001all right mrs stahl we are live on youtube the meeting is yours thank you mrs fakish all right good evening everyone we'll call a meeting to order first up we're going to do is the pledge of allegiance please 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 attendance at meetings via electronic communications i recommend the suspension of board policy 006.1 with specific regards to the limitation on the number of school board directors participating in a meeting electronically and the requirement of having the majority of the board physically present at a meeting location do i have a motion to suspend so moved by mr fusco and segmented by mr rush any comments or questions
002all in favor say aye or raise your hand any opposed motion carries thank you all right um next stop then will be the audience of citizens mrs is there anyone in the audience tonight that would like to make public comment um yes we have one all right right now yes okay i'm going to read off the uh statement there first is my microphone working okay yes you're you're a little hollow but i can hear you yes i'll move it closer okay this meeting is being videotaped for community cable channels individuals attending this meeting virtually and intending to speak to the board should be aware that they are being videotaped in order to meet the requirements of pennsylvania's sunshine law it is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the board during
003the meeting to assure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the board raise their hand electronically and state their name and address members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to allow time for all those who wish to speak to the board the board president may ask an individual to yield the microphone to the next speaker okay mr speaker um our our first speaker is mr patchell mr patchell i'm going to um allow you to talk it's up to you to unmute your mic you may begin mr patchell please mute your mic uh here we go okay can you hear me yeah yes okay we're off my name is william patrick i live at 404 body land landscape pennsylvania as you know many times before i
004said it's montgomery township okay this is a finance meeting i'll tell you where we are right now between 12 and 14 million dollars in a hole we got a million people a million a million lunches a million dinners thousands of bundles of food does that tell you that this is a rich district why are they getting free meals now that's a common question you know i really wonder sometimes and then you got the audacity i hope they replay this for the public uh yeah yeah we're gonna do the act one three percent you know what this is the quickest way i know to get unelected now dr bauer he has been really fantastic as i've told him before dr dietrich i spoke to you about the positions of principal that are available i don't think
005we should go find anybody on the outside you know what we got to do is oh these are salary people we had to knock you down three percent because we're gonna raise the taxes three percent we might get something like revenue neutral i understand there's lots of things to do there's lots of things to do all over the country you know what val arkoush let's let's think about this a thousand a thousand vaccinations number one all the parents oh can't you get us back all of us you got to be right up front no we can't do it we don't have enough physical space okay what don't you understand we have a problem with the faculty just like in philadelphia look i'm not coming back you can't make me come back i don't have to
006take the vaccine i don't have to do anything you tell me to do so you know what this isn't the army you know you have no rank so mr devlin says let's get rid of let's get rid of the dashboard and where would you like us to get information 30 days from mr uh skaraki is that how it works it's wrong be up front mr casa i believe we should be clear and upfront and give the public a good chance to have dialogue and information look i tell you what you're the navy you're steaming under smoke here's another problem we got i have to fit this in i'm getting good at 180 seconds but look what you got to remember is how many students are bailing out going over to i'll do the ad you
007need to look into a gorge cyber charter school how do you think they run all these ads they're going to steal your lunch i'll tell you you got a long way to go before you get out of this woods you know if it was a war you'd be low crawling all the way to berlin thank you mr patrick yes um this person is listed as tele session um so when i mute your mic ts tell a session please state your name and address for the board you may begin hello my name is tanya backlund i live at 211 jade drive in hatfield i am a parent i am also an educator and i currently have two students at hatfield elementary one in kindergarten and one in second grade and my questions for the board tonight
008is specifically about the survey that was sent out and how those decisions are going to be made equitably across the district for students who go to schools where there may be less space there may be more english language learners the school may be a title one school and why our students are still not back in the building i live two miles from the sauderton district border and two miles from the central bucks border and if i lived anywhere else my kindergartner would be in school five full days it also came to my attention at the beginning of this month that hatfield elementary has a pre-k counts classroom in the building which is allowing students who are not district students in our building five full days a week when my own children cannot attend five full
009days i really would like to know why these decisions are being made and how the district plans to equitably decide who will get to go back five full days and who will not thank you thank you mrs beckland we'll be having a presentation so i think your questions will be answered shortly mrs is there anyone else at this time there is not okay thank you all right we do have this evening a presentation on our educational equity policy that would be policy 832 and we had a presentation that was done at our policy committee and believe that this is of the necessary importance that it should come to a work session uh so that we can have another discussion with the full board about this very important policy i am very proud of the work
010that's been done in this policy to be able to establish it we are front runners in pennsylvania on establishing an educational equity policy we work very closely with psba on this and i think they are also admiring the work that's been done by north penn uh on this policy and it came out it was a product of a lot of input and some really influential people helping us as team members to develop this policy and we have some of those team members with us this evening so with that i'm going to throw it to dr bauer and we do have a presentation and we'll do some introductions and we'll talk about this policy dr bauer thank you dr dietrich and thank you to our board of directors for having us this evening mrs fakish if
011you could pull up the presentation please okay so some of you have already seen this presentation um most of you have not unless you had the opportunity to watch it on youtube but i'm very pleased to be before you this evening on this educational equity policy uh we will go into greater detail about this seven-page policy and all that it would um hold us accountable to in our pursuit of making north penn the most equitable district it can be and setting the standard for other districts across the commonwealth and beyond so next slide please so this evening we will go over the timeline and how we got to where we are i will introduce my co-presenters and i don't need to i won't need to describe their accolades to you um because i think it'll
012be very evident as soon as they start speaking so just pleased to be here this evening with this team uh we will overview the policy itself again we're not going to read a seven-page policy to the board so please take the time to look at it in great detail because we're hopeful that this would go before you for a first read at the february action meeting but we wanted to give an overview to the full board as dr dietrich described and then finally any questions or feedback that you might have for us okay next so here's our timeline um we began a policy review process with this board in january of 2019 so we are now two years in to a process um we started working with psva which is the pennsylvania school boards association
013on reviewing our policies top to bottom we had excuse me we had reached out to dr bennett at psba and said uh would you be willing to share with us a draft of uh equity policy this is back in april of 2019 and she said that many districts reach out and ask for such a policy and they're not willing to share it because you need to be a district that is putting in the work that's necessary in order to adopt an equity policy she happened to have intimate knowledge of our district and the work that we are doing in terms of cultural proficiency and equity because she has relatives in the district i believe she told me that her godsons attend our schools and she's so impressed with what we're doing she's like yes i
014would be willing to work with you but most districts i say no to um so a few of us including many people that are on this call or this meeting attended the equity task force meeting out at psba that summer and a number of us including mrs stoll dr dietrich dr waters mr gosselin and mrs carter attended the psba equities summit in the fall of 19 where we worked on this policy there as well then this overview continued uh in july 2020 this past summer when we saw all the social unrest on television our board came out and adopted a resolution to support an anti-racist climate in our school district and they also adopted an equity statement and beliefs of the board um so in august from that point forward and the next slide will
015speak to this but in august we uh began building a team to draft this policy and working with mr summers our solicitor we collected some stakeholder feedback from that committee and then we presented in january to the policy committee and it was moved to the work session to share with the full board this evening next slide please so it's just important to note here in this um this slide that number one uh in the anti-racism board resolution was the passage of an equity statement which was passed and an equity policy and action plan and the action plan will be outlined in this policy so this will give the specificity to that action plan but number one uh of that resolution we are checking off those second two items this evening i'm very proud to do
016so and fulfill the commitment that this board made to the community back in july next slide please so some introductions of the folks who are presenting with me this evening we have dr deanna waters our director of curriculum and equity mr mark gosselin who is a special education supervisor for the district this is christina carter she is the principal of cult elementary this is alexis drollay is a north penn parent and she's also a part of the cultural proficiency equity committee and then ms king was integral in helping us develop this policy as well and she helped present with us at the policy meeting other members of the team that presented with us are collaborated with us on the policy excuse me is mr kyle summers from sweet stephen's cats and williams dr kim is
017our director of human resources dr santoro director of elementary dr dieg assistant director of human resources and then we have mrs rachel early and this is jackie giamarco curriculum supervisors mr nick taylor is an assistant principal at the high school and lastly mr david yum who is a school climate coordinator in our elementary schools next slide please so you will see some quotes embedded throughout this presentation that just kind of represent much of the work that we did here with this policy this is one from mother teresa that shares i alone cannot change the world but i can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples next slide please and i believe we are to dr waters on the purpose yes good evening everybody thank you dr bower i'm also really proud to
