001We'll call this meeting to order. Please stand for 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. Mr. Rao, roll call please. Mr. Adrian? Here. Mrs. Binsay? Here. Mr. Briegel? Here. Mr. Cammelletti? Here. Mrs. Schotary? Here. Mrs. Kennedy? Here. Mr. Lynch? Here. Mr. O'Neill? Here. Mr. Soder? Present. All members present. Thank you. The superintendent's comments? I'd just like to move into the celebration of excellence, please. Okay. Excellence in education in Peters Township School District. All throughout March, McMurray Elementary is celebrating music. The morning announcements include music trivia, students are learning about different music across the decades, and last week our amazing staff musicians brightened up our students' arrival with
002some music of their own. Thank you to our talented staff for sharing their love of music with our students this month. The McMurray Readathon was a huge success, and last week students learned the grand totals from all their hard work. Overall, grades four and five read for more than 441,000 minutes and raised $23,475.28 for PTA events throughout the school year. Grade level assemblies where classroom and individual winners were announced took place on Thursday, with top readers and fundraisers having the chance to cover their principals with silly string. It was an amazing celebration of hard work, teamwork, and a love of reading for our students. Many thanks to the PTA for organizing this fantastic effort. The annual Library Arts Cafe took place at the high school, celebrating art in its many forms in our school. Daily
003themes such as media day, visual arts, theater and choir, and open mic day showcased the very talents of our students. Classmates could visit the cafe in the Black Box Theater during lunch and study halls to enjoy the art and buy a snack to support the school library. Students at Pleasant Valley had an amazing readathon as well, reading for a grand total of 267,232 minutes. Every student who turned in a reading log was recognized with a medal in homeroom, with special prizes for top readers and fundraisers being announced on PVTV. Students and families raised more than $19,700 for PTA-sponsored activities and events for the students. The wild world of animals visited the Bower Hill First Graders. The presentation focused on different animal classifications and habitats, perfectly complementing their wild animal unit. Huge thanks to the PTA
004for sponsoring the event. Officer Jamie Hughes met with McMurray Student Council recently to talk about what he does as a police officer and school resource officer. They learned about his background and all the ways officers can serve our community. Most importantly, he reminded them that his priority is to keep our students and staff safe so they can learn, do fun things like student council, and enjoy being a student at McMurray. This month, we are also celebrating the High School Unified Bocce team on another wonderful season. They recently took home the gold in the Allegheny West Division Playoffs. Our High School Forensics team competed at Moon Area High School recently with impressive results. Congratulations to the team members above, who all officially secured their spots in the state finals. Our High School students and staff recently
005took part in the Polar Plunge and raised more than $2,100 for Special Olympics. It was a cold day, but events like these warm our hearts. Our Middle School Forensics team also competed in the League Finals and All-Stars recently. Congratulations to the Middle School students above on their awards. This month, our High School students in the Moonshot Grant Project visited Duolingo to continue their work participating in a think tank model to examine how human-centered AI can be used to reimagine the K-12 school system. The students above joined students from districts around the region to look at real-world applications of AI, design, and innovation. Congratulations to our Middle School Math Counts team, who took second place in the regional competition. The team members are listed above. In the individual competition, Clifton Parker placed second and Kyle Waters
006placed third, both qualifying for the state competition at the end of March. Hannah Brewering finished seventh and was the highest-ranking female in the competition. The Middle School welcomed Dr. Riker Minch from Pleasant Valley Animal Clinic for a career chat this month. Dr. Minch talked with students about his career, training, and what education he needed to become a veterinarian. Throughout the year, professionals visit the Middle School to give students an opportunity to learn more about professions in a variety of areas. This month, our Middle School students took to the stage in their performance of Finding Nemo Jr. As they got ready for opening night, they welcomed our fifth grade students and third grade from Pleasant Valley to come see a dress rehearsal. It was an amazing weekend of performances. Congratulations to the entire cast and crew.
