001Start stream. Here we go. Call the maiden order of June 25th for the voting meeting. Pledge allegiance, please. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisibley and justice for all. What calls? Mrs. Batty Shaw here. Dr. Gomeary here. Mrs. Bush here. Mr. Jeff present. Mrs. Lamb here. Mr. Manaric. Mr. Bankers here. M Basneski here. I'll get it eventually. Mr. Wood here. Dr. Dan, can you hear us? He's good. Okay, he he can hear me. Yes. Okay, we're all good. Yep. Okay. Chad, you got your work cut out for you. I am. Uh we have visitor uh Jonathan Beerzoff. Okay. Fullington Bus Company. Good evening. Uh I'm Jonathan Barza as he said u president and CEO for the company of Fullington
002Bus Company and our team is just like at church they want to sit on the back row. I don't know why. Um but I just want to say thank you to the board. We appreciate uh our partnership with the district uh here. We've been here many many years. Uh and I just want to say thank you on behalf of our team of employees uh every day to transport the students uh here at Hillsburg. Thank you. Thank you. There'll be a motion to approve the May 28 25 voting meeting minutes as presented and there'll be a motion to approve the June 11th 2025 committee meeting minutes as presented. [Music] We have consent agenda. Oh, we have Tom, are you going to do it now? Yep. high school. You have presentations also. Tiny little Okay. Yeah, you
003guys go ahead. Okay. So, hello. Um, the high school is pretty quiet right now, which is kind of nice, not going to lie. I'm enjoying it. Um, it's pretty much me and the janitorial and custodian staff, so the days are a little long, but I'm busy getting things done for next year. So, I just wanted to say that um end of year events went really well. I had a lot of positive feedback from students and uh parents, community members, especially about graduation. All of the um struggle it took to get there with the weather, but the feedback was really positive. And I even had people say that they um liked it inside better. So, that was that was good for us moving forward to know that maybe um if it rains for the entire month
004of May next year, we don't need to worry as much. Um we do have summer driver's ed going on. We have 16 kids participating in the program. I spoke to Mr. Roman yesterday. He and Mr. Warllo are overseeing that program and he says it's going well. We also have 22 students enrolled in summer school from the high school. They're taking a variety of courses, a different number of courses each student. Some of them work from home. Some of them come into the building and get support from content um teachers. And that's going well as well. So that's everything I have from high school. Thank you. Thank you. I was going to present for the middle school. Okay. So sorry Mr. Pela could not be here today. Um, we want to just mention that in May
005we did have our new teachers end with their induction ceremony. They had a portfolio to present. They were very reflective and outstanding. We have a great group of what will now be secondyear teachers coming through. We did end our year with 109 high honorable students and 77 honorable students. It was a great way to end our academic year. We did get a little rained out with some of our outside field activities, but we did end with a student and staff talent show which was fantastic and eye opening. It was just it was great talent all around that actually probably went twice as long as it should because there were so many fantastic acts. Um I would say next year you should come by and and take a look. It was it was awesome. Um and
006then also we have 15 middle school students in summer school. The middle school students do have to come in person for their classes, but they are online and they have teachers there to help them. Um, and actually seven of them have finished already and um, but it's going well. All right. So, I'm just going to go over um the final proposed budget. Again, we've had multiple meetings going over the budget, going through all the revenues, expenditures of proposed uh initial budget, and this is just the final budget. There's only going to be about seven or eight slides. So, um total revenues uh for this budget are 38.9 million. We're looking at total expenditures of 39.3. So, that would leave us with a deficit of about $395,000 um which would be funded through our fund balance.