018be a part of this committee work and be in front of all of you this evening i know dr bauer said we are not going to read the slides and we're not but this particular slide i am going to read because the purpose is really important so the board adopts this policy to prioritize the principle of educational equity through the fair and just allocation of resources opportunities and treatment based upon each individual's needs the pursuit of educational equity requires the continuous and collaborative effort of identifying various aspects of district programs and operations in which consideration of educational equity shall be analyzed incorporated and and so you know in a nutshell it's really important that we continue to look at the programs provided and the way our district operates to ensure that there are pathways for
019all of our students to be successful next slide please and so how are we going to do that and who's going to do that so our superintendent and or designee will really make sure that we're assessing our students to determine who's meeting benchmark but who also is not achieving and when students are not achieving it's our duty to find out why and to make sure that we put supports in place to help them to become successful it's also an expectation that the employees in north penn school district will foster an equity focused culturally responsive climate to make sure that we are all carrying out the policies principles and will receive training such as cultural proficiency and inclusion implicit bias to do so next slide i believe this is mr caslin yes so the backbone of
020the policy really um censors on this educational audit and so um the superintendent or designee will conduct an audit that will be used to benchmark our equity efforts in the schools um and across the district at least every two years and then we'll use that equity audit to drive our work moving forward next slide please from that equity audit and basically information that we receive as we engage in this vigorous self-study we will develop an educational equity action plan and that action plan has three main components and that's looking at communication and transparency we want to make sure that that plan is presented to the presented to the board um once every three years uh accountability it really is a plan to hold ourselves accountable in a way that's very clear to our community and
021all stakeholders certainly our parents but also our faculty staff and students and then also establishing metrics that we would use to address those inequities and be able to measure them and finally looking at representation so the plan will reflect the voices of um diverse stakeholders including the folks you see on this screen administrators teachers our staff students family members and community at large next slide please and this educational equity action plan will um really guide the work that we do in a very deep way so it's something that um when we commit to this it's going to be embedded in all of our practices throughout the district so that every decision that we make and every policy that we um put into place we're really stopping to intentionally ask about the equity um they're in
022and so it's a really different way of looking at the work that we do but we think it's very valuable to look at everything through that equity lens along with that including equity goals and practices as we engage in comprehensive planning looking to create benchmarks and metrics as we mentioned earlier to evaluate our progress on achieving the objectives of the plan and then a summary of the results across the district that we will share with the um the audience of our community next slide i believe this is mrs all right so um as the parent on this committee the angle that i always approach these conversations with was as a parent and we've talked a lot lately about what's the best way to communicate what's happening um and you know when does the average person
023just out in the public get to find out about you know the work that's going on behind the scenes and so i really push to have updates happen as frequently and as soon as possible um as a part of this policy we've built in an annual update and that's going to be given to given to the board of meetings such as this and this is just going to show off the work and the progress made towards the goals of this policy um these updates are going to include data on a variety of different areas and mr gosselin is going to tell you some more about that so one of the things that we'll um seek to look at are different areas across our district and take some serious look at how we're doing in terms
024of promoting equity in those different groups and so one of the most important ones to us is certainly our students and so we'll be looking at data um about our students looking at enrollment data looking at achievement indicators um looking at how our attendance and behavior indicators measure up for students and making sure that those are equitable across the board and then also really important is looking at indicators of opportunity making sure that we're providing access to folks no matter who they are if they come to north penn that they have the opportunity to participate in all of our highest level programmings and all of our rich resources also we're looking to look at information that is related to our teachers our administrators and our staff it's really important to us that we know who
025we're recruiting we know who we're keeping and we know um that we're putting in efforts to make sure that that's equitable and that those folks represent and reflect the students that are in our classrooms so we look to collect the race ethnicity and gender as well as the years of experience of our staff members engage in efforts to recruit and select diverse candidates for our teaching administrative faculties and staff and that's work that um i think dr kim does a wonderful job of going out and visiting historically black colleges universities offering sheltered opportunities for folks of color to interview the district and so those some of these things are already underway but this will really codify and put into a policy to make sure we're holding ourselves accountable the third piece here is the amount
026of teacher turnover um across both districts and the schools it's not good enough to just go out and recruit staff but we need to make sure that we're retaining those staff and so that becomes essential under this plan um analyzing the ways that our pd offerings professional development at schools is delivered again looking at that through an equity lens and then offering efforts to embed cultural responsiveness into our curriculum and taking the time to look at our curriculum and making sure that it's offering windows and mirrors for our students to see themselves and see the world as they join us as learners here at north penn next slide i think this one is also you mr gosselin all right um and so again how do we measure this we look at where our resources go
027so there's an adage in educational leadership that says um if you look at the budget that will tell you what you prioritize and so it's really important to us to take a deep look at that and say where are our resources going um certainly financially we want to make sure that um looking at how our dollars are spent in the in ways that are equitable looking at our operational programs services and personnel considerations and then also examining our structural resources in the district and making sure that our facilities and across the organization um are maintained in a way that's equitable and that all students attend uh schools that are offer the maximum opportunity for all students to be successful and i believe this one is ms mrs carter thank you so good evening so i
028really love to talk about how this policy gives us guidelines it helps us to really create a foundational structure that we can build north penn system off of and help it to be maintained over time because we really want this equity policy to last long beyond any of us being here so on to grandchildren and further on into the north pain community so i really want to focus on four of the seven essential areas so one of them is the essential element is growth knowledge and skills so right now we've really been working with staff on professional development we've worked with staff and administration to just really look at how we deliver our curriculum and instruction and make sure our staff is well equipped also another essential element is including diverse voices i truly believe
029this policy is a representation of that you saw before when dr brower presented all of the people that worked on this policy we all bring different perspectives and we were able to bring those perspectives to create this great policy we had before us also promotes accountability um it was mentioned before that it will help hold us accountable that we are continually looking at different practices that we have through an equity lens last is addressing barriers in learning and participation that's really looking at access and opportunity which i'm going to discuss in the next slide as well so when we think about multiple pathways to success and high expectations we're really looking at are we providing all of our students with access and opportunity to courses to advancement to pursue their goals and interests and we
030go through one through three really looking at it do they have the access to be able to reach their career goals or college goals beyond north penn and what are we doing to help them to get there do they have the opportunity to be in higher level courses um where ap courses are even in our areas of the arts are they are all of our students present there are minority students present there are we giving them the opportunity to participate as well and furthermore looking at the opportunity our students have to participate in school activities and sports are they vital members of the team are we making sure they're able to play and making sure they um have a voice on these teams as well i believe this is mr gosling sorry it's muted um
031so central to our plan is making sure that we provide actual access sorry equitable access to resources across the district and those resources include instructional materials um the assessments or tests that we give a high quality curriculum again where students feel that they are seen and represented in that curriculum supports when they need that um excellent facilities no matter where they attend school the opportunity to sit in classrooms where teachers are using the best practices possible and also any other educational resources that would be necessary based on individual needs and on individuals cultural needs as well and so for us it's really important that as a district we're strategically differentiating the way that we use need are sorry these are allocations to remove barriers and improve outcomes so one of the uh quotes that sometimes
032we say is that what students need to be equitable isn't necessarily always equal that some students need more and if someone needs more we want to make sure we're providing more for those students also that's crucial for us as we move forward is to ensure that we offer a welcoming and inclusive environment in north penn and um that includes a bias free culture and environment for students and for our staff a cultured environment that values and reflects and is responsive to the diversity of all of our students faculty staff and community as well as our families and um ensuring that as a district all of our employees and all of our students engage in respectful and civil discourse um as we work together um to grow as an inclusive community that values all of our
033members next slide please this is charlay so this guiding principle of the policy just states that the district is going to welcome and empower families of all kinds regardless of your skin color your income level of what language is it spoken at home or any other factor that might cause you to be underrepresented and we not only want to welcome and empower these families but we want to recognize them as essential partners in their students educational experience as well as planning and decision making at the district level so to that end we want to continue to provide multiple and flexible opportunities for conversations with these families and community members we also want to look around us into the surrounding community for examples of businesses or organizations agencies or even like individuals within the community that
