001Heat. Heat. Hold on. Are we on? Outstanding. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Like to welcome your call to order the Penmanor School District Monday, March 23rd committee. The whole meeting. The next scheduled meeting of the Pen Manor School Board will be held on Tuesday, April 7th, 2026 at 7 p.m. in the large group instruction room of Penn Manor High School. An executive session was held prior to the committee of the whole meeting for the purpose of discussing student matters and personnel as detailed above. Mrs. Rhodess, may we have a roll call, please? >> Sure. Mr. Beaks, >> here. >> Mr. Her, >> here. >> Mrs. Hope, >> here. >> Mrs. Kek, >> here. Mr. Lombardo >> here. >> Mr. Warfl >> here. >> Ms. Wart here. Mrs. Napsiger >> here. Dr. Fullerton >> here. >>
002Nine board members present. >> Okay. >> Mr. Warful, would you take that book from Mrs. Wart before she >> I just tried. >> I would love to entertain a motion to approve our committee of the whole minutes from March 2nd, 2026. >> So moved. >> Thank you. A second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any further comment or question? All those in favor? >> Nine affirmative votes. >> Thank you very much. Board development opportunities and reports. Do we have any board reports? >> Uh yes. So, uh CTC um they're uh starting a new um program that's going to have 20 students coming in. We're trying to get it started up this coming fall, but at least it's starting. So, it's going to be uh official votes this Thursday, but um just uh looking forward to that
003and uh lots of good things are starting to happen. So, they're the committee that is looking at how to expand opportunities is is doing a lot of good things. So, just looking forward to keep working on that. So, and we do have one Pen Matter student that is um student of the month. So, um and welding. So, it's also it's also exciting stuff. Good stuff. Thank you, Mr. Beaks. Any questions? Uh I sent everyone the report from the IU13 meeting that we had. Uh, and today you're going to hear a riveting presentation by Mr. Fory and myself because it's budget season at the IU as well. Any other board reports? >> I have one. I'll wait till my turn though. >> Okay. >> I don't. >> Okay. Miss Nat. >> Okay. So, the uh mental
004health advisory committee met this month. Um and that uh committee meets uh twice a year and it's made up of community members um our school counselors, administrators um and myself as our schoolboard representative for those of you who are new to the board and that is a state required um committee that meets. So it's another unfunded unfunded mandate from our PA legislature. Um but it's a great group of people who really care about Pen Manor. So I enjoy participating in that. And um this uh spring meeting um Mr. Eie shared about the new course offerings that we heard about earlier in the year. Um and it gave the time for the community to kind of give some feedback and ask some questions on that. And then we also just had an opportunity as community members
005to um spend some time talking with the school counselors about ideas that we may have um to assist students in Pen Manor and just some opportunities that we as leaders in the community may be able to provide to our students um or just kind of thinking at for some big picture things. And so, um, the goal of that then was that the counselors would take that back to their department and look at, um, ways to offer new opportunities to Penmanor students in K through 12. So, that is my report. And then as far as board opportunities, we have some new fun things. Um, May 7th is the district art show. May 11th is the senior athletic awards. May 21st is senior recognition night. So, please mark your calendar for those things. Um, and then between
006now and our next meeting, we have our board breakfast down at Mardikville at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday, March 31st. Back to you, Dr. Fullerton. >> Well, thank you. Any questions for Mrs. Napsinger? Seeing none, we'll move right on to item one, the -ate program. Mr. Risinger. And Cindy is bringing the slides up. I will note that we are way ahead of schedule. So I'll try to keep us ahead of schedule with this presentation. Although I'm happy to talk about -ate for as long as you would like. >> Charlie, I got all night. >> You have all Great. Okay. Very good. >> Mr. Klein's going to stay here with us all night long. >> Fantastic. All right, let's get started. >> Uh, also tonight we are previewing some new slide layouts that we're trying. So you'll
007notice some updated graphics on our slides. So, we're going to give them a beta test tonight and and see how you like them. So, okay, let's talk about the -ray program. I want to go back in time about 28 years ago, back to 1998. The movie A Bug's Life was the hot ticket at the time, if you remember that Pixar movie. >> Yes. >> And the feds, the legislation created a new program called the -ate that was designed to provide universal access to all schools, uh, universal internet access to all schools. So it was uh created actually as part of legislation in 1996 and it went online for the first time in 1998. So this is one of the longest running if not the longest running federal program for school technology just it has been
008continuous since 1998 to be able to provide discounts for schools to get at the time connected to the internet uh to wire up their buildings to help to offset the cost of telecommunications between schools and to internet service providers. We have been funded. We've received money from this program since 1998 and we continue to be funded. So, thank you all for paying your bills since 1998 because this program is funded through a fee that the FCC collects on all of our cell phone bills, on all of our internet connection bills. So, every time you pay your internet bill to Comcast for your cable modem, you'll notice that there's a stack of fees on top of that. One of the fees is the universal service fee and that's what funds the -ate program and then from
009that schools can apply for discounted bills part at from the -ate pool of money that we all pay into uh as part of just our our normal business and lives of getting connected with cell phones and with internet access. So, who's eligible? This is just a little bit of a 101 on on because we have some new board directors. Uh, public schools, of course, I wouldn't be talking about this if we weren't eligible to receive discounts. Um, but some of you may not know, and I haven't talked about this a lot in the past, but non-public schools are also eligible for discounts on their internet bills. Uh, public libraries are also another target for the - program, and it's been that way for quite some time. So, how do we know how much money we
010get discounted on our internet bills? Well, it depends on a couple of different factors. The first one is for each public school, it is based on your free and reduced lunch participation numbers, right? So the more students that participate in the free and reduced lunch program, the higher your discount rate becomes, okay? Because again, it's trying to be like a sliding sort of scale to provide more funds for districts and communities that are more in need. The other piece is uh the feds make a designation between urban and rural school districts. If you happen to have schools based on census data that are in rural areas, you get a slightly increased discount rate. So the rule is you have to have 50% or more of your school buildings to be rural to get that slightly
011bumped rate. Guess where Pen Manor lands? We happen to have six out of our 10 school buildings that are designated as rural. Here's a fun fact. Manor Middle School is still designated as a rural school building on the US census. What will be interesting down the road is if that flips and changes, we would be five and five buildings and then we'll see a slight decrease in our rate funding. So that'll be something interesting to watch over the next four, five years and see where that goes. So those are the two elements. Okay. So what's eligible? So what can we use this money for? What do we get these coupons on? So there's two categories of funding for -ate. The first one is straight up internet connectivity, right? That's our ISP bill that bills that
012we have for the district and also for the interconnections between our buildings. Right? So that's the fiber connections that we have from for example Micville up here to the high school. The other piece, the other category of service that we can get discounts on is called category 2. And that's all the stuff behind the walls. So for those of you that took a couple months ago, we took a little tour of the data center over here, if you've been inside any of our network closets, you know, all those blinky light electronics, all of that stuff, all that infrastructure, and also our wireless access points, which you can see are kind of stuck on the wall up there. All of that stuff is category 2. and that's also eligible uh along with firewall appliances and those