007Our fund balance would be 4.6 million at the end of the year. Tax millage per center 63.07 clear 70.93 um total 136.4 4.2 uh% increase the index the max you could increase it was 5.8 so it was 1.6 under the index this just gives a breakdown um again right now of the percentage change as far as how many mills the increase was. It was 2 and a half mills in Center County, 2.91 mills in Clearfield. Again, it gives you a value per each male mill. Um, in Center County, for each mill, it's $87,612. In Clearfield, it's a little under 70,000 for each mill. And for each 1% increase, it's about 53,000 in Center County and about 47,000 in Clearfield. So, 4% is going to give you roughly around 400,000 in real estate taxes. uh homestead
008farmstead credit uh for 2425. Each qualifying uh resident got a credit for reduction on their taxes of $331 from 2425. That increased another $50 this year to $388. So again, if we look at the increase or decrease for our average resident, um what their bill would be, the the taxes would go up um before the Homestead Farmstead, $81 in Center, 65 in Clearfield, but they'll be getting a credit of 56 at Center and in Clearfield. So the average increase in the real estate tax bill in Center County would be $24, and in Clearfield County, it would be $8. And again, this just gives a breakdown of of the different revenues and expenditures from our initial budget when we first came in where we had about a $1.4 million deficit. And uh at this point showing
009the uh $395,000, so it was about a $1 million swing. Again, we had some increases um in the uh revenue through the real estate taxes. You can see about 400 grand there. State resources. Um again the increase there was primarily due to the homestead farmstead tax increase that we got and there's some federal uh increases there and again the salary benefits there was positions with people retiring that we did not fill and um again we made some adjustments the supplies to reduce cost there too. Next slide. Again, this just shows the general fund balance. Um, and again, just going back to 2013, 2014 again, um, GFOA, they recommend that we have at least 60 operating days of cash on hand. And so, you can see back in like 1415, 1516, 16, 17, we had 120,
010110, 74. So um right now for 2324 when our when our final audit was we had 50 days where we're estimating to be for 2425 we're looking at 48 days with 4.9 million and with the budget with that deficit it would bring it down to 43 days. So again you want to have at least a minimum of 60 days because again we're going to get into the summer months now. No more state funding until the end of August and that's if they pass the budget on time. So um we just got our last installment from the state here again in June. So really no money will be coming in July, August, September will start to get um August and September will start to get tax revenue. So and I believe that is it. Thank you.
011Any questions at Tom? Okay, Dr. Dan, I think you're off. You show you have a report from there. Uh just want to say appreciate uh Fington uh uh and the ongoing relationship that we have with them and just in support of our plan that we have tonight up for approval. So looking forward to another uh five years with them. Also just want to thank Tom for all the work over the last couple months as we've looked at many different options for our budget. We all know that there's going to be ongoing conversations into this coming fiscal year. Uh but Tom's put in a lot of time and effort and just want to uh show support for him also. So that concludes my report here. Okay. Thank you. Uh I do have to announce we had
012an executive session prior to uh the board meeting uh for personnel reasons. Uh anything to come from the in front of the board right now from any board members the public meeting? If not, we'll move on to the consent agenda. Uh, if you'd like to pull anything, um, two, I'd like to pull, please. We'll go down through. We're going to see C. So C5, the general fund budget, C5, and then C8 and C8, the 2526 real estate tax rates. That is all for budget finance C5 and C8. Building and grounds. Nothing. E. Any relations? F curriculum and instruction. G personnel technology J. Should we do the addendum separately? Pardon? Doc, Dr. Mr. Wood, he usually reads them and we we vote on the agenda. Consent first. We'll do the We'll do the consent, then we'll