034are already doing this work and doing it well so we want to partner with them and learn from one another so collectively we can raise the bar for um cultural competency next slide please and we want to have data driven decision making so that means that we're going to collect data at the district-wide as well as the school specific level and then use that data to make informed decisions in the pursuit of educational equity equity so to use disproportionality as an example this is something that the district is already collecting data on so there's the quantitative data to look at we can look at the raw numbers of students that are enrolled in ap level courses or are receiving detentions after school but also it's important to note that we plan to use qualitative data
035as well so collecting information through conversations through surveys or focus groups or forums and this is going to help us dive deeper into that through the quantitative data and it's gonna help us figure out what additional supports that might be needed to help achieve that goal of educational equity mrs carter thank you so this policy will also when we we talked about it before help us to have a lens on equity it'll help us when we make some of our critical decisions as a district and as a school make sure that we're looking at it so that it meets the needs of all learners in the process and and we even think about what do our staff members need so how do we provide equity for all so when we look at these areas we
036really look at how do we have an equity lens when we create our policies so this policy will help lay that groundwork for other policies um also when we think about our practices thinking about discipline and suspension and any other um course selection policies we might have are we viewing our practices through an equity lens so that all students are able to achieve when we don't have disproportionality across different areas and lastly just making sure that we train our teachers to have this lens on equity we have trainings this week we had them last month that we're continuously working with our staff to make sure that they're able to have this ability and it becomes innate inside of them so that it's a first thought and not a last thought dr watters yes okay so
037this slide is about cultural proficiency and basically you've heard this um throughout the presentation and mr gosselin i know has said it a few times it's really important that our students see themselves in the curriculum and when you think about curriculum curriculum instruction and assessment go hand in hand and so we want to make sure that the instructional materials that we're using reflect and respond to the diversity in our school district and we're going to ensure as mrs carter stated you know that we look at our curriculum with an equity lens we've um already been making some changes for example one of them being looking at the novels you know that our students read um at the secondary level and making sure that they see themselves in those novels and they see the characters in
038a positive light so making sure you know that we are embedding that culturally responsive teaching and practices and making sure that we are developing culturally proficient proficient citizens um being teachers staff students um and our community as well mr gosselin you're muted mr gosselin thank you um as we mentioned earlier it's essential for us to consider the diversity in our workforce and it's something that dr kim and her team are hard at work doing and much of this work has already begun and it's continuing to be strengthened and enhanced as we move forward there's really three areas that we're looking at one is maintaining a process that's free of discrimination and bias so as an administrative team we've already spent time looking at the questions that we ask candidates during interviews looking at how we
039screen applications as they come in so that we're not inadvertently prioritizing um or discriminating against certain groups and so um that work is already underway but we wanted to again make sure that it was part of our policy so we're holding ourselves accountable um to continue that work we've also spent time identifying addressing barriers to all aspects of hr from recruitment to hiring development training onboarding of our folks and also the way that we promote district employees from diverse backgrounds and dr kim is leading excellent work in that area and again this just once again just puts into the policy some of the great work that's already being done across the district and then the last part um was something that we mentioned earlier and that's the act of recruitment and retention and promotion of
040highly qualified candidates um who are committed to educational equity and so one we actively seek to recruit a diverse candidate pool but we also want to make sure that we're bringing on people who believe what we believe and we are um not ashamed we're proud to say um that we're committed to equity and we ask questions about that in all of our interviews and we want people that are on the team um to come and work for north penn um and if that's something that's not a shared belief um there's many other districts that folks can certainly go work for but um we want to make sure that we're being very um forthright in our commitment to that work so um this is an area that i think that we take a lot of pride
041in the district and i'm really happy to see that it made it into the policy next slide and dr waters so the professional development again this is something you've heard repeated throughout the presentation but we have really been working hard to make sure that our teachers our staff members that all of us who work in our district are equipped to make sure that we are carrying out what you've heard tonight in this policy we're very fortunate that we've had professional development opportunities around cultural proficiency and equity every month it's something that again you've heard we are very committed to and we spend this time working together so that we can all continue to grow in this area we say you know it is a journey it's not something that necessarily happens overnight but we're certainly
042taking the steps and we're using a framework to really help make sure that we are making sure that we have high expectations for all of our students looking at our curriculum again that's mentioned um and there's some other principles that we're working through but it's really important at the end of the day that we're creating a student-centered learning environment to make sure that all of our students no matter who they are where they come from feel really welcome and safe and have access and opportunities so that they can be successful as they go off whether it's to college or to start their career and again just making sure that that equity lens is on everything um that we do we also tie in the social and emotional piece and of course during this time this
043pandemic that we've been in really really important it's always one of the most important things that we do because we are there for the whole child so you know it's the academics the social piece but also that emotional piece all ties together and the pd that we're doing hits at all of these areas okay and lastly here to close it out we have a quote from maya angelou we all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color so i'd like to thank our presenters this evening mrs drollay mr gosselin mrs carter and dr waters just a pleasure having you you can see why they were invited of course um because they're passionate about this work
044and such uh essential team members um to this policy and what we've put together so we're very proud of it we're very proud to say that most of it we are already doing you heard that throughout but this is a a all-incompensate all-encompassing document that kind of puts it packages it all together so i know they all need to go present at pendle this evening so i just want to thank them for joining us and dr dietrich and i can certainly uh take any of your questions um and if not i i'm hopeful that the board will move this to a first read at our action meeting this month thank you for joining us thank you for joining us we have coordinating council at seven uh yes so several parents from different buildings um but
045uh yeah pendle reached out and set it up and so at seven many of us are jumping on there to talk through some of the things we've been doing around cultural proficiency and equity that's great well thank you so much for presenting um any time i've seen this presentation you're welcome thanks for having me with the work that you've done thank you thank you for your leave equity action okay are there any other questions or comments that's just that the policy i want to make a quick statement i had recommended that we move it to work session before action so that the board could have a chance to to hear the same presentation that we were uh able to hear um earlier this month or last month i'm immensely proud of this policy ms carter
046hit an important point earlier that you know policy work is legacy work and this policy is part of a commitment that we as a board made to the community when we passed our anti-racism resolution it's an extension of the cultural proficiency work that was started three years ago we get hearing over and over again that word accountability um that's what this is about it's accountability to both the students and the public that we serve uh is it's a commitment that we recognize that our institutional shortcomings and that we're committed to addressing that problem not just with rhetoric but with action uh like the annual update is a great example of that it may very well open us up to criticism but we can't move forward if we don't know where we are right now um
047requires to take a critical look at how we are serving all students and ensure that we're not continuing practices that marginalize groups of students and that's exactly what this policy aims to do in a concise organized and systemic way so i just also wanted to take the time to thank everyone dr bauer dr dietrich dr watters uh mr gosselin mrs carter mrs drill and honestly even though i know she wasn't part of this committee i think we should recognize dr rufo for starting the cultural proficiency work uh three years earlier which is one of the main reasons why this district was able to take this initiative on at this time um so thank you all so much and um we are excited to get this work going thank you mr mr fusco for starting us
048off um i just have a quick question i do think like having a policy in place is so important and one of the most exciting elements that i think you all brought up was the idea of an equity audit so a policy could be placed in a policy binder but without having that action plan to carry it forward um this will keep it going keep it alive and keep it active so you will mention that there that you all really were innovators and creators that in this policy that there wasn't a lot of precedence to go on i'm wondering if in the tool and the equity on it that we'll be using has this as is this a new tool is this something that you all are developing um have you received a lot of
049examples um i'd just love to learn a little bit more about about that tool that we'll be using great question mrs ramich um so we have not adopted a tool yet um but we have actually among the group been circulating mr gosselin i think sent something last week to our group saying hey this looks like a great resource or tool so such tools do exist we haven't dove into that yet because we're still waiting for the policy to be adopted um but it is a perfect time in our three year cycle with our cultural proficiency plan because this is year three of that plan so it's it's time to renew re-up and review um and so once we adopt the policy we hope to implement a tool and do that thorough audit um and i
050just want to make sure that we're clear that we really did lean on psba for this policy they gave us a kind of a template and a form and suggestions and then we work to mold it into you know you could actually pull components and check boxes of what you thought best represented you and in many cases we changed their language i believe mr summers said that he was told that three school districts in pennsylvania have an equity policy out of 500 so we really are at the forefront of this and excited about it but thank you for your comments and questions um anything else before we dismiss really quickly um your presentation was so comprehensive and so good so i appreciate that you were able to bring this to the full board um and