013types of things. So cat one I said is internet and its wide area connections. So we have a couple sources of of this connectivity throughout the district. We have two internet service providers. One is our primary which is Glow Fiber here at Penmanor High School. So that's eligible for a discount. And then the other one is we also have an additional internet connection at the Hambrite Manor campus. that's a smaller connection to provide some services into that into that uh campus as well for both of those buildings. So that's CAT 1. That's all eligible. And then on March 13, 2020, >> I won't forget that date for many reasons. Friday, March 13, 2020. Right. >> Bad day. >> And I'm not just talking about CO. That was the day that our w our fiber wide
014area network came online for the first time. So, I won't forget that date ever for various reasons, but that was the first day that our velocity fiber links between all of our buildings back to the high school came online. And that's also a a CAT one service that is eligible. If you don't know, if you're driving around the district, and there's the map in blue, you can follow literally the fiber fiber optic lines up on the poles and some of it's underground that links Martic Elementary the whole way back up to the high school. Right. We have leased fiber that carries our internet pathways from each one of our buildings back here to the high school. So, that's cat one. Cat 2, as I mentioned, is all the stuff behind the walls. That's the switching,
015um, UPS's, uninterruptible power supplies, all of that battery backup gear. That's also eligible for discounts, um, wireless access points. We have all that stuff. Um, I'm not going to read this to you, but the benefits are myriad. The I think what's for me in in some ways most exciting is one of the goals of the program is equity for all students at all buildings no matter where they are. You know talking about this fiber optic project I don't know that the district could have ever afforded to string fiber from the high school all the way down to Micville and Marduk if we wouldn't have been provided with discounts for that. I mean, we received a massive massive massive amount of of discounting and really cash back from the feds to be able to provide those
016high-speed links down to the buildings that are just considered so remote and that are traditionally underserved by carriers that simply don't want to invest in the infrastructure uh in these more rural areas. Um this is a simplified, again, I'm not going to read this to you, but I wanted to give you a sense that it's complicated. Um, the funding year is it's a year- round cycle every single year with multiple steps. And if you've ever interfaced with federal programs, you know how complicated they can be. Uh, the language is archaic. Um, there's legal ease there. It's it's complic it is literally complicated. But we start every year, we just finished up filing our 471s. You don't need to remember that. There won't be a test. But essentially, I submitted all of our paperwork to get
017our discounts for the upcoming year. And that's where we are in the cycle. This is probably the slide you're most interested in. That is how much are we saving. So I just went I said earlier that we have had this program in place since 1998, but I just went back 10 years to give you a sense of what this has done for us. There is a big spike there in yellow and that was the funding that we received the discounted discount that we received for finishing the velocity WAN project to interconnect all of our buildings. Uh that was a huge year as you can see we we received a significant amount of - funding back. Again, I don't know that we would have ever thought about investing threequarters of a million dollars in fiber um
018had we not been able to to have it discounted through the -ate program. Um so it's been about 1.64 million in CAT 1 over the past 10 years and and close to 900,000 in in discounts and savings that we've had with our internal connections. So 2.5 million is literally our savings over the past 10 years. That's not a joke. That is our actual discounts and savings that we've had through the program. So it's it's quite significant. I mentioned earlier that our discount rate, our savings rate is tied and pinned to our participation, our student participation, the free and reduced lunch program, national school lunch program. It's bounced around over the years. Um we were at a high at 80% off our bills when our free and reduced student population was about 49% of our district.
019So, it's a bit bittersweet that we're seeing those higher discounts because we have so many families that are eligible, but it did provide savings for us. This year, we're coming in at about 70% because the number of families eligible for free and reduced lunch has has dropped back to about 46% of our population. So, we're still on the very heavily discounted uh funding side. For this year, we're going to save $176,000 on -ate. That's at the 70% off. Uh that's total discounts for cat one, for cat 2 services for all the things that we applied for. And then there's another piece to this, too. We continue to do this work inhouse. The majority of my colleagues and the neighbors in Lancaster outsource and bring a consulting firm in to manage this. Uh, I can understand
020why because it is a Byzantine process to work with the feds. Um, but we continue to do this in-house and that's about a $10,000 a year savings by doing this in house and not hiring consultant. Some of those consultants will also take a percentage of your savings. So, they have a base rate to do the work and then they'll take a small fee for whatever they're able to help you save. Um, and again, we sidestep that by doing it all in house. So, 176,000 is what we saved this year. Thank you all for your contributions to the -ate program over the years. I do want to make mention of something we talked about last summer. Uh we didn't just dodge a bullet, we dodged a mortar round, right? This was a this could have been
021a catastrophic hit to us. There was a case that was argued in front of the Supreme Court. It was FCC u so the feds versus an advocacy group a lobbying group called consumers research. Consumers research pushed a case all the way up to the Supreme Court in essence saying that is and it gets a little complicated but essentially their their case was this was a tax that the FCC was not permitted to levy on individuals. All right. So, that's kind of a simplification, but that was essentially what they were arguing in front of the Supreme Court. Fortunately, uh, we ended up winning this, and I say we, the district, right, the program ended up winning 63 where the Supreme Court said, "No, this is really not a tax. This is a fee that the legislation
022enacted and they were permitted legally to to actually do this." But this could have been absolutely catastrophic as you can see. Imagine if going forward next four, five, six, seven years if we would have not been able to receive this funding. So anyway, this is very good news for the program. So just wanted to put a fine point on that. Happy to talk about saving money through a rate. So you're saying on that one that additional discount, it doesn't have any I it doesn't matter how many students are in those schools 50%. So you could have six schools that are educating fewer students than the four that are not designated rural and you would still get the discount. >> It h so the little bit of the bump that we see for because we are
023designated as a rural district is because we have and it doesn't yes it doesn't matter how many students we could have 50 students in a rural school or 5,000 right it all has to do with where is the school located. Fortunately, currently we still continue to have more than 50% of our buildings as designated by US Census as rural. >> Yeah. So, it's strictly the building. It's not the total. >> It is a it is an accident of location. >> Yeah. That's interesting. >> Yeah. >> It's about delivering to the building, not necessarily the individuals in it. Right. That's >> that's precisely it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because again the the core one of the core tenants of this program from way back when was it again put your put your mind into a bug's life
024in 1998 and all the things that were happening back then right so this was the dawn and the genesis of the internet right >> and at that time how were schools connect they weren't I mean the intent was to be able to make sure that every school regardless of location had high speeded internet connectivity >> and what we saw at the what we know at the time is that the Telecommunication providers were not so interested in building out infrastructure to remote locations. Why? Because it's really expensive, right? Yeah. The cost was just prohibitive. So, this was, you know, this was truly an equity program to level the playing field for every single student regardless of of location. >> Yeah. >> Any other questions for Mr. Risinger? Thank you. And you kept us ahead of schedule.