013do the two that we'll pled, and then we'll do the agenda. But he'll tell what is on the Okay. Now, when we hit the addendum, he usually handles that. Should we read each item or we do it? He he does he he can do a little bit like he doesn't read everything. He does. All right, let's uh consent agenda. We're going to pull C5 and C8 to vote on separately. Have a motion to approve the consent agenda minus C5 minus C8. Motion second. Motion. Second. A second. Call please. Mrs. Danny Shaw. Yes. Dr. Ber. Yes. Mrs. Bush. Yes. Mr. Jeff. Yes. Mrs. Lamb. Yes. Mr. Manarchic, Mr. Vancas, yes, Mrs. Vesneski, yes. And Mr. Wood, yes. Motion carried. Let's go to Cat five. We have a motion to approve the general fund budget for the
0142526 school year 35,349. I have a motion, please. Motion. Motion. Second. Second. Who's a second? Mr. Vancus. Mr. Bankus. Roll call, please. Mrs. Bainy Shaw, no. Dr. Beri, no. Mrs. Bush. Yes. Mr. Jeff, no. Mrs. Lamb, yes. Mr. Manarchic. Mr. Vancus. Yes. Mrs. Fasneski, abstain. And Mr. Wood? Yes. So, that was four yeses, three nos, and 431. Yes. So, motion carried. Motion carries. We don't need five for a You do You do need five for the for the budget. Yes. So, if you would like to chat about it and then we could vote again. She abstain. I thought you had a good reason. Can can you say what your reason was for abstaining? Yeah, because I don't understand it. So, where do we go? Uh, we have to have a budget approved by You have
015to have a budget approved by June 30th. Yes. You have to have military set by June 30. So, we need to either adjust the budget. Yep. Yeah. Or We'll have to have another meeting. You need five people in favor of whatever budget is developed. Any suggestions from um people who do not who are not in favor of the budget on how we can correct the budget? for me. I I pulled it with it. Um it's really related because we have in the presentation the really related to C8, the real estate tax. Um because we have it in there. Um I think it's probably because we have this listed first where we have the um proposed millage increases. Um I can support the tax increase. That's that's my currently my position. So, I pulled that one
016as well as C8 because I would be um contradicting myself if I approve one um C5 without um going. So, we've reversed it. Um if C8 was first, I would have still I would not be able to approve it. But um should the tax increase pass um you know that the budget at that point is you have that those funds allocated um you know then I'd be able to pass the budget. So it's all really related to the tax increase for me. That's where I stand. Dr. Mary if I could. Is that something you would support? So you're saying it would need to be a zero or a reduction? zero increase or reduction for you to vote yes for yes. So I think last year if I remember correctly we had the tax rate might
017have been first on the on the um agenda and if you know everyone votes to you know if the the votes approved to increase taxes that is then set in stone can't change anything with that but then I would have to vote yes to the proposed budget because then that would all make sense based off of what's been passed up to that point if that makes I don't know if that my logic kind of makes sense kind of where we're kind of following. But because we would have the budget first, if I passed the budget with everything proposed, if I would say no to the real estate tax increase, it wouldn't make any sense on my part where I would stand. That doesn't mean we should have done C8 first. Maybe. Can we do that?
018Well, a piece of this too is and I know where you're coming from. Um, again, the budget that we're passing here, again, it includes the revenues and expenses, but what we're what we're what we're voting on here is the budgeted expenditure piece, the third that voting purely on this is what it's going to take. Um I guess as long as we have C8 and to know that this would not reflect I guess that um just vote go do a roll call on C8 and then come back. Yes, I think doing the roll call on C8 would be um better to do if we can do that and then revisit C5. If the board is in agreement to do C8 and then revisit C5, that would be fine. Any objections? No. All right. There you go.