051there was just so much just rich elements of it that will kind of keep us going and keep us inspired for a long time but i do want to just highlight i think um mrs draleigh brought up the point that that there will be a process where we're going to be connecting with community groups and and keeping abreast of who in the community is doing this work as well um and i hope that we can all support our community and growth right so if our school district is adopting this policy and our students are growing and learning and we as professionals and and our and our staff are doing this that we're also able to bring in resources and tips and connect with the community as well so thank you for addressing that as well
052i would uh just knowing what i know of you mrs ramich i think you'll be a great resource and in that work as well and connecting us with other leaders in our community so thank you mr casa did you yeah uh thank you again everyone for for your work it's been a journey for me personally speaking i i i think it's important for the community to realize where we were years ago just the word you know inclusion and how many people across the community have different versions of what that means and you could say that for equality and equity what this is doing uh putting it front and center for our community is helping to raise the dialogue so that people just don't throw the word around and that it's not just rhetoric but we
053hold ourselves accountable and leave ourselves open to to be held accountable and that is what's going to create that long-term sustainability it reminds me also of when full-day kindergarten which was debated for many many years finally came to fruition it you know i think his vice president fusco made a really uh eloquent case that this is about everyone you know everyone's tied being uh raised and this is for the entire community i think it's really important for the community to understand equity is about the entire community it's not taking anything from anyone you know reminds me of you get three students they can run the same race one of them's gonna be fine another we might not know and someone else might be really thirsty you need that water equality is just giving them all
054a half cup of water we want to make sure each student is you know properly hydrated so to speak and we're not taking from anyone else when it comes down to advancing these goals so very proud of this it's um i guess it's good it surprises me if we're only the third or fourth in the state out of 500 districts uh but you know we're here to lead and not not follow and uh hopefully we'll be a lot more districts that sign on to this type of policy dr bauer this is um um i'll echo what mr acosta mr said his voice [Music] um mrs stohl i'm having a hard time with your audio as well am i am i the only one now you just came in clear there at the very end okay
055yes okay of uh equity i've noticed there are closed captions on our meeting time this is true this is true i apologize all right so can we can you hear me now yes so thank you so much for everyone for everybody's work i think i've said that five times now you can hear it for me first time um but i appreciate everybody's um the equity action plan moving forward and i also like to thank heather bennett from the psba for all the work that she's done she's been amazing and a huge resource for us so thank you very much so um do i have a motion then to move it um forward to the work so moved on so any comments or all questions moving then on to i guess new business and the covet
056discussion under other business i guess we'll just go right to code discussion thank you president uh so um mary if you could call up that slide deck we do have a slide deck that uh we'll be using it's just six or eight slides uh so mary if you could get that up for us all right uh next slide please [Music] just a little bit of background information for those that are uh watching from home i know the board is very familiar with this but um some background information here as we did ready for our transition from fully virtual to in-person uh effective there at the end of october and early november we did ask our parents to select either fully virtual or hybrid uh the only students that were given the opportunity for five days
057of in person where those students with special needs or eld students and given that not all the seats were used uh we recently asked our parents if they desire fully virtual hybrid or the third choice of five days of in-person per week and with that information our principals and our central office administrators have been reviewing the results and they're looking at various solutions to meet the ask we're considering those so we go to the next slide before we get into some of those details this slide in the next slide we won't spend a lot of time on a lot of information on there this is just an example of the data that we looked at kind of at a macro level but very importantly and you you can go to the next slide also there
058mary very importantly uh we need to look at the individual classroom and each individual building to determine what the availability was for additional students and you can go to the next slide uh that would like to have five days so the highlights would be that 2325 of the 6458 elementary students are requesting five days of in person and one thousand forty one of the six thousand plus students that are secondary are requesting five days in person we also had in the survey results or questionnaire 749 elementary students uh requesting hybrid and a thousand three uh secondary students requesting hybrid now this is all of the respondents uh there were some non-respondents and for the non-respondents uh we're keeping their selection the same so there would be some students that did not you know respond to
059the survey that perhaps might continue to be in hybrid or continue to be in five days of in-person or continue to be in virtual we did have students that formerly had selected hybrid that changed now to full virtual and we're not surprised by that as some of those students were not uh taking advantage of the opportunity to be in person likewise then we also had some students uh that changed from hybrid to five days in person so all the different permutations and i just want to emphasize again in order to make a you know a good decision on the ask we have to look at every classroom and every building and those classrooms do vary in size they vary in how many students already were in the different delivery patterns so we can't make a
060blanket uh you know statement that applies to every situation so if you go to the next slide there so depending on you know the number of requests we have various options that are being considered to meet the ask and i want to emphasize next statement here six feet of social distancing will continue to be maintained that was the charge we gave our principles as we work through this process that we would continue to emphasize that we would need to maintain the six feet of social distancing and you can see some bullet points there in many situations there are sufficient seats immediately available there are some situations where additional seats will need to be added to large group areas or perhaps additional spaces in a few cases are going to be needed to be able to
061provide lunch an example that might be uh that you know the stage um on the at the gymnasium at an elementary school might now be cleared and used uh to have some extra seats you know there uh to be able to ride a lunch and maintain the six feet uh in the limited number of situations there are elementary students that would need to change to another teacher on that grade levels team perhaps it's an existing teacher we do have i think four situations where we may need to hire somebody else and we would approach the families about that and if they would say yes that is absolutely fine we would proceed with that if they would say you know what upon further consideration what do you think about just staying in hybrid and the team
062would have that discussion with the parents and perhaps determine then that uh the child would not move so we would you know have that kind of dialogue with our with our families regarding what is in the best interests of the students but we want to make everyone aware that there are some limited number of situations where students may need to change to another teacher and then again in a limited number of situations a teacher and his or her class would need to move to a larger classroom space as i said earlier we do have differences in the square footage and the size and the layout of our classrooms and our various buildings so we want to make everyone aware there might be some again it's a limited number but some situations where we need to
063move to a larger classroom space go to the next slide please so just to summarize uh the way it appears we are able to meet the requests while maintaining six feet of social distance uh but parents will need to uh be flexible uh and we'll have to talk about that um you know with them in the various uh you know solutions many of them not much to talk about it'll work out pretty easily but there are situations perhaps as i said earlier there might be a need to change a classroom a teacher you know that sort of thing we do have four cases where an additional elementary teacher would need to be hired through the use of federal grant money uh we do have that uh grant money available to us it was uh you
064know put out there for this very reason uh to be able to meet the needs of during covet and uh you know to be able to do it we would perhaps need to hire uh four additional teachers again we need to have that conversation just to be certain that if it does require another teacher that those parents are okay with that and you know the entire team the principal teachers everybody is okay with that if the answer is we decide not to do that and we'll just stick with hybrid for example then perhaps we would not be hiring those four teachers at the middle school there might be some schedule changes that may need to occur uh specific sections an example may be in the case of a math class there might be multiple sections
065of of a particular math class and they might have to have a student switch from one section to another in order to continue to achieve the six feet of social distance and at the high school we're still working through the numbers there it's a very complex situation as you well know many periods in the day many sections to deal with there many many different iterations so uh you know we're still working through that so the timeline that we're looking at here by april 16 the principles would be communicating with the families there might be some preliminary communication if it does involve the switching of your teacher that sort of thing but we would really try to establish february 16th as that kind of deadline to make this communication to our families then in that period
066of february 16th through the 19th uh school staff administration would prepare for the changes that might necessitate bringing some desks back into classroom for example it had been removed or because they weren't being used or some other furniture moves or sitting charts updated you know that sort of thing as i said earlier perhaps we have to move an entire classroom in a limited number of cases and then february 22nd would be uh the effective date for the change in the delivery model for those that requested such a change so that's an overview uh if you want to close that i can certainly answer any questions that the board might have [Music] somebody and which way you turn it seems like it's better you've got a uni-directional microphone you need to be pointed directly at it
067as my assumption i think you're wrong if you were here you gotta point right at the sucker no no chris i'm sorry but it's not i'll start i'm gonna uh the the administration has done a a great job of providing us information um through email communication throughout the weeks to give us an opportunity to to consider the wisdom of returning students to five day i think we've all you know it's been a long half of a school year it's been a long time since march that students have had some sense of normalcy as it comes to school and i i know that my original concerns were always related to prioritizing safety first and i still think we are prioritizing safety first i think that we just have better information to work with at this point