025It actually gave us five more minutes. So, so we will move into item number two and it is Dr. Gail's third quarterly report. >> Yes. Thank you, Dr. Fullton. And actually, this is uh finalizing one of my goals uh for the year, but it's actually been a goal that we've been having conversations that have been webbed into probably many different uh areas and and probably with each board meeting, we've had parts of conversations about this. uh to to go back to uh I do want to just thank you as a board for giving us this goal uh because it has really helped us dive into our not just our short-term planning but our long-term planning and I think we all recognize that we have challenging decisions that we have to make uh when it comes
026to financial decisions when it comes to our facilities decisions uh that impact right now but also down in into the future. So tonight when we're talking about this uh those are kind of the premises that we are looking at and truly how do we help our students not just our students of today but we know that students that will be coming into the district in future years uh we really have to be talking about this as a long-term process. So the goal was really to look at our current attendance boundaries, the implications that what our projects we will be doing will have on those boundaries, but then also what impact not only will it have for our our students, but also the teachers and the educational and support resources that will be needed. And tonight
027want to kind of bring all that together. And as we've been talking about this goal uh throughout the current year, uh we've kind of focused in on four different aspects and they're there at the bottom. And we'll talk about it like where we currently are, uh what our needs and what our growth areas are. And when we say growth areas, like not just physically, but also what are some of those areas that we need to better ourselves at? And then we'll look at it from a three to fiveyear impact uh because some of that will happen uh in that time period. But we also know that this will stretch well into the future. And then how do we plan? How do we prepare? How do we move forward as we're really looking at uh you
028know down the road? What are how are we putting the district in the best position? And again, like I just mentioned, this is a conversation that we continuously have. Uh and for those of you who have been on the board for many years or for a few a short time, we've had those conversations. And it's how do we best situate how do we best prepare our our district and the credit to past boards, credit to past administrators, CFOs, you know, as we've talked uh our our financial rating is very strong. We have a we have a healthy fund balance. Uh we're working to continue to develop our capital uh funds so that we can begin to look at some of these things that we need to be doing now, but also we know that they'll
029have long-term implications for that. So really want to dive into a little bit of our current status. Where are we today in terms of our enrollment, our class sizes, and some of the pressures that we are experiencing as we go through. Uh an interesting number uh should jump out to you right right away on this slide is that our total March enrollment at for this year is 5,249 students. Uh that's the lowest that we've been in quite a while. That's a that's a low number for us. we've been around that 5,500 or so number and that's been a trend for probably about the last 15 years that we've been up you know and each time there's a little bit of fluctuation but we also recognize that our total enrollment this year is down it's a
030it's at a lower rate and on the left hand side of the slide you can see uh where our where our buildings what the current enrollment as of the end of or at the start of of the March uh was and we look at this on a monthly basis Sydney provides us with a report about our enrollments both in our schools and then also outside placements. So we took a lot of that information uh and put it into this. Uh so when we look at this we also recognize that uh a trend that we are seeing is that there has been this dip in our kindergarten our first grade and our second grade enrollment. Now, our kindergarten enrollment has always been a little bit lower. Uh, and that's primarily because we have just a half
031day program. Parents are looking for a 4-day program so that they'll have students that uh go to a private kindergarten and then they come in first grade. And we do see a little bit of increase. We have seen a little bit of increase but really concerning this year uh in terms of numbers was the the numbers stayed low for first grade and then even second grade. So that dip uh for second grade has been in existence for now for two years. Uh use examples uh from years past. Uh the largest in my 26 years, the largest graduating class happened to be uh my older son's class of 2017 and they were around 475. Uh long graduation, long time. >> Shortened uh was in 2020 when my younger son graduated and their class was at 375.
032Graduation was really short that year because we didn't have one. Uh but uh you know when we look at those numbers, 367 is a number that we have not seen in Penman for quite some time now. Is that a temporary dip? Uh, you know, birth rate has been talked about that the birth rate is lower. We do have more students that are in home that are being homeschooled. But when we look at this, the impact that that is having is creating some uncertainty for us as we begin to look out over the next several years of where will these trends be? Will they stay at that low or will they come back up to where we're accustomed to around that 400, 425, 430 number? That being said, we also have continue to have oversized classrooms
033and that's by our district standard where we have classes in K to three that are over 25 and classes four to grades four to six that are over 27. Now, that number of 12 is down from years past or some years we've been close to almost 20 oversized classrooms across the district. And a significant limiting factor in that number is that in certain cases where we could have put a third classroom in a school that had just two classrooms per grade is we don't have the physical space for that third classroom. Uh we we did do that last year with uh or two years ago with uh the class that is now in third grade at PCway. They were a large first grade class. We added a third class in second grade and third grade
034and that'll continue to follow there at PCway because we had the room. But there are other schools. Example is Echelon. Echelon has a large fifth grade class that has been this class that has gone through and we don't have the physical space. So, one of those factors that we continue to look at is where does this leave us? What do we do with this? Um, the new data points that we are really looking at and focusing in on is that right now we have give or take a few 610 students that are either in cyber charter or homeschooled. So, they are Pen Manor students live in the district but are receiving services outside of the district. the 450 homeschool numbers that's doubled since uh precoid numbers. The cyber charter numbers that is actually down a
035little bit but we still have a large number of students who are receiving that education and and as you can jump to the conclusion that's almost $2 million that goes out over $2 million that goes out our door uh to cyber charter schools. And uh so we so when we look at this number we have to be cognizant of this and do we cons so as we consider what is it that's going to happen with this group and we have seen those markers for homeschool students to come back into the district sometimes it happens like going from the transition from sixth to seventh grade or 8th to 9th grade and you know student will enroll in the district at those points. I think one factor that is continuing to keep that number higher. If you'll
036recall two years ago, while we don't have many, this homeschool students do have the opportunity to participate into a quarter of the school day. So, here at the high school, they could take a class or at the elementary level, they could come for a subject area or not. Um, now we'll we continue to keep an eye on this because it, as you can imagine, if all 610 students returned to the district, that would make some overcrowded buildings really overcrowded. Now, fortunately, it wouldn't all be consolidated into one building, it would be spread across the district, but we do have to keep that in mind, especially as we plan for our capacity and what does that look like as we move forward. The other part of where we are, I think when we talk about this