007The Bower Hill Best Buddies got together to play some games and make new friends recently. Joined by representatives from our High School Best Buddies, they divided into groups to meet some new people and enjoy some fun games before classes began. Eastern Township seniors Allison Griffith and Joshua Zeng have been named finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program. Allison and Joshua are among an elite group of students from across the nation being considered for these scholarships. These students have been selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies. Our winter sports have had a great season. A special shout out to high school junior Ava Komoroski, who is now a two-time WIPEO Class 3A Girls 100 yard freestyle champion. Congratulations to all of our swimmers who competed in the
008state level competition recently. Their results are above. We have an exciting sports week ahead with the High School girls basketball team taking on South Fayette Tuesday night in the PIAA Semifinals game. Also tomorrow night, our varsity hockey team will take the ice against Seneca Valley in the Penguins Cup Finals. Best of luck to both of these talented teams. This month, the middle school introduced their first activity period of the year. For the last hour of the school day on March 13th, students had the chance to branch out and try something new. Students had a chance to learn new skills and explore different activities ranging from chess to baking and from self-defense to pickleball. Public comment on agenda and other items. Peters Township School District values parent and community engagement. Speakers who sign up in advance
009for policy 903 will be allotted a maximum of five minutes for public comment. All other speakers will be allotted a maximum of two minutes for public comment. Part of our communication effort involves taping and sharing videos of our board meetings to help our community stay informed on matters before the board. Any guest speakers or members of the public who are taking part in the meetings are reminded to come to the podium and use the microphone when making their comments so that they may be heard by those of us in the room and those who are watching. All speakers are reminded to state their name and residence status for the minutes. We do have three speakers signed up for this evening. Speaker number one, sixth grade student, Lily D'Antonio. Hi, thank you for having me and
010giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. So I am here to personally hand off a donation to the Peters Township Best Buddies Chapter. This donation comes directly from the Childhood Inclusion Pageant, which is an event I started at 10 years old to start to raise awareness for individuals with disabilities and to get our youth involved in youth leadership and really to join our community through celebration of these individuals. This year we were able to raise over $5,000 to go back to local charities, some of which will be coming back to our Peters Township Best Buddies Chapter. I chose the middle school because as a current middle school student, I am actively seeing the results of this work. We have a phenomenal director of the program and I know this donation will be put to great
011use. So again, thank you for having me and I can't wait to see what this donation does. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for your efforts. Thank you. Thank you for your efforts. The second speaker, Mr. Bob Donnan. Hello Board. I was at the Township Council meeting on last Monday night and I learned of their plan to put cell towers or develop an ordinance to put cell towers on, I think, all school properties or at least most of them, as well as in all the public parks. So I just wanted to give you a heads up early on that. Mr. Lauer said it might take 30 days to develop that ordinance and then there should be a public hearing on that. So I gave everyone one of these handouts and what you see on
012those pictures, the thing that really got me involved in the cell tower issue initially, other than my wife waking up early in the morning because maybe some RF was getting into the bedroom, you know, whether it's a cell phone or whatever. But it's this tree issue, the top left picture there where you can see that a 16 year study in Germany and they found out the cell mass would start to burn the side of one side of a tree that was closest to the cell tower and eventually a lot of the trees would decline and have to be removed. And then on the right there you see that top, the two cell mass that are already in front of the middle school, they're on top of those utility poles and I have a small $150
013RF meter and they both give off real strong RF signals. The middle school is already getting hit with a lot of RF from those two cell mass. And then the two pictures below that are up in Peterswood Park when they when they stuck that cell tower in there and if you look at the picture right below that of the radiation pattern of a cell tower, you see most of the most intense signals straight out. So that one actually shoots straight at that upper playground in Peterswood Park and that also has very high readings. And then at the bottom, those are three pictures of the 350 foot cell tower in upper St. Clair. And actually the readings around it are minimal to none. So, I think the plan the township is talking about putting in cell
014towers that are under 200, 200 feet or less. And the problem with that is that there's a lot less restriction on towers of that height, as opposed to ones higher than that, like no environmental impact study, etc, etc. So then, leafing back into that, why focus on school properties? I found a couple of these websites today that really focus on this and have some great suggestions for they're trying to zone away from cell towers around schools, not add cell towers to school properties. So why focus on school properties? School districts have a legal and ethical duty to protect student health, safety and long-term liability exposure. Children are considered more vulnerable to cell tower emissions because studies find they absorb higher levels of cell tower radio frequency, RF radiation, and their developing brains are more sensitive.