019Roll call on C8. Motion to establish the 2526 real estate tax rates as follows. Center County 63.07 and Ko County 70.93. Roll call, please. Dr. Bulary, no. Mrs. Bush, yes. Mr. Jeff, no. Mrs. Lamb, yes. Mr. Manaric, Mr. Venus, yes. Mrs. Vestneski, abstain. Mr. Wood, yes. And Mrs. Bainy Shaw, no. That was four. Yes. Three, no, and one of stay. Yes. You also need five for that one because it's related to the budget. Well, we need to give Tom some direction on what direction to go. You don't like the the millage numbers? You you guys can discuss. I mean, I can adjust to whatever. I mean, I pretty much showed you on there what each mill is going to bring in. Right now, we have a $390,000 deficit right now with the taxes where they're
020at. And again part of the again because of the homestead farmstead credits are going up you know so if we didn't have homestead farmstead credit you have 4% increase you know the average resident's going to go up um closer to like I said $70 to $90 on your taxes with that homestead farmstead going into that amount like what we showed on the center county side you're looking at about an average increase of about $24 you're looking at an average increase um of about $8 on the clearfield side. So again, um that's the piece of that with that homestead farmstead coming through helping that. So again, we're just trying to again, we talked about this in the beginning when we first came out with the $1.4 million deficit. We don't have the cash reserves on hand
021to continue to have to have that kind of a deficit in place. So again, we did some things by not filling some positions that were that came available through retirement and that made up a couple hundred thousand there. um the tax increase was going to make up another couple hundred grand and then we have left over the $400,000 deficit. But again, typically since I've been here, when we've tried to budget, we've always tried to have a balanced budget in place. So, we did the best that we could to get to that point. And that's why we took into account again with that Homestead Farmstead credit coming into place that it wouldn't impact the taxpayers um the residents as much. Yeah. And my concern is if we just flatline it now or different. I've seen the
022history of the district where they've actually lower taxes, but in the next year or two later, they got slammed with Yeah. For me, it's not um my district, if you were to look at the um the tax increases, we're going to be hit relatively high in my particular district. Um, right. It's, you know, the numbers that you kind of went over the average were significantly higher in there. So, um, for the people that put me in this place, I can't good and everybody respects that. That's that's not a problem. People that come to me are the ones that don't get the homestead because their child owns their home or they're, you know, I mean, they're not getting it then. Well, to your point, because if you're living in a home that you don't own, you
023don't get it, right? And and to your point, like I said, for 2526, we didn't fill several positions and we went that direction. And again, as we look at 2627, um again, we have to look at enrollment trends, look at all those different things. So, we'll be looking at our expenditures and going through that, especially relates to enrollment. So, we basically have options of cutting to get down to where we're at or using um more reserve. I don't know if there's other options either. Can we work with Mrs. Mneski so she can be kind of brought up to date so she can vote on things? I don't know what I mean. any questions of the public meeting, you're welcome to ask. You know, I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot. No, I'm not
024either. I think um I think I'm understanding this piece of it, it's just for me being so new trying to figure out how it all fits together, I guess. I don't know if that makes sense. Right. Yeah. So the basic like if you have any specific questions you can ask me but basically right now on the expenditure side I mean the majority of our cost for a school district is going to be at the at this for salaries and for benefits. So it's for our personnel um for the teachers and all the support staff that we have in here. So again you look at the majority of the budget that probably makes up about 65 to 70% of that. So you don't um again when we had a couple retirements we didn't fill those positions
025and then that helped out in that area. Um our health insurance costs went up quite a bit and that's part of why we have the deficit amount that we're looking at for this year. Um and again a lot of schools everybody had that particular situation going on. The other thing that's again that's an expense obviously cyber charter schools um funding that we have probably over a million dollars that goes out for that for those particular expenditures and um again a lot of the other services that we provide those costs you know they they are what they are but there's really nothing this budget's pretty kind of straightforward from that standpoint and on the on the revenue side 60 about 65% of our revenue comes from the state so unfortunately right now the state hasn't adopted
026their budget as and it's supposed to be done by June 30th. What's happened the last couple years doesn't get passed till July or August. So, we don't know specifically what the numbers are going to be. So, we have to budget this point based on what we have at that particular point. Our local side um makes up probably about 35% of our budget and the majority of it is real estate taxes. So, in this budget we have 10.4 4 million dollar budget in in the real estate tax and then the earned income tax is probably the other biggest piece. So the only things that we really control on on the local side is that real estate tax piece. We we don't adjust the earned income tax and there's not a lot of growth right now here
027in Philsburg. You don't have additional funds coming in. We don't have additional real estate tax coming in from commercial properties coming in. So again, this is the balance of what we have to kind of try to figure out to try to bridge those gaps. So, um, that's really again with that Homestead Farmstead being what it is. So, that's what the state's done the last couple years. So, prior to that, when I first got here, the Homestead Farmstead credit was about $230 or $240. So, now it's up to $380. So, what we've done is again, we've been able to have some tax increases, but we've been able to offset it with those homestead farmsteads. So, your tax increase is generating roughly how much money? 400,000 additional, you know, with the 4%. So to eliminate the tax
028increase, then we have to find 400,000 somewhere. And the options for doing that are to cut costs somewhere else or position. You have to either you would have to look at, you know, the services, what services you provide, different things cost on that end. So again, that's where we go through all again why we had when we went through the proposed pieces again when we had certain positions again retiring. Do we fill these positions or not? And that's part of the whole thing and and a lot of schools are doing that where before you might just broad them out going to fill it. No, we're going to pause. We're going to talk and say do we need to fill this or not fill this. The the philosophies right now has been to not affect people.