037and and you've seen this when you've been in the in the school buildings, uh our our physical space uh that we are using to serve students has become limited as we've expanded and tried to work within and provide different types of of programming and opportunities for our students. uh you know we're utilizing areas uh that you know having students receive small groupoup instruction in offices uh we have students receiving small group instruction out in the hallways uh really trying to utilize best as we can and I think when we think about this and that's one of those factors that we do need to consider as we are making our plans for future buildings and this is justified but also at the same time I don't think any of it's preferred Uh if you think about
038it from the standpoint of when construction projects were done in the past, we were operating under state restrictions uh in terms of what funding could state funding could come back to the district for. A lot of that was promoted or or I shouldn't say promoted. It was it was uh reimbursed square footage for student education facilities or spaces. So classrooms, we would kind of limit on some of the smaller spaces like the offices and things like that where there wasn't going to be student education, but was part of that building. Now, good thing, bad thing, Plan Con is no longer in existence. It's not being funded for new projects that are coming in. We are still receiving a slow trickle of that money coming back to us. But that does in some cases provide us
039with the opportunity to as we design and go through the planning for some of our newer buildings to make sure that we do incorporate some of this the flexible spaces that we need for the way that we program and the way that we service students. So those are kind of the scenarios of where we are right now. any any questions about kind of as a district our numbers uh our spaces what we are using right now >> I was just curious of the 450 homeschooled students how many of those about are high school versus elementary do you know that off the top of your head >> approximately >> I don't have it off the top of my head but but Dr. Egan is going to look it up. Okay. Come back to that. >> And
040I was curious, how many of them participate take advantage of coming to and getting part of their education at the high school? Various. Are there any that do that at the elementary level? >> There are some here at the high school. Actually, I'll refer to Mrs. Rhodess, the expert. >> Right now, we have three at the high school. Okay. >> And I have one at an elementary school >> that participate in our one of our schools. I have had >> seen an increase in inquiries for next year. >> Okay. All right. >> There's 87 homeschoolers in the high school. >> Okay. >> Contrast that to in second grade alone. >> Okay. >> So 87 the entire high school, 51 in second grade. >> Okay. All right. No, go ahead. Do you have a sense or
041how our neighboring districts compare to the number of students being homeschooled? Like, do we know what LS's numbers are? >> Like, are we in line? >> Yeah, we are the we are the second largest homeschooled district. Eastern Langster County is the first, which is when you look at it proportionately is very a skew because they're a much smaller district than we are, but they have more homeschool students than we do. Uh, but we would be the second largest in terms of numbers, >> but not not in terms of percentage. >> Not in terms of percentage. No. So as we continue through this, as we've been looking at this data and pouring over and considering making considerations to it, you know, it does it does make us think about, all right, what are our needs? What
042do we need to do? What what do we have to make sure that we improve upon? And when we look at this, we've broken it down into four different areas. instructional programming. And really what we're talking about here is as a need, as a growth area, how do we ensure that our instructional program drives the space and not limit our programming because of the physical space? So in other words, does the building adapt and flow because of how we educate students or does the building dictate how we educate students? And we saw that when we were looking at the high school, previous high school was really hindering some of the programs that we wanted to have where we wanted to offer. I mean, we had a dis when we talk STEM, we had a distance
043of a third of a mile between our science department and our teched department in the old building. So, we have to be cognizant of that. What's our instructional programming and how does the program drive the space? We want to make sure that we're optimizing classrooms. So in other words, we're building space to address the current enrollment but also addressing the aging buildings that we do have. Uh as I mentioned to uh Mrs. Kek, we're you know even Mrs. Rhodess the the researcher the the all researcher of all researchers is having problems finding the original deed for Ashelman. The original deed was acquired that land was acquired in 195758. Original building was built in 1959. Mrs. work was not on the board at that time. Dr. Fullerton, >> so when we talk about this, >> you
044can imagine that there are some uh spaces in in in buildings that we need to make sure that we are addressing. The other part that the third part of this is our student services. Again, incorporating the spaces that we have been that have been minimized in the past. You know, dedicating space for our special programming. Uh as Mrs. Scale and I have talked, you know, as we consider new buildings and programs running like an autistic support classroom. In that classroom, what are some specific physical things that we would want to have? Probably the biggest one that Miss Galen will be looking for is a bathroom is is, you know, a self-contained bathroom for students to be able to use. So we want to continue to think about that as well as counseling services and and
045both from the standpoint of our counselors but then also the agencies that we have that come into the schools to service our students. So we want to keep that as a prime consideration and then obviously we want to talk about room to grow because we need to build for the future. Now we're not going to be like field of dreams build it and they will come. I think we're going to be they're coming and we need to build. Um so as we look at those those are the four areas that we have really started to and and really have been planning around and thinking using as our our four four benchmarks as we move forward. So where do we go for three years three to five years? What is it? What's the planning? It would
046be a lot less complicated if we only considered our current position. We know we we see a number of students that are we have a lower enrollment right now. Can we plan for that? And you do see that in some of our neighboring school districts where their enrollment has been declining and some of their buildings are being constructed or renovated to include other programs because their grow their enrollment is not growing. However, we know that we need to look at what is going to happen in the district in the next 3 to 5 years and then also beyond. We've had many conversations about the multiple housing developments that are being proposed and that are being going through the process and whether we can pinpoint it as to a certain number or not, we know that
047there is the potential of bringing significant student growth to our district. The issue with all of this is that all five of these developments that are being talked about right now are concentrated in the northern part of our district already where a significant number of our students are living right now. Uh as these homes are built in our enrollment in northern we have to consider what will happen with our northern elementary schools and matter middle school as we go forward. just so reference and what we're talking about and you can this really does bring it to to light although it's not drawn to scale perfectly. We do know that the five developments are going to happen really in a in probably a 10 mile a square mile uh area that that's here in the northern
048part of our district. So, as we continue to think about this and plan with student success at the center, we must acknowledge that all of our decisions that we make kind of webbed together and build into into really being uh building off of each other. I don't think it's a case where we can make a decision in isolation and think that it's not going to have ripple effects. And that in essence, that was really the root of this goal as we've considered it. So if we make this decision, what does it mean here? What does it mean here? And what does it mean here? And I'll break it down a little bit more as we look at this. You know, fiscal planning, what impact does fiscal planning have on our facility, our ability to do
049phys facility expansion? What does that then mean for when we put a new building in in or when we put a a larger building? What does that mean for our enrollment boundaries? And as we've talked about many times and Mr. has brought up many times. Well, if we build a bu bigger building, we also have to have more teachers in that building, more staff. So, as we look at this, what are those avenues and what are those aspects that we have to consider? Uh, as I think about this, you know, the depiction that we have, I'm sorry, the depiction that we have in this case really shows how they overlap, but this depiction shows those four areas that we are considering and continuously looking at. So, as we go into our smart planning, what do