015While federal law limits local governments from regulating wireless facility solely based on RF radiation health concerns, school districts can control what happens on property they own. So then it goes to a list of four things you can do. Refuse to lease land for cell towers, decline to renew existing leases, require independent RF radiation assessments, and establish stricter leasing standards. And as they point out, I highlighted in yellow, the best time to act is before a proposal is on the table. So that would be now, basically. And in the first part of that, we found some school districts that have acted already, like Los Angeles Unified prohibits new cell tower installations on school grounds. Palo Alto Unified actively limits cell tower placements after community feedback. One in Virginia, strict regulations, Bar Harbor, Maine, increased setback distances
016to 1,500 feet, based on local ordinances. Montgomery County, Maryland, stopped installing cell towers on elementary school properties due to health concerns. California banned new towers and lease renewals on school properties. Maryland terminated lease agreements with cell tower companies, that's Prince George's. And in Oregon, did not renew contracts. Okay, my time's up. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker this evening, Mr. Sam Perlmutter. I do not see Sam. All right. President's comments. Executive sessions were held on March 2nd, March 11th. Oh, I'm sorry. Any other speakers? Okay, seeing none. President's comments. Executive sessions were held on March 2nd, 2026. March 11th, 2026, immediately prior to this meeting to discuss personnel matters. New business. Any new business before the board? Seeing none, business office. Recommendation, consider a motion to approve business office recommendations as follows. So moved. Second.
017Any discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Board committees, personnel, Michaudry. Recommendation, move to appoint Mark Elphinstone as the athletic director for Peters Township School District pursuant to the Act 93 compensation plan and on terms and conditions approved by the solicitor. Second. Any discussion? Public comment? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Michaudry, anything else? Lose my report, Mr. O'Neill. Thank you. Buildings and grounds, a couple recommendations here this evening. First, move to approve the replacement of the walk-in cooler at McMurray Elementary by controlled climate under COSTARS contract 0000187236 in the amount of $16,000. This project will be funded by the food service account. Second. Any discussion? Probably the same question for all of these. Was this at the end of its life? Was there some problem or
018malfunction? Is this expected? Yeah, these items are at the end of their life at the elementary schools. So these would be on replacement. This would be funded through the food service fund. As we talked about it, the finance meeting food service account has to be used. Anything, any monies or funds in food service have to be used towards food service upkeep. And these four items fall under that. Thank you. Is this a surplus that developed just in one year, two years? The surplus actually developed going all the way back to the COVID. During COVID, there was grant opportunities, federal monies. We signed up for that. We received it. There was one round that went to every district in the country. They had money left over because not everybody signed up. They actually did two additional
019rounds of funding. That kind of led to a surplus in our food service accounts that thankfully let us do some of these upkeeps on some of this equipment. Any further discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. All right. Several more of these to go through. Move to approve the replacement of the walk-in freezer at McMurray Elementary by controlled climate under COSTARS contract 0000187236 in the amount of $20,050. This project will be funded by the food service account. Second. Discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Recommendation four, move to approve the replacement of the walk-in cooler at Pleasant Valley Elementary by controlled climate under COSTARS contract 0000187236 in the amount of $13,900. This project will be funded by the food service account. Second. Discussion? Comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed?
020Motion passes. Recommendation five, move to approve the replacement of the walk-in freezer at Pleasant Valley Elementary by controlled climate under COSTARS contract 0000187236 in the amount of $17,200. This project will be funded by the food service account. Second. Discussion? Comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. And finally, move to approve the purchase of a two-door reach-in freezer beverage air model number HF2HC-1S from Great Lakes Hotel Supply for Pleasant Valley Elementary in the amount of $7,100. This purchase will be funded by the food service account. Second. Any discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. That is all I have this evening under Buildings and Grounds. Education, Mr. Briegel. Thank you, Mr. O'Neill. We had an Education Committee meeting on March 2nd, and I move to approve a three-year lease agreement with Howard
021Technology Solutions for 687 Lenovo TS500E G4 Chromebooks and 339 Acer Travelmate B3 Spin12 laptops at an annual cost of $207,621.08. The items will be leased through CoStar's IT Hardware Contract 003, TAC Echo 22, TAC 572. Second. Any discussion? I have a couple comments. So I know that we sent a survey out to the community. I think the reception was a little bit mixed on that. I'm hopeful that we can still move forward with some sort of working group, the way we did for the cell phone working group, which I think was a great success to hear from everyone. You know, we're voting tonight just for some Chromebooks in the amount of $200,000, but I'm looking at this from a bigger picture perspective. Our 2026-2027 tech budget is $806,000. If you factor in Canvas and IXL,
