a number of talking points you know discussing these two proposed bills and the impact it would have on school districts yeah i
064think that's something that's very very important to make sure that our community understands the proposed legislation and have their voices heard and i would encourage people to make those voices heard and they're both bad bills they're just bad bills um so we can put that out there for people okay mr fusco i don't believe our student representative is with us tonight on the financial reports it sounds like a broken record but we are projecting break even for the current fiscal year we started the year with a budgeted 6.4 million dollar deficit we are projecting break even earned income tax continues to be strong up 5 compared to last year so transfer taxes again that also continues to be strong so the worst case situation that some feared last april and may certainly did not come
065to fruition at least here at north penn school district with that i believe we can move to the public comment mr fusco all right thank you let me read the guidelines uh individuals attending this meeting virtually and intending to speak to the committee should be aware that they are being recorded in order to meet the requirements of pennsylvania sunshine law it is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the committee during the meeting to ensure compliance with this requirement it is essential that they that those planning to address the committee raise their hand electronically and state their name and address members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to matters being discussed at tonight's meeting or matters that may come before the finance committee to allow that
066to allow time for all those wish to speak to the committee the chairperson may ask an individual to yield the microphone to the next speaker all right all right just a reminder if this is uh if you'd like to make public comment you just need to raise your hand in the interface you do have one hand up it is mr jason lanier jason i'm going to enable your microphone say we're ready to begin you can state your name and address and begin your comments jason lear 100 oak drive landsdale excuse me um a couple things i i was regarding specifically the financing and the the the on-site medical center you guys didn't cover it here i'd look through the data or excuse me the board docs try to find some information there is a little
067bit of a presentation back in october but not a whole lot of information and i'd like to get some ideas of where that cost savings would be shown again i think this is sort of out of the lane of north penn school district or any school district to get involved with this i should say uh maybe in a rural county it makes sense but not here there's a lot of medical options we shouldn't be getting involved with this it's only going to increase cost as it pro proceeds along and more things are going to be included lots more uh features will be will be added we'll expand it to include not only employees of north penn but students and pretty soon we'll be we will be running deficits uh because as a a bureaucracy we
068have a hard time staying within within our budgeting uh guidelines it's it's a it's a fact uh locally you know federally statewide just bureaucracy have a hard time uh saying no to expanding programs uh in one area which kind of dovetails with with this other line of thinking here in one area where you guys didn't have a problem is implementing critical race theory i know you say it's not critical race theory it's cultural responsive teaching but you can dive into it if you want you can go look at the py or pccy and who they're connected with and and what it is but it's basically critical race theory it's sort of a a martra marxist indoctrination and mr lanier i failed to see how this is anything to do i'm getting into it i'm getting
069to it what i'm what i find funny is then is then there there was a response by by uh the the state senate and the state uh house about doing vouchers are you guys kidding me you guys are not listening to the community trying trying to implement something that is not wanted which is not needed which is damaging to kids is causing people to look to other options this is this is the true fact this is not a positive outlook on on anything to to treat teach to teach one group of kids that they're already i'm gonna ask that about finance mr this is not about finance this is about your agenda to talk about something we have addressed multiple times in multiple committees about your opinion about something that is not happening in our
070school and i'm not going to entertain it at this committee finance related issues only sir mr fusco i do not have any other hands up at this time all right you will get a chance to go on about critical race theory in about four minutes so we're all geared up for it mr lanier we're ready with that is there any other business oh no yeah there is as a matter of fact we haven't voted on anything have we okay um do we or do we not mr karaki have to include a motion for the the transfer on this we should yeah and what we're asking for here is for placement on the june 17th action meeting so we do have items a through i that are in the agenda and we would just add that
071one other item that would be a separate item then for the transfer the recommended transfer 1.5 million dollars from the general fund to the extended care program and we'd be happy to separate any of the items or vote on them as a group again this is simply for placement on the june 17th agenda all right so i'll ask promotions for items a through i and in addition to that the budget transfer request for action ocean by mr mcbain seconded by mrs ramich any comments all those in favor raise your hand or say aye hi hi okay all right motion carries right um our next finance committee meeting is scheduled for july 7th it is very possible that that meeting will not be held however given the there's not much to cover in july in finance
072um all right uh otherwise can i have a motion to adjourn all right thank you mrs stohl are we same link mr giller we'll be moving to a new link so we'll all know this one and anybody watching and the public uh we'll be jumping to the new link and just give us a couple minutes to get it started okay thank you everyone thank you everyone