050we need to do today to prepare for tomorrow? And I think for for all of us when we talk about recommendations when we talk about thinking in the future financial foundation is where we can start because we need to make sure that we're providing and and and being able to meet the needs today but also know that there is this escalation of costs that we need to be prepared for whether it's by the number of students that we have our facilities or just in general the cost of to operate our school district. So when we talk about where are we, let's talk about our our first off in regards to uh looking at our f our our staffing and our our boundaries. So when we talk about our boundaries, this is our current boundary uh
051makeup for our elementary schools. somewhere around that red line going through the district. 66% of the of our enrollment lives in the northern part and we recognize and we see that that's only going to increase as new developments come on on board. So what does that mean for the areas not only north of that line but also in into the south? One factor that we do have to make sure that we consider is not only total enrollment in in schools, but also what is the practice and what does it take to get to those schools. As we've talked about many times, Mic Elementary School is our smallest school in the district. But look at the physical boundaries that we are drawing students from. We could continue to extend that to the north, but then what
052are we doing? We're increasing time on buses. we're increasing them the distance that families have to travel. So at some point we have to say far enough's far enough we can't continue to increase those. But in the northern part is where we really have been utilizing what what Dr. Egan refers to as swing areas. So depending on the enrollment of a of a grade where a new student enrolls that student may go to one or two of elementary schools. For example, there are areas where when student registers, Dr. Egan looks at the third graders in Hambrite, looks at the number of third graders in Central Manor and says, "You'll go to the school with the lowest enrollment." Not because one's better or one's worse. It's just that there's less students in one area versus another.
053I think from now for for us to say that this will these are going to be the boundaries and this is how it will be impacted. It's too early to say definitively. But I think as we look at that northern part of our district, those boundaries will be changed and they will be modified based off of enrollments, based off of the number of students who are living there. I think one of the things that I learned growing up, uh I lived in a district where there were two high schools. I drove past the one high school to go to the high school that I attended another 10 minutes. we'd wave >> politely because they were our rival, >> but I continued past that. Uh so when we think about that, what are some of those
054cases? Where what are neighborhoods? what are sections of the of the district where as students start to enroll where do we want to make sure that they're traveling but also you know doing it in a in a in a fashion that impacts their time their education and best suited for across the district. We also will have to look at our numbers in terms of our middle schools as we build a new middle school and the capacity increases there. What will that impact have on our other middle school in the southern part of the district? Will that boundary begin to shift? Will it move? The yellow area that is on this map is our Letor boundary. And for middle schools, that area has been a swing space. There's been times when half of Leort went to
055Manor, half went to Mardikville. There's been other times when the majority of the students went to Manor. Now we have all Letor students going to Mardikville. Does that continue to to this day? One consideration that we will have to take into factor as we continue to plan in the de development of a new middle school is will we be okay with a middle school that could be twice the size of Mikville. Not a right answer, not a wrong answer, but it's a consideration that we'll have to keep in mind. So our boundaries, this map, I see this map in three to five years looking very different than what it is, especially in the northern part of the district as new developments come online. Smart planning for staffing. Now, when all said and done, when we
056would have our schools at full capacity, we may be looking at needing to hire 25 new teachers. Before you have a coronary, 25 new teachers is at full capacity down the road. Okay? Not today, not tomorrow, but down the road. That is our projections at this point. But it's a practice that we have actually done in other places. And the example that I want to use is Handbright. If you'll recall when Hambrite was our new elementary school that's now 11 12 years old was opened, it was three home rooms per grade level. In 2017 2018 or actually up until then after it was open for one year we housed number of grade levels from PCway and then Konisoga as renovations were taking place in 27 2018 when the renovations were done at the at the
057two other elementary schools in Hambrite only students coming to Hambrite were Hambrite students we had grades one two and three go from three classrooms to four classrooms. The next year we added another another classroom to make it four classrooms in grades 1, two, three, four. And that's how we subsequently added into that staffing. The timing is the timing depending on actual enrollment and new building capacity coming online is going to have an impact on our staffing. But we do recognize that the capacity is going to draw and necessitate that we do have additional teachers. And that's something that we need to be cognizant of as we plan future into the future years. Will it be three years? Will it be five years? I don't know when we will need those numbers, especially as we consider
058those reverse bubble classes of K12 going through fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade at the current size or if they come back into numbers. But we can anticipate that at some point we will need to be adding teachers. The other area is building the fiscal foundation and this is really kind of the takeaway of this. We can control what we can control right now and that is what we are doing in terms of the fiscal foundation. We've been given our act one index for the upcoming school year as ranging from 3.5% to 4.5% as an adjusted index. So at some point as we continue through this process, we need to make that decision of what is the amounts of monies that we need for this year to operate but then also what are
059some monies that we are putting into our uh capacity for our future building projects. We do know from all speculation and all the reports that we are getting is that our act one index will continue to drop the decrease which means our ability to increase taxes will become less and less over the next couple of years. We've done this before. I think we would all go back for those of us who were around in the district. 2016 was a very pivotal year for us as a district because the at that time the board made the decision to have a substantial tax increase. A tax increase we can't do now. Not only just because we don't want to, but because of the fact that we legally cannot do it to that extent, but that laid the
060foundation for the next several years in order to be able to do this building. So, it's almost kind of like that, but yet not to that extent where we would be saying we're increasing taxes by 7%. >> But when we talk about this, if you'll remember some of the direction or or encouragement that we received from Ken Phillips and Lauren Stadel, they have encouraged us to really be preparing for setting aside 1% for our debt services that we will have going into the future years. knowing that that's not easy. As we continue to think about this, why do we act now? We we are in need. We have areas that are at capacity. Our buildings, there are issues in terms of the physical space that we need to address as well as some of the
061services that we are providing with students. Obviously, what we're mindful of is that when we tax, 66% of our revenue comes from our local taxpayers. So we need to be cognizant of who we are receiving that from. I think it's also important that we continue to advocate for our ready tolearn monies because that is the monies that we are receiving from the state that where we are seeing increases for or increases in versus our basic ed and our special ed funding. So in terms of where we are heading, we are continuing or really in the initial stages of our design development for a middle school and then as what our hope would be is about this time next year, maybe a little bit month or two uh more into spring, we would start our construction