022it takes us up to $900,000. I think we need to have the discussion about these Chromebooks for the younger kids. One of the teachers said, is the juice worth the squeeze? And that really resonated with me. I think that we've got to look at that when they're spending seven minutes a day on these. The flip side of that is we need more data, because otherwise, are we throwing good money after bad if these aren't helping our kids learn? So I'm really hopeful, and I think maybe now's the time to start, because I also kind of rested on this, and then the vote came up, and computers need to be replaced. But I'm hopeful that following this meeting, we can get things going with the working group. Yeah, I'll just second what Alex said. I think
023that further discussion needs to be had on technology based on some of the survey feedback that we got. Like, it's definitely a conversation we have to continue having, so. Yeah, I would echo those comments, Alex and Sarah. And it's a reminder to my school board partners that we have a suspense tomorrow to me on the next round of our goals, and if that's something you want to tackle as a group next year, that would be a great venue to do so. So thanks. Just a few comments as well. I mean, I do think we'll obviously keep this discussion going. I mean, I guess I'd ask the administration for at the lower levels, like K-1 and K-2, take a look and see. We did get some feedback in terms of parents not liking the kids coming
024home with computers. So I realize that it's probably a time consuming effort, but if you could look at that. But we also have the, I mean, I think we've all seen. We've gotten a lot of emails on this. I mean, I'll just say I've seen the benefits of the computers with my kids. I do think they are very worthwhile. I do think at the, like K-1 and K-2, it's worth taking a look because I do remember as my kids being kindergartens carrying a heavy computer with them. I think it's something worthwhile to look at. We do have the survey. Actually, since there's a fair amount of people here this evening, do we want to put the results up? Do we have that? Or would that? And I mean, I think we might as well get
025them out so people can see the results. I want to thank you. We had really good response. So in a public school, the percent return, the response to the survey was in the very good category. I'm sorry if you chat GBT, what's a good survey response for for parent surveys for your school districts. Thank you, everybody who filled them out. Okay. All right. We'll release this so people can see us. This is just really good responses. Yeah. Yeah. Overall, again, it's a fair amount of respondents and, you know, we have questions on there in favor of eliminating the one to one. Yes versus no off doubt. Yes versus no. And then the question three time spent on the computer. And the thing for me, I took out of there was every school was above 50
026percent and just right on time. But I'd say let's release these people can see them. And since it's hard to read from back there, I definitely understand. So we'll get this out there for everyone. Just one final comment kind of reiterating. I was actually I wasn't surprised by the results of the survey, but I do think it is telling when, you know, I think a lot of people we've heard from the community. And as I kind of mentioned last week in one of our subcommittee meetings, this is a very multifaceted issue. And it is something, you know, the board is taking serious. So from a budget perspective, you know, the boat today. But I do think there's some qualitative things that, you know, take into effect, you know, taking them home at night, taking them
027home during the summer. You know how much and what for they're being used for because, you know, you can kind of see I think there's enough people that are in favor of keeping them. But they also think, you know, there's too much, too little. So they see the value. But I do think there's a lot of additional stressors that parents are asked of them as a parent kids coming home with Chromebook. I do understand some of the requirements that we are putting on the community. So one of the things when we look at this, we're always looking to improve our operations. We know that our instructional package and again, that that's you know, you can't piece out one one part of it. So we have excellent teachers who use the tools that they're giving to
028get the results that we get the top in the states. We do it on a very good return on investment. We have an incredibly low budget as compared to our peers. One of the things that I learned that was interesting to me from this survey and what I've also heard is that the team is already looking at some of the feedback about it. It's very doable for us to just have K and one computer stay in the classrooms. This is, you know, it solves the issue of them going back and forth. Also, these are our oldest computers, saving wear and tear. And I make sense. We're going to be talking with our teachers. And again, I defer to them. They are the experts in the classroom. They are the ones who are giving us the
029results that we're getting about, you know, what is the benefit of just keeping them in the classroom at grade two versus going home? I will defer to them. They are the experts before we make any recommendations. But that is something that I think that is very easily doable. Saves wear and tear. It's responsive to parents and any parent in K and one who might want to take it home. Just have a procedure where you are able to sign it out. So I think that we have options that will make it just a very smart tool and being responsive to our parents. Dr. French, I don't disagree with that, but I think one thing that we should all keep in mind is, especially during the cold weather months, if the students don't take them home at
030any grade, then I'm assuming that would impact their ability to participate in an FID day. So only a teacher would ask that Mr. Regal, right? That's on your mind. And I'm glad you did, because I was going to comment on that. It's perfect timing right now because we are up for rewriting our FID plan. And so we can write it however we would want. And if we decide not to have the, again, the FIDs are a very small part of this. And I never want something that occurs two or three times a year to drive an instructional decision. So what we would do is simply just, we would be able to write, that we would be able to send packets home and have the state approve that for us. So it's good timing right now.