068in terms of an understanding of transmission rates in schools and how they do not appear worldwide the evidence suggests to be super spreader environments we have been led the county and really the state for that matter with rapid testing we do have vaccinations beginning and we are able to continue to maintain that six foot distance with this plan i acknowledge that this is there will be some families that will be asked to make some sacrifices in order to make this work um but i as i have also said from the start you know that we are in this together as a community and you know sacrifices in order to make um students whole who need to have five day instructions are going to be asked and i think it's a fair ask it's it's unfortunate
069i know kids have teachers and they love their teachers i'm a teacher i certainly wouldn't lose any of my little guys halfway through the year but i think in the in the big picture that we have to be able to to expand our ability to provide five-day in-person instruction to families in this district i i think that it's just unquestioned at this point that um it it's it's time to figure this out so that's on the record where i stand at this point yeah i i would uh second that uh or concur with uh vice president fusco especially because we're as we're focused on safety you know there's we've been looking at teachers and staff and what it means uh you know community spread was was already addressed but we're sticking to the six feet
070the rapid testing is a really important feature that we rolled out at the beginning of this year and with confidence now that only begins to expand each week we also have an additional layer of you know we've seen uh county board of health if there's going to be transmission within the schools then they'll address it but we've actually now have the testing in place and the protocols that we've got to give this a a serious uh genuine effort to return those students and families who need to be back five days a week into the classrooms and like we've been saying unfortunately like a broken record for almost a year this will never be perfect and it is about consensus and compromise until we get over to the other side and at least we have the
071proper thresholds in place that if the data starts to go sideways or there's an unsafe environment in transmission it will be shut down and the community should be aware of that um and for teachers and staff we're doing all that we can uh to keep you safe uh and to that end students as well and the one thing i've been proud about with this board is a measured approach some have been very uh angry about what seems like a board that waivers but being an imperfect time and making decisions uh this is a board that's open to a measured approach going forward with safety and also education combined and so i'm excited to see if this can go forward should my other school board directors concur i i concur with uh mr fusco and mr
072casa and i want to thank the staff the bus drivers the people who clean the buildings the teachers the administrators for making it possible to open up the schools and i know my grandson is going to go back to school full time i have faith and i want to thank you thank you while president stole adjust some microphones a little bit more there i just want to thank our administrative team one more time i ran into dr santoro coming out of walton farm on late on a friday um and she was there making sure that uh walton farm one of those elementary schools we worry about uh one of our 13 schools we worry about uh was well taken care of as the math works out properly um having worked in another school nearby i
073can tell you that what north penn is going through um is very indicative of a school district that is using the science and every resource uh to find out the best way forward other school districts are trying to figure out how to bring more students in after attempting a hybrid model and so far i'm very happy to see what north penn has been doing the data driven way in which they're attempting to make a little bit better picture moving forward knowing what we know and also the work of dr dietrich and the team to to bring um the best possible resources from the county level with rapid testing as well so i'm just very thankful that we have this team and i fully support this motion julian you're muted what one last thing can you
074hear me now oh yes sorry no go ahead al go ahead one last thing i'd like to say is we're giving the parents the choice the parents are making deciding what is best for their child and that's what i like best about this situation thank you i think also in in line with what mr resh said i think a district as large as north penn being able to provide a path to reopening that is rooted in parent choice is incredibly innovative and requires really amazing leadership so i thank you for that i think we've had to make really tough decisions and i know that we have um you know there's disagreement within the community about what has happened um but i think that we've always been rooted to taking into consideration what we have in
075the moment and what we know in the moment really assessing and measuring community resources and our community partnerships and then and then what we have on hand and so i so appreciate everyone's efforts to ensure that we have adequate ppe to ensure that we have strong partnerships so thank you so much for your hours and hours of meetings with the chop policy lab and with the county um i'm just so appreciative of that um and then thank you for coming up i really do think that this is our first step in a reopening and i'm i'm really proud of that it is rooted in in that in that element of parent choice so thank you we don't have you tina do you would you like me to take over here the motion no all right
076so what we did okay okay um without any further questions or comments uh i will ask to make a motion to i guess move this to action or are we motioning to just go ahead and move forward with go ahead and we can take action tonight all right well then all right a motion to return students to five-day in-person learning or virtual or a hybrid or whatever they so desire um beginning on february 22nd do i have a motion motion motion by mr mcbain seconded by mrs ramich on favor say i raise your hand motion carries okay thank you very much for that support and we will get busy immediately that concludes this evening's work session i believe uh president stole i know we do have a finance meeting uh so uh kristen if you
077want to ask for a motion yeah i might i would let the folks in the audience know it does uh have another audience of citizens but at the start of the next meeting we will have yet another opportunity to speak so in order to be on schedule we're going to close this meeting and then please stay on if you have comments you may feel free to express them at the start of our finance committee meeting uh a motion to adjourn motioned by mr mcbain we are adjourned thank you we'll see you in a few seconds here at finance yes um just remember we are still live everybody the meeting will just roll right into finance okay in that case without wasting any time i call this motion this meeting of the finance committee uh for
078february 9th to order and we will once again begin 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 okay and is our practice i'll ask for a motion to suspend policy uh 6.1 attendance at meetings via electronic communications uh with specific regard to the limitation on the number of school directors participating in a meeting electronically and the requirement of having a majority of the board physically present at a meeting location have a motion i moved uh motioned by mr rash seconded by mr casa all in favor great all right now we will move to our audience's citizens opportunity to address the board this meeting is being videotaped for
079community cable channels individuals attending this meeting virtually and intending to speak to the board should be aware that they are being videotaped in order to meet the requirements of pennsylvania's sunshine law it is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the board during the meeting to assure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the board raise their hand electronically and state their name and address members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments it's a lot of time for all those who wish to speak to the board the board president uh may ask an individual to yield the microphone to the next speaker okay do we have hands and it looks like we didn't yes um our first participant is owen wilcox owen
080when i unmute your mic please state your name and address for the board and then you may unmute your mic uh good evening owen wilcox 32 east school street uh first just a general comment um you know i don't know if the board or or however these are advertised can be a little bit more clear because i was very confused maybe i misread it but i could have swore that the finance meeting was at six in the work session at seven but in other case i thank you for the opportunity to to comment and um as always i you know i do thank the administration uh the board and and you know certainly the teachers uh for their continued efforts you know i did have a bunch of prepared remarks and um now that uh
081the decision was made to move forward with returning i'll kind of refrain from some of them um but you know um in the work session i kind of thought it was ironic that you know talking about an equity policy uh that was on the agenda um given the inequity that you know to to this point has been experienced by frankly hundreds of students uh that they were being excluded from attendant in person while reading it i couldn't help but notice the section that states you know each student shall be provided provided equitable access to instructional materials assessments curriculum support facilities etc um you know as a one an earlier caller said you know where's the equity you know some children being able to attend five days while they're stuck at home and i certainly get
082the you know special needs and these students um but i've also heard second hand that you know if you happen to have a conversation with your principal um because your trouble child was having trouble you know you might have been able to attend five days so you know i asked how is that equitable to the rest moving on tomorrow i believe is the 100th day of school um i understand that some classrooms do something special to celebrate that i recognize the milestone and you know frankly i don't know there's anything to you celebrate due to some of the decisions being made by the board um you know on the 100th day of school that's true elementary students will have been in school in inside the classrooms total 24 days 24 days i think that's embarrassing
083and i think that's an embarrassment that frankly falls squarely on on the board's shoulders i know when each of you were elected you probably didn't expect to ever have to make these decisions but you know you do and and you need to make those decisions to represent all the taxpayers in this district and not just you know some so uh and lastly you know just i keep hearing the six foot distance and um i don't know where it's coming from i know um certainly manko isn't stating it publicly because you know the website the reopening guidance still says you know encouraged to be configured six feet apart if feasible so again thank you for doing what should have done a lot sooner but um certainly now is appreciated and thanks our next speaker is michael
084lennon michael when i unmute you you may state your name and address for the board and then you may unmute your mic hello um i'm uh michael lennon um i live at 21 east 4th street in lansdale borough um so i too um you know i had some remarks that i really wanted to hammer home that i wanted to get kids back in school five days a week and i'm very happy um to hear it um i want to see i want to say that the the presentation on on equity was was well received and you know this is one of the reasons why i moved me and my family and my kids to the north penn school district for things like that so i'm very proud that the uh the district is doing these