062project and then with the completion for the 2930 school year, which would then mean we would then be turning our eyes to Echelman. And then from there, what are our future projects? A lot of information, a lot of things to consider. Uh, and that's why Charlie talked about a little bit. There's a lot of information in that presentation. We'll use it as a reference point as we continue to move forward, but willing to take any questions or have discussion that anyone might have. >> I just want to say, Dr. Gail, we had tasked you with taking us into the future of the district and you certainly did that today. Um, gave us a lot to ponder. I can't even imagine any questions that I would have at the moment without digesting >> uh this. It
063certainly um provides us some food for thought and certainly some reflection on how we want to construct our decisions moving forward. It's a great day to be a comment. >> Any questions from the board? in in keeping with that projected timeline like what what is the next planning part of the design like what what comes next? >> Yeah. So, right now uh Mr. Fory and I we have every other week meetings with our architects uh and and really our most immediate right now is we're doing a field study. If you'll remember, we've we've partnered with Durk and Edson to do that. We should be having those results in the month of April which will then be brought back to the facilities committee so that we can start to consider that portion of it. We did
064do two middle school visits took team of teachers to two places. Uh one first tour was at Mannheim Township uh that they did a new middle school well you would be familiar with it three four years ago I think it opened now. We then spent the afternoon over at Lamp Peter Strasburg Middle School. They're in the midst of a renovation. Uh and then our second visit, we went to Cumberland Valley. Uh they are they have two very large middle schools. Actually are their middle schools are almost the same size as our high school. Uh they finished a new high or new middle school I think it was two years ago and they are beginning the process in the sec in at the second one to renovate those and then we went to Bermudian Springs. So
065the idea is to go there, see different aspects of what our architect has done, the plans, the way they've designed things to get some ideas that we will then incorporate as we have discussions with the architects over the next 6 to 8 months talking about as they work on the design in order to really get to the point where we're ready for construction to begin probably I would say Mr. for a March, April, we will have what is referred to as an act 34 hearing where at that point the board will make the decision about this is the direction that we want to go and then from there then we would have bids put the bids out and then have a bid uh opening and then hopefully you know mid mid to late spring next
066year we would be opening or we would start construction. Just one thing as we look into the future. I know one of the things we discussed in this goal and and you touched on that that like right now we don't have the answer but I think it'll be important as we look specifically into the echelman and next portion of this as people start to build um you know as we open a new echelman and students from crossgates filter that way um I think it'll be important for us to have that data to decide what is next Right. Yeah. Very. And and that's like that northern swap of our district. There's a lot of colors in that now. Right. >> I think it'll become >> three, four very distinct colors. >> Yeah. >> Now, having said
067that, the transitions will happen as students come in or out of the district. We're not going to say to a student, you're in fourth grade at Pekquay. We're going to have you now go to Echelon >> unless it's an absolute necessity. >> Okay? We we've tried to limit those types of disruptions. >> No other questions. Thank you very much Dr. Dale and and team for putting that together. So we'll move to item three, the IU13 core program of services instructional media services. Mr. For you, you want to kick us off? >> Sure. >> We attached the uh highlight sheet. Um I I think the most important thing to see and understand from that is when they talk about this uh general operating budget, this core programming. I think the important thing to see is that
068this represents 1.3% of the IU's total operations, right? The majority, right? So uh 98.7 of the IU's operating has to do with classroom support and those type of things. This is the the very core of of how they operate and you can see that they have been and and this year is not different from previous years have really worked to see how they hold that. You see that the core programming is a 2.4% increase. you see that the instructional media services where they provide services to many of the districts is about a 2.28. And so what we've done is the all of the background to all that is also posted in there. Um and uh you're able to look at that. The vote and the approval of this won't happen till the next meeting. So,
069if there are specific questions that you have now or if there's questions that come up as you look over the materials in the next two weeks, uh myself or Dr. Fullerton as he sits on that board are more than able to get you answers, but this is a very small portion uh that we approve each year. The rest of it is actually the more fee for service type model. Is that Dr. Anything you want to add to that? >> Very obviously very accurate. Um, you will notice on that summary sheet that there is no charge to the districts for being a member of the IU13. That's very rare in the state of Pennsylvania. Um, the other IUs, they pay a fee. Districts pay a fee whether you use IU services or not >> um to
070be a member. So, that's something that uh IU13 prides itself on. I think the amount of increase to these particular budgets for Pen Manor is not even what I would call noticeable uh in the end um at the end of the day. The other documents uh as Mr. Fory mentioned are posted if you want to read a little bit more into what the um uh changes are. But when you're talking about the percentage increase, for example, for the instructional media services, uh it's a 2.28% increase, which is a total dollar costing amount of $22,965. That's the amount of the increase. So, um be happy to entertain any questions. It's a much simpler budget than what we do. So, if there are no questions, I would love to entertain a motion for the placement of this
071budget to be passed on our April 7th board voting agenda meeting. >> So, move. >> Thank you. A second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any further comment or question? All those in favor? >> Nine affirmative votes. >> Thank you. And then we'll move on to item four. Miss Gayen. >> Yes. Um if you think back to um previous months when I was talking to you about autistic support and um taking the two classes from the IU, I spoke about two positions. um the autistic support consultant and the uh BCBA or the board certified behavior consultant. Uh tonight I have the job descriptions for those two uh two positions because they are new here at Pen Manor. Um and what I just wanted to share with you is just a brief overview of those positions. um
072the autistic support and I have talked to you about those previously but um the autistic support uh consultant that is the coach um this person would provide support um to the classroom um in the form of programming um also with evidence-based uh practices ensuring compliance um also modeling for the teacher and for the staff training um the classroom and the building staff uh providing support in the collaborative model between the teacher, the speech therapist, the occupational therapist um and the paras and also serves as like a liaison for the in the for the classroom staff um and the building and um the principal. The board certified behavior analyst or the um BCBA is um supports the team with the student behaviors and how to intervene. They do a lot of observation. They provide feedback. They
073conduct what we call FBAs or functional behavior at um excuse me FBAs regarding the student behavior and they create positive behavior support plans. Um they would also provide training for the paras and the staff in the classroom. They'd also provide training for the staff in the building and they could also provide state um training for the parents. So again, that's an overview of the two job descriptions. Um these again job descriptions are new and that's why I'm bringing them forward to um all of you and I'm looking for these to be pre placed on the uh board agenda next meeting for approval >> and these are very much in line with the job descriptions of the IU classrooms for those same positions. >> That is correct. >> I don't see it. Maybe I missed it.