031We're in the process of redoing the FID plan. So I think that would be a discussion that we would, we could write it as such. And there are some districts who do that. So I know that the PD would approve that. Okay. Thank you for considering that. That would come back. We would probably want to have a discussion in the Education Committee when we're doing our plan, because I would want to, again, talk to the teachers. There's a lot of moving parts for that. We have agreements with our staff. And I would really, I would want their feedback and their expertise. Again, they're the ones doing the work and getting the results for us. Thank you. Question. Do you know, does the state require that a district have a K-12 one-to-one program to be able
032to do FID days? No. And then, Alex, what would be the next steps for forming a working group for this? I think why don't we have an Education Committee meeting and go through that process and then see what comes out from there. Let's sort of, once the administration has a plan of some of the tweaks they want to have, let's discuss this Education Committee and see where we feel we need to go from there, if that makes sense. Timing-wise, Rolf, when does the Education Committee usually meet again? We could take a break, I think. I'm going to pass that one to Dr. Murphy. We need to have one before the April board meeting to talk about potential new courses. And I thought we could, there's one textbook that would be a month early, but we
033already know what it is, so we could kill two birds with one stone there. Do you have any dates in mind? Are we discussing those at the end of the meeting? It would be the first two Mondays of April, whichever, April 6th or 13th. Okay. We need to schedule it right now, the 13th perhaps. Unless you want to wait until the end of the meeting. I'm fine if we want to schedule that. If, will, I guess, does that give you enough time to have things in play? I mean, we still have that Education Committee meeting, just, will you have, I guess we can discuss as we get close to that Education Committee meeting if we're going to have this discussion at that one or a subsequent meeting. I mean, they have to have their plan
034in place first. So what's everybody's preference then, April 6th or April 13th? We are. April 13th if we get an opportunity to finish the second request. That would give us a little more time. That's right, because Peter's is all for spring break that Monday, aren't we, then that's probably a bad day. Students are off, but staff's working. All right, so we'll go with April 13th. 6, 630, what time? 6. April 13th at 6, got it. That way we get a 6 in there somehow. Okay. No, I appreciate everyone's comment. Any other board comment? Of course, yes. Public comment. All right, Mr. Rao, roll call, please. Mr. Briegel. Yes. Mr. Camilletti. Yes. Mrs. Schotary. Mrs. Kennedy. No. Mr. Lynch. Yes. Mr. O'Neill. Yes. Mr. Soder. Yes. Mr. Adrian. No. Mrs. Binsay. No. Motion passes. 6-3. Thank
035you, Mr. Rao. And Mr. O'Neill, I think that concludes my report this evening for now. Thank you, Mr. Briegel. Finance, Ms. Binsay. Thanks, Alex. We had a finance committee meeting on March 9th. We had a presentation of the audit report and looked at the preliminary budget. I only have one recommendation. Move to accept the 2024-2025 school district audit, including the single audit report prepared by HOSAC, SPECT, Metzl and Wood LLP for fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025, as presented. Second. Any discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Ms. Binsay, anything? The audit was a great read. I agree. That's all I have tonight. Thanks, Alex. Perfect. Thank you. Ms. Kennedy, policy? Yes. We had a policy meeting held on March 9th, 2026. This agenda includes the first reading of the following
036policies. Section 100 programs and below. Section 200 pupils and below. Section 300 employees below. Section 800 operations. You have to read all the policies. Oh, my gosh. I already did that last meeting if you want to go back in. Oh. People are messing with me now. Okay. And then I did want to talk about the self-unworking group that we had. Was there a second on that? Oh, sorry. Second. Oh. We're not voting. It's just a first read. Okay. Never mind. Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. I think there was a policy that, Kathleen, you had suggested language change on. Can you guys remind me which one that is? It was the current events policy 119. It was under definition. So green is what was Kathleen's suggested language. I just want to make sure because
037there's black line and then red and then green. Or did it not get changed yet on paper? No, it should have. I think it's on 119. The pink, I believe, is what we had at the meeting and I think the green is what is being recommended now. Yes. Under definition. Okay. I'm going to continue on. The cell phone working group we held today at 430. We had 33 people attend out of the 36. It was a great working group, a lot of good conversation. Some of the key points that we came across, we basically segmented out the people who came into three groups based on their surveys, whether they did not want cell phones in the group, they wanted cell phones in the group, or they were neutral. As a collective group, we came up
038with two key points from each topic to bring on to our next working group. So the no cell phones, they were concerned about safety and socialization. So safety being if their kids are being filmed in school, if there's pictures taken in school, some of the key topics came up from the safety. And then socialization is just like, you know, you sit at a cafeteria table and you actually talk to your friends versus texting or being on your cell phone all the time. The people who wanted cell phones in favors, the two collections of key points were enforcement of roles. And they talked a lot about they were more concerned about no cell phones K through 8 and 9 through 12, having more cell phone access. But they wanted to make sure that the roles were