085kinds of efforts um but you know one thing i just want to point out is is i have a disappointment with the survey that was sent out um to the families um about selections so i think i think we're missing the mark on you know advertising that our schools are safe so you know we send out the this um the survey and and the perception of safety is the real driver for the decisions that the families are going to make to send their kids back to school and if the district is not clearly confident about the safety of the kids in schools families aren't going to participate so you know the messaging needs to be that schools are safe please send your kids to our schools and you know sending a passive survey in the
086hopes that most of the kids won't select to be in school and that will have the rooms in the building is kind of the opposite of direction that i'm hoping that we go in right you know we really need to to say that the schools are safe because they are you've showed us with this dashboard and and that there's no community spread in the schools so again you know it it took a i in my feeling it took way too long to come to this decision that we're gonna get kids back to school five days a week but i'm happy to hear it now and i'm just hoping that moving forward there's no you know knee-jerk reaction when you know we have another you know seasonal you know flu or covet or or whatever you
087know is happening you know seasonally that we don't you know have a knee-jerk reaction where we go back to virtual because of xyz it's you know we need these kids need to be with each other they need to socialize they need to play on the playground you know and you know for us you know my son comes home and tells me when he goes to lunch he's got nothing to do he eats and he lays his head down on the desk the entire time he's there because he can't talk he can't play he can't do much and that's not school right none of us want to send our kids to a place where they gotta later head down the desk during lunch that's utterly ridiculous so you know i'm hoping that we can get back
088to a normal way of educating our children and that you know moving forward we just keep making you know pushing back especially like on the six foot spacing all the districts around us are pushing back on that it's not a requirement it's a recommendation and for us to just make it a requirement it's putting an undue burden on us getting back to normal and so i just hope that you keep reevaluating keep pushing the the limit to get us back to where we need to be which is you know all kids in school all the time um and so that that's my two cents thank you any other hands no that is all at this time uh then we will move on uh to item number three can i have a motion to approve the
089minutes from the january 12 2021 finance committee meeting motioned by mrs stoll seconded by mrs ramich all in favor excellent all right motion carries all right and we have a different voice tonight taking over for our items recommended for work dude good sessions everybody how are you how are you mr fusco oh well this is johnson all right uh so if i take over we got three items for uh recommending for action meeting tonight so we'll just jump right in the first item for board consideration is the monthly budget transfers for january totaling three hundred sixty nine thousand one hundred ninety seven dollars and three cents all routine in nature uh mostly done to ensure we are properly charging costs in accordance with the pennsylvania department of education account guidance so normal routine transfers and
090we're asking for board approval to move that to the action meeting on february 18th do i have a emotion motion by mr rash seconded by mr mcbain any comments or questions singing none all in favor motion carriers all right moving on to the second item this is the tax liens so these are the liens for parcels that did not pay their tax bill by december 31st attached in board docs is a summary of the history of our liens for 2020 there was a decrease in the total value of liens that we had sent over of 126 286 dollars or an 8.22 percent reduction in delinquent properties we had a slight uptick in the number of parcels but overall the the full volume or value has gone down uh and just a reminder that um this
091is for a ratification of the liens this is a timing issue every january mid-january we need to get those properties over to county the county so it's just a little bit of a timing issue so we are asking for ratification of these lean properties have a motion motion by mr casa seconded by mr resh any thoughts or comments questions all in favor motion carries all right the third item for action is the 2122 montgomery county iu budget this is an annual budget called the membership services service budget the budget is comprised of three parts the office of community and government relations office of professional learning and the office of technology services attached in board docs is a summary of what each of the services that each department provides for north penn for 21 22 north
092penn will see an increase uh in our in our budget line of one thousand two hundred and thirty dollars or point five nine percent increase for a total budget amount of two hundred and ten thousand six hundred and forty one dollars so our share is based on enrollment for one program and our wealth and weighted average daily membership factors for the other two programs so even though the expenses for the member districts is being reduced from for 21.22 so it's going down overall our share is going up just due to our prorated share uh mr ramich i know that you are our board member that represents north penn on mciu board i don't know if you have anything else you'd like to add yes we reviewed the budget at our last meeting and so this
093does represent level funding across the county but a slight increase for north penn and then this is the vast majority of the mciu budget is funded through other sources this but this does provide access and and partnership and i do think that kind of our membership and our and our participation in the mciu has been very beneficial for the last year in particular but um in prior years as well so um i would ask that we support this yes we they provide great services for us we appreciate their help along the way um so we will ask that this get uh moved on to the february 19th action meeting so moved all right uh motion by mrs romich seconded by mrs stahl any comments or questions saying none all in favor uh motion carries all
094right on to our informational item and mr snyderman is here is he not yes we have mr schneider joining us today um so we are starting into our departmental budget presentations so for this evening we do have mr schneider our director of facility and operations he'll be presenting his department 2122 budget so we can get that presentation pulled up we'll have mr schneider go ahead thank you kristen good evening once the presentation pulls up we'll get started kristin do you have it i can get it um uh yeah i wasn't told to have it ready all right can you see it okay um this evening i'll be discussing the facilities and operations budget for the 21-22 school year it's known as the 2600 budget which is facilities and operations next slide please just a quick
095overview of the the district and the facilities and operations department uh the department manages 21 buildings with equating to over 2 million square feet under roof and we maintain 500 acres of property including parking lots athletic fields and open areas and the department is made up of 130 employees including custodial maintenance grounds support personnel administrative assistants and supervisory personnel next slide please so just going over the maintenance staff we have district maintenance and we have building maintenance they handle most of this system repair system maintenance and also the ground staff and manages the athletic fields upkeep for the grounds and fields uh playgrounds trees shrubs and snow removal and this year we're getting tired of snow removal already you know but we're still getting it this week next slide please so the custodial staff we
096have head custodians in most of the buildings and in the middle schools in high school we have day custodians and facilities supervisors and we have a second shift in all schools and even a third shift in the the high school they we have maintenance personnel the custodial handle some building maintenance some grounds maintenance and snow removal support staff and supervisory work out of the ssc here at 630 west main street um west a street and in the warehouse we have purchasing the copy center facilities use and departmental support next slide please one of the items that people may not realize are all the regulations and the compliance issues that the facilities and operations department has to maintain and keep in compliance mr dan linsky handles a large majority of these regarding with the integrated pest
097management right to know the ahira us epa is a hero program and we also have inspections by the pennsylvania state for fire sprinklers fire alarms elevators boilers pressure vessels and we also have the blade in drinking water act 39 that we have to stay in compliance with next slide please so as a just a 30 000 foot overview the facilities and operations proposed budget is 16.4 million dollars it includes approximately 10.5 million dollars in salaries and benefits energy utilities sewer and waste is 2.7 million dollars building system inspections and repairs around seven hundred and forty four thousand dollars supplies is around seven hundred and six thousand security monitoring and professional services two hundred thirty seven thousand dollars and we have capital equipment replacement in the budget at 000. next slide please the 2020 2122 budget
098is an increase over the 2021 budget and there's a few items that are included in this budget and they're listed below one of the items is trash and recycling we cooperate with the mciu we participate in their three-year trash and recycling did and this year it's up for bid and talking with the waste management services who is handling our waste right now waste and recycling they're indicating that there's a possibility of a fairly large increase in waste and recycling so we should have that bid from the mciu prior to approval of the the budget so this number may be modified once the budget once the proposed bid comes in and we have a better idea what the fees would be for wasting recycling in addition we've included a fair amount of asphalt and concrete repair
099and replacement around the district compared to previous years we have a lot of concrete that's uh spalling and deteriorating and so we increase that um this year to try and get some of that replaced it's some of it is a is turning into a trip hazard we want to maintain that as much as possible the next large item is capital equipment as you can see in the 2021 budget there's a zero amount for the capital equipment last year we were able to utilize surplus funds from the previous year to make some capital equipment purchases that's why the 2021 has zero dollars in for capital equipment this year if we have a surplus again this year we may reduce that number or eliminate it depending upon how much surplus is left in the 2600 budget at
100the end of the year we made pre-purchase in 2021 in lieu of having that large amount in 2122. that will yet to be uh c and we should know that in about a month and then we have in the lawns and grounds maintenance we have an increase in that line item uh for two reasons one is we're increasing the fertilization and management of the middle school athletic field we've been increasing that last year and we're going to increase that this year and also we have a large number of trees that have succumbed to the emerald ash borer and some other plates that are happening to some of the ash and oak trees in pennsylvania so we have a fair amount of dead trees that we're going to have to put a bit out for to
101get those trees removed from the district um you'll notice that in pulling into the high school a lot of the trees that are in the islands have succumbed to the ash borer and are no longer alive so we'll be getting rid of those trees we'll put a bit out for that next slide please so you can see that this year's budget does uh exceed last year's budget slightly and like i said we may be modifying that through the budget process as we find out some more secure numbers on fashion recycling and to see if there's any surplus next slide please this slide indicates that over a 10-year period this year's budget is 4.58 lower than the average of the 10 years of north penn's budget in comparison to the montgomery county schools 10 years they're