074What classification or compensation are these positions? >> Like they're part of the professional the bargaining group teacher teacher uh contract. >> Okay. Can you go into a little bit more detail on the choice of amount of days that these individuals will be working? The two the amount of days 209 as opposed to >> and why more than you know typical? >> Yes. So the consultant having 209 that had that Looking at our model currently and the consultants that are working within my team, they also have 209 days and that is um providing the training for again the staff that they're working with and then also working on program development and um also uh well pretty much as training and program development and that is wrapping up our um uh department like expectations at the end
075of the year. Um planning for the you know next year and that's why I'm looking for extra days for the consultant above and beyond what I would be be looking for for the BCBA. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Any other questions? Yes. >> Are those extra days contemplated in the discussion we had about three or four weeks ago, maybe two months ago about the savings. >> Yes. >> So when we say extra days, >> it's not extra days. It's it's we planned on from the beginning. Yeah. >> It's days for the position that we did plan on. >> Yes, they were factored in from the beginning. >> Any other questions? May I have a motion to approve these two job descriptions and place them on our voting agenda for April 7th? >> So move. >>
076Thank you. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any further comment or question? All those in favor? >> Seven affirmative votes? >> Opposed. >> And two opposed. Okay. >> Motion carries. Anything else for the good of our committee of the whole? Seeing none, I will adjourn the committee of the whole and I will call to order the Monday, March 23rd, Pen Manor School District School Board voting agenda meeting. Would you please join me in a moment of silence and the flag salute? Thank you. I pledge algiance 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. The next scheduled meeting of the Pen Manor School Board will be held on Tuesday, April 7th, 2026 following the committee of
077the whole meeting. An executive session was held prior to the committee of the whole meeting for the purpose of discussing student matters and personnel as detailed on the committee of the whole agenda. Committee the whole agenda. Mrs. Rhodess, may we have a roll call, please? >> Sure. >> Mr. Beaks, >> here. >> Mr. her >> here. >> Mrs. Hope >> here. >> Mrs. Kek, we'll be right back. Mr. Lombardo >> here. >> Mr. Warfl >> here. >> Miss Wart >> here. >> Mrs. Naviger >> here. Dr. Fullerton >> here. >> Nine board members present. >> At each of our board voting meetings, we allow our citizens to have two opportunities to address the board. We've arrived at that first opportunity. This opportunity pertains to actions on the board voting agenda. We ask if you have
078any comments, you state your name and your municipality and limit your comments to 5 minutes or less. Do we have any citizens comments at this time? Oh, wait a second. You show up for the first time in six months and you have a comment. >> Oh, okay. Um, so this is more of a question. >> See, you already forgot your name and municipality. >> Um, Shauna Chanelli, Kanos Stoga. Um, this might be because it's a question with an answer type thing, so I might have to talk to you after, but I just kind of wanted to so everyone could hear. Um, when I was teaching, we used to be able to, this was a while ago, we used to be able to call the IU and they would be able to provide for us behavioral
079consultants and things to come in if we had a student we were struggling with figuring out how to best serve that student um, related to behaviors or other things. And I guess I was just wondering like is that something that they don't provide anymore? Um, so maybe I can talk to you about that. Thanks. >> Thank you. And welcome back. Seeing no other comments, Mrs. Kek returning just in time to take a vote. That's okay. >> Drinking water. >> We We all have been there. >> Love to entertain a motion to approve the minutes of our March 2nd, 2026 board voting agenda. Mr. So moved. >> Thank you. A second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any further comment or question? All those in favor? >> Nine affirmative votes. >> Thank you very much. Dr. Gail,
080superintendent report. >> Yes. Thank you, Dr. Fordon. Uh two three updates that I'd like to provide everyone with. Uh this week is actually the end of the third marking period. So it means we're almost uh 3/4 of the way through the school year. Uh the official date is Thursday uh for the end of the third marking period. Uh which actually should be a national holiday. You know why? >> Tell us Dr. Gail. >> It's opening day. >> It is opening day. It's when the Pittsburgh Pirates can still have dreams of the World Series. >> Go Socks. >> Yeah. Uh so we we're you know closing in as you saw on our board opportunities a lot of the end of the year events are starting to be scheduled and it has been a very strong uh
081successful year and we look forward to celebrating all things. Speaking of celebrating I would like to take a moment to congratulate somebody who congrat seems like we congratulate regularly but it's because of the work that she does. uh Pemmaner High School music teacher and Lauren Simitz. On Friday, she was honored with the Citadel Heart of Learning Award. Uh as we know, Lauren is also our high school coral director and director of the spring musical. And for those of us who got to see the show this past week, uh what an outstanding performance and congratulations to the staff, the crew, uh and the the u cast of the musical. But Lauren was honored uh and this honor is for exceptional teachers who inspire their students and make a significant impact on their community. Every year students,
082parents, and colleagues nominate thousands of teachers for the award which cover a sixcount area and winners are chosen based on their dedication, innovation, and commitment to education. This is actually our second straight year of having a teacher be recognized. Uh so congratulations to Lauren uh Mrs. Simuits for the work that she does and being recognized for that. And the other one, hopefully we'll have another chance uh to recognize her, but also this week, I think it's this week, uh Patty Glasser, our secretary for our buildings and grounds department is retiring after o over a decade of service to Pen Manor. And for those of you who have entered the barn or made any contact, know that the quality service and and friendly face that Patty has provided uh and has kept a number of individuals
083in line over there. Uh and that's not just the buildings and grounds workers, that's other people who use that building. Uh we will certainly miss Patty and hopefully she'll oblige and come back when we do recognize our retirees in May. But we uh very appreciative of Patty and all the work that she has done and she will be missed. That's all I have. Dr. Foron. >> Thank you, Dr. Gail. Any questions for Dr. Gail? >> Okay, Mr. Ford. Treasures report. >> Treasures report >> for this evening includes February of 2026. The balance sheet as of February 28th, 2026 shows total assets of 57,965,360.84 84. And as I mentioned last month, we have now received our ready tole learn funding. And so we are basically where we should be at this time of the year. So
084>> minus interest. >> Minus the interest. Correct. Um but tonight there are February bills that are awaiting ratification. >> Not bitter about that at all, are you? >> Well, I think that if you can't do your job, you should pay the consequences. Well, here here >> all I'm going to say on that. >> May I have a motion to pay our bills? >> So moved. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> Thank you. Nobody's jumping at paying our bills this month, right? >> Staff, you're not getting paid. >> That is not accurate. >> What's not accurate? >> We are paying our staff. >> I know we You know that this is going on the internet for the next year. >> You just said that out loud. >> I did. >> In your notes, you are all