039being forced by administration teachers and the kids knew exactly what they were supposed to do with the cell phone policies. And then they want their kids to be responsible for communication. So as they stated, cell phones aren't going to go away. Technology is not going to go away. And they want to give their kids in those older grades the responsibility to know what's right and what's wrong with a cell phone and have them make those decisions versus other communities. And then the neutral group talked about accountability, consistency and enforcement. And that was throughout the teachers administration and also the students having accountability, consistency and enforcement. And then they were also concerned about distractions in the classroom. So if their phone was going off and they weren't paying attention to lesson and stuff like that. So
040those were the three or the six key points that we will be taking into the next cell phone working group on April 20th at 430. So again, very excited about the cell phone working group. I've heard good feedback already and I think everyone enjoyed it. All right. Thank you. Will you have the mic anything on PSBA? No. Okay. All right. Western area. The next joint operating committee meeting is next Wednesday, March 25th, 2026. And I'm going to turn it over just a few minutes for Alex because she went to the last meeting a month ago. Yeah, I had my first meeting at Western area. It was great. I haven't been there before at all. So I had a nice tour from the principal Mr. Pertel. Most of it was executive session information. But it was
041really nice to kind of get my feet wet and meet people and happy to help out whenever you need me to. To mention that our PTSA at the high school is going to provide goodies to the teachers at Western area. So I thought that was very generous. Great. One thing I apologize. They have a fish fry that is very popular. I figured I'd mention it. It's only for lunch. So if anyone has an opportunity to get over there, they have a very famous fish fry apparently. And I believe that concludes our report. Okay. All right. Great. Moving into superintendent's agenda. Thank you. Requesting action on certificated personnel items number one through five. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Public comment? Seeing none. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. I am requesting action on non-certificated personnel
042items number one through six. So moved. Second. Discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. I am requesting action on extra duty personnel and programs items number one through five. So moved. Second. Discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Requesting action on professional conferences trainings and trips one item only. So moved. Second. Discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. I am requesting action on educational programs and student activities items number one through three. So moved. Second. Discussion? Public comment? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. I am requesting action on other items number one through eight. So moved. Second. Discussion? Just like to accept that amazing donation and her amazing work from Ms. Dantonio, if I'm not mispronouncing that. That's a great job. Thank you. Thank you.
043On number six, Parent Square. So I had inquired about this and it looks like this new platform for communication and website is going to be about a $10,000 a year increase on what we're currently paying for this. I guess I was just curious, how long ago did we decide to make this change and I'm guessing how many different kind of games are in town for this? Is the only option to stay where we were or this company? I can have Shelley Belcher come up and speak to it and then also Mr. Ryle may want to add, it's not an apples to apple comparison regarding the funds because the program for Parent Square is more robust and if we did the add on features it would, there are other things that at that Parent Square we
044can go out of the business of doing that will get the numbers closer. But Mrs. Belcher can explain the kind of the why before this. This is this migration is additional work for us and while we don't like to run towards additional work, we're trying to solve a problem that we have in communication with our families and our staff. So I was here for the past probably five years, six years Adam and I have been looking at a website upgrade. Our website is stable, it's reliable but it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. It also does not have a nice cell phone facing front for our parents and most people access our website that way. We can get it, it costs more money. So we've been looking at that but there have been
045other priorities in the district in terms of technology, in terms of big things going on. One thing that has happened with School Messenger which is the other side of it which is our parent communication, parent and staff. We use that for emails, for automated callings, for everything from our day to day emails to emergencies. In the past two years, School Messenger has been a really reliable thing. We've probably been customers for a dozen years. They were acquired by Power School and service fell off and so we started to have problems and some of our teachers in the room can probably attest to the fact we've had a lot of trouble. People aren't getting calls, emails are being severely delayed. Tried to work with them for about two years. We did kind of a targeted test
046with some of our people who weren't getting messages. They kept saying, they tweaked things, they tried to change things and it just never got any better. In the end they said to us, it's an end provider, it's whoever your cell phone is. That was the problem. I don't know if that's really the answer because it wasn't a problem previously. It had really historically been rock solid, reliable for us. It's one of the reasons I liked it even though it didn't offer a lot of bells and whistles. And so we just start to look at these different things. We look at what other districts are doing, we get recommendations from other districts and so earlier this year actually Mr. Swinshot came to us. His wife was using this product in another district from the back end,