1028.49 percent higher and then in southeastern pennsylvania like school districts they're 2.81 percent and then statewide peer districts or 1.22 so uh our budget fit is faring much better than most of the other ten-year averages of other uh areas in montgomery county uh south houston pennsylvania like schools and statewide schools next slide please here's an indication of the overall expense uh in the past 10 years and you can this is showing up to 2019 you can see the fluctuation in the budgets over the last 10 years next slide please this slide indicates on the the left hand column it indicates a percentage of facilities and operations budget compared to the general fund so north penn is 6.33 percent facilities operations is 6.33 of the overall general fund budget we're the second lowest in montgomery county
103lower moorland is lower than us but everyone else is higher the right hand column is the expense per pupil we're at 1186 dollars which we're the third lowest in the county so we're faring much better than most of the other school districts in montgomery county next slide please similarly with the like school districts in the area and by like school districts these school districts are of similar size to north penn school district you can see that we are the second lowest again in the percent to the overall general fund budget and also we're the third lowest in the dollars per student cost of operations maintenance next slide please there are some operational efficiencies that we are working toward in 21 and 22. our electricity is locked in until 2024 at uh 5.56 cents per kilowatt
104hour so that there isn't much efficiency in that but those numbers are still a very good uh number and a very low price for electricity we recently locked our natural gas basis in at uh 52.7 cents per decathon compared to the 75 cents of decatharm which it is currently when we will be monitoring the uh the nymex for the commodity of natural gas and when market conditions prevail we will lock in the natural gas at favorable times and energy management the buildings will continuously be reviewed and adjusted this year uh unfortunately i do expect the energy costs to increase slightly uh because of this situation of government 19 we're operating much longer than the normal uh school year to purge and ventilate buildings and also we a lot of teachers and occupants are having their
105windows open to allow for fresh air to come into the building so i would expect the energy costs to increase slightly this year one item that we are taking advantage of is pico's one act 20 act 129 rebate program last year we took a huge advantage of this by receiving 20 000 led fluorescent tubes not fluorescent tubes led tubes to replace our fluorescent tubes at no cost to the district they were the cost of the rebate and we got them for nothing virtually so another product that we purchased were some replacement light fixtures for high bay situations the fixtures were 95 list price the rebate was 70 so we got them for 25 each there the rebate programs are very um beneficial to us so we're trying to take advantage of them as much as
106possible and also we're always trying to adjust summer operations to ensure efficient operations next slide please and as uh we shared with the opera facilities and operations committee last month we provided a labor and financial analysis for high capacity for all tail and toilet paper dispensers which provided a savings to the overall budget in both labor and expenditures so we will continue to evaluate small items such as that that people may not think are a huge efficiency tools but they they yield great savings and labor efficiency so we will continue looking at all the processes and supplies and in the grounds upkeep and maintenance we will be reviewing all the supplies to consolidate products and looking at new equipment and techniques we're always looking to improve our operations next slide please this ends the presentation
107the following there's a detailed line-by-line item of all the 2600 facilities in operations budget and for your review if you have any questions on any lines or if you have any questions uh about the presentation i'd be happy to answer mr rush mr snyder are we going to try to save any of the ash trees instead of just cutting them down unfortunately mr russell the ash trees are dead um they they are they have not survived uh in the in the high school we have a lot of green ash in the islands and they they've all succumbed to the um emerald ash borer okay thank you i know most of you die thank you mr schneider you mentioned you're anticipating a large increase in our waste management recycling service what is the process for finding
108a contractor for that service well the mciu would typically bid that on a three-year cycle and they have used the same bid process over the past i would say 10 to 15 years just this year they're revamping the entire rfp process to open it up to smaller vendors for example if we have a local trash holder in the area that could only handle north penn it would be opened up to that in the previous rfps they would try to gain the larger companies but the larger companies are now seem to be forming together now there's only two large companies in the area a lot of small haulers but there's two large companies and um we just want to open it up to see if we can develop more competition and see if we can um
109you know get the best price out of the waste solars the unfortunate thing is is most of the waste either goes to the trash to steam plant in conshohocken or they it goes to the waste management facility in falls so that's where most of the waste goes from this area so most of the companies are locked into whatever those charges are when they they drop a truck so it's um it's unfortunate but at this point right now recycling is going to increase in cost probably dramatically because there really is no market for recycled products right now the waste haulers are finding that they have to store for a long period of time then they have to re-handle it and then it finally ends up in the um in the landfills anyway mr schneider i'm very
110interested in in the uh rfp for smaller businesses for a variety of reasons but it reminds me of uh something that you were looking into last year and i remember it's it's about this time we had the environmental club give their report on all the changes we were making uh to go green is this gonna increase or increase the possibility that we can actually compost because i know you were searching low and high if we're maybe get to those smaller companies it feels like that's where we were blocked out by the large ones just couldn't deliver well um there really isn't a a market right now for composting when we searched all avenues there aren't any facilities locally that would that are doing it right now um that are doing wholesale composting there was one
111large facility down below the airport that recently closed and so there are limited opportunities for anything like that at this point thank you for that update thank you for for your work and your team um you've added efficiencies um since you've come on board facilities and operations uh those means go two to two and a half hours a month uh with all the work that's being done uh by the administration yourself and the dedicated team uh without covid it was a lot of work and so thank you for the successes and continuing to find efficiencies for us do we have any other uh comments or questions for mr schneider okay uh seeing none that would be the end of the presentation is that correct that's the end of the budget presentations for this evening so
112thank you mr snyder as i had mentioned earlier this is just the beginning mr schneider was the first one we will have uh two more presentations at next week's special finance committee meeting and safety and security so we'll look forward to those next week thanks mr schneider um so we can move on to the next informational item if that's all right mr fusco yes indeed okay so the next item is governor wolf's 22 budget presentation so we'd like to provide an update on uh what was what was included in that presentation so on february 3rd governor wolf did present his 2122 budget to the legislature there is a link in board docs to the recording if you haven't listened to it already or would like to i'd like to highlight that what is proposed in
113the governor's budget is not a guarantee but it is an indication of what are the priorities of the administration and what they are asking of the legislature for the finalized budget so throughout the budget there were three priorities identified that are applicable to north penn those being an increase in funding and a change in the funding for a funding approach for basic education an increase in special education funding and charter school reform including funding and accountability so i'm going to talk a little bit about each of those priorities the first being basic education and i'd like to provide a little background or history regarding the basic education funding process in 2014 a bipartisan commission was created to recommend a new equitable school funding formula in 2016 that formula was finalized and created um and has
114been used to run through any new funding added to the state uh basic education subsidy line item at this point in time only 11 percent of total funding is flowing through that new formula um we've talked about it before that's kind of that hold harmless approach where we every district is guaranteed what they received in 1415 anything new is running through the formula um because we're using this out of date formula for 89 of it uh our funding that's creating an unfair funding system across the across the state and it's hurting our students and our taxpayers so the governor's plan does call for doubling the investment in education basic education by adding 1.3 billion dollars into pa schools and running all funding through the new funding formula so that would mean no more 11 percent
115all of it and the additional 1.3 billion would run through the new formula and having all the funding running through the new formula would result in an 8.4 million dollar or 76 percent increase in north penn's basic education funding amount so that is a substantial amount of money um so it's a great recommendation that we're seeing i'll open up for questions on that line or any discussion on that line i think it's just worth mentioning that pennsylvania for the past decade has seen a decrease in funding overall we're still digging ourselves out of the hole so to speak and so for context uh certainly in a state where we are seeing fewer high school students going to college to be teachers in a state where we still rank in the last maybe three to five
116states in the nation for education funding from pre-k all the way up through higher education in the 14 uh sister state schools this is what we need certainly and thank you for the analysis mrs johnson okay so the second uh priority was an increase in special education funding and this is something that we have seen over the last few years from governor wolf so he's recommending an additional 200 million to flow through the special education funding uh which would result in a 422 378 dollar increase in our subsidy line or a 6.3 percent six point three six percent increase so special education just a overall 200 million dollar investment above last year the final priority of the budget presented by the governor is charter school reform i know we've discussed many times during our finance
117committee meetings the need for reform of charter school spending and accountability we spent one recent meeting reviewing the student performance results of the charter schools utilized by those students that reside in our district boundaries and the student performance revolt results of our north penn schools and we saw as evidenced by the dashboard that consistently north penn is outperforming those charter schools so we do have that dashboard it is available on the website just as a reminder charter schools represent six percent of all public schools statewide but but account for roughly 25 of the lowest performing schools in the state again something we saw when we were reviewing those those performance results and as of 2020 all 14 cyber schools in pa are designated for federal school improvement with most cyber charter schools among the lowest