085getting paid. >> Okay, we're good. >> No, you're not. >> Miss Wart said so. She wants options. >> I like options. Yes, I like options. >> Uh, we have a motion and we have a second to pay our bills and pay our staff. Is that better? >> Thank you. You are giving me all kinds of reasons to not sleep. Okay. >> All those in favor? >> Nine affirmative votes. >> Thank you. Staff is getting paid. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Let's uh review our our uh agenda for tonight. Item two, A. Any comment or question? >> Item three, A through D. I'd like to pull uh 3B. >> We'll pull 3B. >> And item four, A through H. Any comment or question? Okay. Seeing none, I have a motion to approve item two, letter
086A. >> So move. >> Thank you. A second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any further comment or question? All those in favor? >> Nine affirmative votes. >> May I have a motion to approve item 3B? >> So moved. >> Thank you. A second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any further comment or question? >> All those in favor? >> Seven affirmative votes >> and opposed. and two opposed. >> Motion carries. May I have a motion to approve item three, A, C, and D? >> So moved. >> Thank you. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any further comment or question? All those in favor? >> Nine affirmative votes. >> And may I have a motion to approve item 4 A through H? So move. >> Thank you. A second. >> Thank you. >> Any further comment or
087question? >> All those in favor? >> Nine affirmative votes. >> We have now reached the second opportunity for our citizens to comment on any district business. Same rules apply. We'd ask you to list uh state your name and your m municipality and keep your comments to five minutes or less. Do we have any citizens comments? >> My name this time Sha Chanelli Konos Stoga. >> Um good evening. It's been a while since I've approached the podium, but each time I do, I consider it a privilege, as not everyone around the world is afforded this opportunity. It is also a privilege to address each of you each time with thankfulness andor to appeal to you with items for consideration or change. As a taxpayer in the district, as a mother with school-aged children, and as a
088former educator and person who cares deeply about children and education. Although I might not agree with each of you on something, I agree with most of you on fundamental things that are a great of great importance to me. You are in your seats for a reason and that's because you represent a certain set of values that match the people who voted for you in the district. So, thank you for your com uh for committing your time, energy, skill sets, etc. as well as for making sacrifices to serve the Penmanor community. Additionally, thank you for your past decision to record and make available the school board meetings. It has been extremely helpful to me in my busy season. I know of others who feel the same way. As I've watched some of the recordings of these
089meetings in my physical absence and as I consider what is going on in some of the communities around us, I see some people appealing to school boards such as yourselves to cease counsel from the Independence Law Center as well as to revisit, revamp, or ditch policies such as 123.4 sexbased distinction in athletics and 216.2 student records name, sex, and gender identity. I know I've said it before, but tonight I want to say that though the policies are not perfect, I'm still thankful for these policies and the hours of thought, dialogue, and effort that you put into them. I'm also thankful for the wisdom you gleaned from both the district solicitor and the ILC. I and many others supported and still support the ILC and its delegation as spe special counsel. They have a wealth of
090experience with difficult issues such as those addressed in the aforementioned policies which we can benefit from at no cost to the taxpayer. And just like any other advice, it can be utilized or not as you see fit. Thank you again for maintaining the ILCS special counsel and for writing and keeping policies such as the ones mentioned. Please continue to consider how we can be loving and compassionate without compromising the truth. >> Thank you. starting the clock. Good evening everybody. I'm Bill Klein. >> It's a pleasure to see old members. Welcome to the new members. I wanted to take a second to reinforce uh things we've talked about over the last year plus but I thought were important at a time when a few boards across the country unfortunately being one of them continues their destructive
091my opinion behavior. I wanted to reinforce four principles that I think are important to us here and I believe you already feel the same. And I also am here to represent the silent majority to give you confidence that we are fully supportive of these uh four principles. Uh principle number one uh retain experienced legal counsel to help us navigate through today's choppy challenging social waters. Uh therefore, simply stated, Pen Manor must retain ILC services in the silent majority's opinion. Principle number two, uh continue to adopt a parent first approach with every issue that you encounter. Parents have the legal right to be informed first and they must be involved in every step of decision of decision making. Principle number three, gender decisions involve a small percentage of our students, but are nonetheless very important and
092they should be very personal family matters requiring private and professional help. This point of view is contrary to what some in the teachers union and others might espouse who see this issue as an opportunity to promote a personal belief or a social agenda. But I'm convinced the personal sensitive nature of this requires these matters be kept out of the public and dealt with on a family and personal level. Principle four, please don't laugh at the first one. There's two. The first one is men cannot have babies. I'll come back to that in a moment. And second, biological males do not belong in girls sports nor in girls locker rooms or bathrooms. Now, why do I mention men cannot have babies? I realize how ludicrous this sounds, but we actually had a Stanford educated female lawyer
093testify in front of Congress that men can have babies. So, while that's insane, we need to be crystal clear in the on this point to make sure that someone doesn't try to use that particular example in some sort of way to promote a social agenda here. And then finally, ensuring biological males should not participate in girls sports. You're already there, but let me reinforce it by an experience I had this weekend. Uh, one of my five granddaughters, eight grandchildren total, but one all five girls, is a 17-year-old, Zadeie. She's a junior in a Northern Virginia high school. She's also in the top five in her state in two track events, 400 and 800. She had a great meet this weekend and said to me after a race pop up in states state competition that's coming.
094I don't think it's fair if I lose to a boy who decide who then who decided he was a girl. I worked too hard to get here. And my answer to her was very simple and I know you all are on the same point of view. Don't worry Zadeie, I won't allow that to happen. And frankly, it's not going to happen in Pen Manor School District either. And I appreciate your support on that. So, finally, I hope these principles resonate with you. Uh, they also resonate with a majority of Penn Matter parents and residents. And since we elected you to represent us, these principles form the basis for how we'd like you to continue voting in the future. It's good to see all of you again. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Do
095we have any other citizens comments? Seeing none, do we have any board comments? Okay, next meeting is two weeks from tomorrow. Hope everybody has a great two weeks and we'll see you on Tuesday the 7th.