047from the staff side and really loved it. We also have staff members here who were using it from a parent side and loved it. Talked to other administrators who'd use it, they loved it. And it's really a nice factor because it takes away that possibility of your carrier not being a problem because it's app based as well. So it's replacing what we have and then amplifying it. And so we have a lot more reliability, a lot more options for our parents, a lot more things we can do with it. So it's not exactly apples to apples, we will get a lot more for it. So parents essentially have the option to have an app for the way they can communicate with the district and it'll be a one stop shop. Their emails from me, their
048emails from their teacher, their emails from their coaches, it'll all be in one place. It's almost like I call it like a Facebook type interface just for the district. And so they can look at it from there, they can search through, they don't have to search through hundreds of emails looking for what I might have sent. Everything is searchable and accessible that way. It works with different languages. Parents can still make every preference they want. They can say they want text, they can say they want emails, they want calls. Parents still control that just the way they do, but it just gives us a lot more functionality and it also gives us that app that again, our current services could give us but we'd have to pay more. So I think that's part of the
049price difference you see between them. A lot of other functions and Mr. Swinshok can attest to that. We've tested it out. We think it's going to be a really great thing for our families just to give us a lot more functionality for our teachers as well. And then some other things can come down the road with it as well. One follow up question I had is if Messenger got bought by Power School and then service went downhill, do we need to be worried about Power School? That I can't answer for you. So we run Power School differently than most organizations. We actually are not, we're not hosted like another system. We actually house our data here on premise. So we're responsible for maintaining the performance of Power School Sys ourselves and we don't anticipate any
050type of issues like that. Power School itself is pretty stable. I'm going to knock on wood just to make sure it stays that way. So we've been successful with that piece of it. The only other part that we have that is cloud based with Power School is Power School enrollment and that is a completely different product that was rebranded just like School Messenger was. I think part of the issue with that support level is that it used to be a much smaller shop and getting support was pretty easy. And now that it's part of this very robust suite of products, it's just a little bit harder to get to an actual person to work with whenever you have an issue. All right. Thank you. Do you guys by any chance know what the additional cost
051on our current system would be with the bells and whistles you're looking for? I believe we looked at the last time we looked at eSchoolView adding it was about $5,000 to add that app portion of it. We haven't priced it out currently. Mrs. Kennedy, I did a little bit of research on this because I have somewhat of a technology background. I think one of the things that the parent square really focuses on is like not just sending out broadcasting alerts but like parent engagement and communication with the educators. I know that that's a big differentiate different point of differentiation. The others from a cost consideration standpoint is I believe a lot of the functionality and you can tell me this if I'm wrong, but the additional functionality to layer on top of the existing platform,
052not only does you pay licensing fees for those, but you're also managing separate disparate tools as opposed to having a single platform to manage, which oftentimes makes it easier for administration. It's more effective, more impactful that way. Then over a long period of time, that enhanced feature functionality can do a lot of good for like I said, parent engagement and communication. When I did my research, it seemed to me that a lot of districts are going in this direction as opposed to going to more like a broadcast system or looking for a platform for two-way communication and engagement as opposed to just kind of one-way, hey, we're just pushing alerts out there. This is Belcher, Mr. Swinchok. If we did stick with the older software, but paid for the extra enhancements, that would give us
053more capabilities, but it wouldn't necessarily fix the problems we've been having. Correct. Thank you. Adam, did you have something to add to that? That was just correct. It doesn't fix the problems that we've been having with the broadcast side of it. In some cases, when you look at the parent square side of it, those options that are there with them, one of them being polling, are not options within another product. We would have to go to something outside like a SurveyMonkey, like what we did with our one-to-one. It's actually built into the parent square module. Thank you. From a budget impact, what will this take away? Where will this fall out? I know the website and the school messenger. Anything else? Immediately it's that, but I do think there are some other things. This is
054a very robust package, and so we're going to be looking at that as we go through it. I don't think we would roll out A to Z at one point. We're going to get everybody on board, because there's going to be some training for both the staff and the parents on how to use it, using all those things. We look at SurveyMonkey, we look at several of us in the district pay for newsletter functions. There's going to be a lot of little things like that over the course of time, but then there's other things that we've looked at having, like being able to pay for parking fees and tech fees and things like that online that we haven't been able to do, but we wouldn't have to pay for that. That's all inherent in this.