118five percent of public schools this while they're only graduating two-thirds of their students so not only is a performance lacking but funding to charter schools is growing so that's another concern that the governor is highlighting in 2019 taxpayers across pa spent 1.8 billion dollars on charter schools including more than 500 million for those 14 failing cyber schools in 2021 it's expected to grow to 3 billion that would mean one in five dollars that every taxpayer is paying for real estate taxes is going to charter schools within the next year so substantial amount of money is going to these charter schools so the governor is proposing a couple changes to charter schools to help with the funding the first is the governor would like to establish a statewide cyber charter school school tuition rate of ninety
119five hundred dollars flat currently each district across the state is required to calculate their tuition costs for both regular ad and special ed students which means each state is paying a different rate so the governor would like to propose a flat level rate every district across the state would pay the same amount the second change is a change in how we were paying for our special education students currently we're paying flat rate regardless of the services being provided to those individual students to meet their needs so the governor is proposing that there be a tiered rate that we would pay to charter schools based on the needs of the students you're servicing much like they the state provides funding to us individually as a school district so that charter school reform would result in a
120savings of over six hundred thousand dollars for north penn so those are the main priorities that the governor covered if you have any questions i'd be happy to address them just a quick reminder to anyone listening that that's your tax dollar she's referring to that's your money they are not free where is all that i would encourage people that are listening to this to contact their extended not just the charter school reform but the entire budget this is a very good budget for education that's i mean it's outstanding and it's increases for public ed it's special education um these are where the priorities should be um for this state to to move uh forward um and to make our schools nationally more competitive um so yeah it is a good question where does that money
121go mrs stoll all right uh mr fresco i would like to remind the board when we met last month and provided the preliminary budget um results uh we did not have any increase in in state funding so um you know this would be a substantial help to us if we if this did come to fruition so uh we're hopeful and we will make adjustments as we move through the budget process as we see what the legislature actually puts into the budget bills right so it's important point right what people need to understand is the governor puts a budget forward the governor has nothing to do with actually passing a budget right he'll sign a budget but it's the legislature's job to take up the work of actually saying here's what we're going to do to
122reform charter schools here's what we're going to provide public schools here's what we're going to do to help increase special education funding and the likelihood is they're going to look at governor wolf's budget and they're going to have a lot of ideas of their own that are going to be not nearly so um forward thinking in terms of putting priorities as we said in the last meeting you know your budget reflects your priorities um and clearly this budget reflects a high priority on public education and we need people to encourage their state legislators to pass a budget that reflects what the governor is putting forward so thank you kristen context to that it was 1997 is the charter school bill in pennsylvania it was reformed just very minor changes over 20 years ago there has
123not been a change since and so to that point we are all being fleeced it this is not political this is taxpayers millions of our dollars are leaving north penn so those you know this is not anti-charter school this is pro accountability every taxpayer no matter what your political persuasion should be during covet in this economy especially why isn't our state legislature making sure that our dollars help with our budgets and you know once again it's been over 20 years since they've ever even looked at that law why haven't they done it since it's going to require all of us from every political persuasion to make this case to make reform to charter schools one thing that's interesting one thing that's interesting about how they plan to fund the uh changes to the the school
124funding is that money's going to come out of the horse racing industry what happened when when they passed the lottery uh when they put the lottery up is they took a chunk of that money and they said they want to have horse racing in pennsylvania so they they took that money and put that money in force foreign governor wolf has said is that he wants to take that money from the horse racing industry and actually give it back to the citizens uh of the state and to the school children of the state and i i thought that was very interesting it was something that i didn't know that that is interesting mr rashford i think it stands a reason that north penn needs that additional revenue to buy our school board director's new microphones we
125have a lot of problems with them this evening uh all right any other thoughts on that all right moving forward right moving on we did receive word recently that we received 142 128 in grant funding through the driving pa forward rebate program so we're going to be using that funding to help offset the purchase of five school buses five propane school buses and just a reminder the districts pre previously received 459 400 from the grant program and 115 000 from the alternative fuels incentive grant program um in the past few years so we've received quite a substantial amount of money that we're using to help propel our propane initiative forward and just as a reminder nick will be here next week to do his department presentation so if you have further questions around these grants
126he could definitely um provide some more information kristen do you know what percentage of our actual active fleet is would be propane powered with that you know if you don't know i don't know i don't know right off hand i believe we're over 20 vehicles at this point um and if not at the end of this year at the end of next year we'll be at 30. um so we are making strides uh to move forward with with converting over to the propane every year as you're aware nick we'll cover we have a million dollars that we help put in the budget each year to help make that transition to propane excellent okay uh the next informational item is our student rep report i think we do have casey with us this evening so um
127if casey has anything to report hi can you hear me yes indeed casey okay perfect so i talked to mr berger today just to see if there was anything that he thought that was like really worth mentioning that i wasn't really aware of um and what we talked about is that there isn't really much like over the whole board um like for school and all the activities like much going on just because we are still like um hybrid and a lot of people aren't in school yet at all so there is isn't really a good opportunity for that but what he did say is probably in the next few months we're going to be focusing on just like senior events graduation if there's like a prom perhaps like something like that or whatever we can
128do just for seniors in the next few months because that's like the only real thing that they're planning on so far but yeah in case you just described the next batch of emails that'll be coming our way fairly shortly folks thank you casey thank you casey thank you uh so mr fresco we can move on to financial reports yes indeed all right just a couple things to cover on financial reports this evening uh mr scrocky has provided the the summary of each of the reports as per usual uh we do want to highlight a few reports uh for the revenue and expense projections we just do want to remind you that we had a 6.4 million dollar deficit budgeted for 2021 based on our most recent projections we're planning on uh ending at about 2.4
129million uh deficit and as we spoke about earlier our preliminary budget for 2122 is starting at a 15.5 million deficit with zero tax increase and no change in state funding so as i stated earlier that state funding could have a substantial impact um if it were to come to fruition eit i do want to touch on that growth is slowing down from prior months however we are we are still showing a increase over the prior year of three percent so we are seeing a slow down we're gonna kind of keep an eye on that february is traditionally one of our larger collection months so when we get through that month uh we'll have a better idea of where we're going to end the year um but we did see a slow down so we want
130to keep our eyes on on how that that's going to shake out for the rest of the year don i think we're good if you want to jump off thank you crawford stadium we did want to highlight that we do have some um change orders we have 2.36 percent of the total cost in change orders at this point those were all majority if not all due to unforeseen soil conditions um and then at nap we have a point four one percent change order total of the project cost so both of those projects still well under that limit we we try to have internally of of change orders so we're progressing along but we do have some at this point uh right to no requests we have officially passed our historic high and we're going to
131end 2021 with a new high so far this year we have 62 requests 35 of those requests have been generated from two individuals alone one with 20 requests and another with 15. and as mr scracky has reported in the past there is a significant time effort that goes into responding to these requests and we are they often take up many times much time and they're pulling us away from other tasks and it is getting to the point where we're now spilling into the weekends to make sure we can get responses out for these requests so they are becoming a burden but we we understand the importance of providing transparency but we do want to provide information that that those requests are now at a record high with four months four and a half months to
132go and then finally for the enterprise funds and we do want to draw your attention i believe we have covered it on the last meeting that um extended care is struggling a bit financially we are keeping an eye on them and there may be a potential that the general fund has to provide some financial assistance to get them through at the end of the year um so we'll keep you informed as we move along with the enterprise funds so that's it for the financial reports if anybody has any questions i'd be happy to answer thank you kristen you've done a phenomenal job this evening stepping in for mr skaraki and we all know he has very big shoes to fill that he likes to run in all right um all right uh with that that
133brings us to our second opportunity to address the committee is there any hands raised at this time there is not okay seeing no public comment uh quick review of items that are being recommended for action we have budget transfers from january 1st through january 31st 2020 tax liens and the 2122 mciu budget our next finance committee meeting will be held uh the 16th next week at six o'clock p.m there was a comment at the beginning of the meeting about a confusion about times um there's a legitimate reason to have been confused about times we did flip-flop the meeting for work session and finance this evening because of some folks that needed to do some presentations in two places at once so just to quickly address that we will reas uh we will be meeting at
134six o'clock which is our usual time for finance uh on february 16th uh unless there is any other business from the committee can i have a motion to adjourn approached by mr mcbain we are adjourned good night everybody thank you very much