055I'm glad you brought that up, because that kind of was my question. If we're going to spend more money on some of this ed tech, does it relieve some administrative load? Because if not, it's more expensive, and it doesn't relieve an administrative load. That's where I keep getting caught up on it. I don't think it's much of a change in that point. I think from us, it's really the benefit is to the parent, because everything is in one spot. For us, we're still going to be communicating and emailing and doing all the things that we do and updating the website and all of that, so I don't know from our standpoint that there's going to be much change in that point, but the real benefit is to the parents. I think overall for us, for
056me, it's reliability, and that's a concern to me for an emergency, to not be able to reach people. We had one call go out recently, and Tracy Bidoli didn't get the call, and there's no consistency in it either. Sometimes people get a call, sometimes they don't, and we can't track it down, so it's difficult to fix. I would just say it would be nice maybe next time to get more than one quote from more than one company, just to kind of see where we might fall out from a financial perspective, because this is like $10,000 more than what we're currently spending for these same services annually. Mr. Swinchuk, is there like an online demo that we can see of the product from a parent use case standpoint? Yes, I'd have to pull the demo. I
057think actually what was sent to you all earlier today has a link in it that shows you kind of what that interface looks like and some of the options that are available. I'd just like to see like the usability of it and how to navigate and make sure they have a mobile app component to it as well. It's a short one. It'll give you a good look at that. Thank you. Are there many companies that provide this kind of service? So that's the challenge is there used to be, but in a lot of cases they've all been acquired and kind of consolidated, so there aren't as many out there as there used to be, and there aren't very many that do it as well as some of the ones that we've looked at. Thank you.
058I do have one more question. When you were going through the evaluations, it was just between ParentSquare and SchoolMessenger, were those the two? Yes, those are the two that we were considering the most for the web page side of it. We had final site associated as well, so there were different vendors for different things. So those were the ones that offered the most robust package for us to be able to go with. And then as far as like decision criteria, I'm sure cost was a component of that. Was there specific features and functionalities you were looking for? So two big ones were privacy, obviously for student and family information. Information was a big piece of it because for us we need to be able to pass data back and forth seamlessly, otherwise it creates another
059load of work, but for us it integrates into our student information system and pulls the information that is necessary to be able to seamlessly do that for our families with their existing contact information to be able to onboard them very effectively. So yes, those were the two big ones. Thank you. Any further discussion? Public comment? I had a question on number seven, the renewal of the Quest Tech technology. Is that different? Is this new? Is this just a renewal with a three-year attachment to it? So this is just a renewal of the existing services that we have with Quest Tech. We've been a Quest Tech partner here since before me, and I've been here for 13 years. So this is just a renewal of the existing services that we have in place. Is there a
060big change in the rate or the annual cost? Not a big change. I think Brad, we ran the numbers and it was about a five percent. Was that in the budget that you presented earlier, the increased cost? Yeah, those costs were included in the preliminary budget that we reviewed at the Finance Committee meeting. And that includes number six too? Yes, yeah, those were right. Any public comment? Seeing none. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Does that conclude your report? Okay. All right. Good. Moving on. Any board information? Actually, yes. We don't often, I don't often have anything to say, but I'm also the district Shasta representative that's the South Hills Area School District Association. We used to have more events, but they still have at least one every Saturday, usually in, well, not
061every Saturday, every year, usually in April. On a Saturday, they have this big breakfast to honor certain students. I think each district nominates one or two students, two. And then they recognize all the students at this one breakfast. And because of my duties and my day job, I again this year cannot go. So if anybody else would like to go, please let me know. Honestly, I forget the date. I will have to dig that up. But if anyone's interested, please let me know and I will do that for you. Typically, I think it's from what, eight to noon? Nine to noon? Yes, nine, I think nine to noon. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any discussion? Public comment on agenda items? All right. Seeing none. Solicitor's report? My report were all executive session items. Thank you.
062Thank you. Correspondence. Excuse me. Correspondence and matters of information. We have the April board meeting on April 20th at 7 p.m. The May board meeting on May 18th at 7 p.m. Education committee on April 13th at 6 p.m. And I think we want to do a joint finance buildings and grounds on the 27th at 6 p.m. Finance with buildings and grounds immediately to follow. That'd be great. Okay. Anyone else? Okay, good. All right. Entertain a motion to adjourn. So move. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you all. Thank you all for coming.