029somebody who's left. We have not filled a position, right? We haven't tried to impact any families by cutting positions. So, a few things to note. Um, abstaining because you haven't had enough time or understanding of the budget, unfortunately, um, is not a valid, um, reason. So, the options are that we could try to accomplish this tonight and continue discussing. Um, there is technically enough time to have a special meeting um because you have to have 24 hours, but I'm not sure if it would be published in the newspaper in time. Um, so we'd have to see about that. Um, so those that's kind of where we're at right now. I think even if I could just chime in. Um so there is the whole discussion of living within your means and whatever your cash flow
030is from from that standpoint. Um but from a decision-m standpoint uh Mr. Mark and I can definitely bring back a different budget, but we are going to be looking at class sizes at the elementary schools and we will be looking at class enrollment numbers, the AP classes at the high school, your driver's ed, the classes that you don't absolutely need that to have to function as a school district. And so, like those are our options. We can't we can't say we're not going to have electricity in a building. We're not going to have water. We're not going to have all the basic utilities. Um, so it it comes down to personnel and it this from my end, we can definitely bring back a different budget. It's not a should should be perceived as like a
031ah here's what you're going to have from a threat standpoint, but from easy decisions, it's there's not going to be an easier decision when we come back in a day or two. it's just going to be where we're putting the um where we're going to make up those dollars. And so my only thing would be to think we can we can definitely bring back options, but to think that we're going to bring back options where everyone that's employed in the district right now is going to be employed after that decision, it is highly unlikely. Great. Classes cut. on the real estate taxes. I'm willing to change my vote to yes. We we would have to have a a new motion and revote them if that's if the board would like to do that. That I
032think that would helpful. It's agreeable. Yeah. Do a motion. We have a motion to approve the general. Let's go to number eight. Number eight. Let's do eight first. What's that? Let's do that one first. Then number five. The motion to establish the 2526 real estate tax rates as follows. Center County 63.07 county 70.93. Motion. Motion. Second. Who's the motion? Yes. Mrs. Bush. Yes. Mr. Jeff. No. Mrs. Lamb. Yes. Mr. Manarchic. Mr. Vanis. Yes. M. Mrs. Vasneski. Yes. Mr. Wood. Yes. Mrs. Bainy Shaw. Yes. Dr. Bulary. No. We have three. Six. Yes. Two. No. Motion carries. Carries. A motion to approve the general fund budget for the 2526 school year in the amount of 39,32,49. Have a motion, please. Motion. Second. Mr. Jeff. No. Mrs. Lamb. Yes, Mr. Manaric. Mr. Vancus. Yes, Mrs. Vasneski. Yes, Mr.
033Wood. Yes, Mrs. Bainy Shaw. Yes, Dr. Bumary. Yes, Mrs. Bush. Yes. Seven. Yes. One, no. Motion carries. Thank you. [Music] Everything was approved on the consent agenda. We're over to the agenda. We'll clarify on one uh just a language. There'll be a language change on number 26 and 27. You'll be able to open that box computer, but it's just buy out of six days cannot go into a 403B. It's it cannot possibly be done. So that that line item will be taken up under the vacation. So on the add agendum and uh Dr. if you want to chime in on any feel free I can get through them if you want me to highlight them. What was that? He'll go over. Go ahead. All right there. Uh we'll start on the addendum letter M. We
034have investment transfers uh that Mr. Martin's asking for. We have an inter fund transfer for approval. We have a reimbursement resolution. Item three. Item four is transfer of funds uh for capital projects in the amount of 187 188,000. Authorized signatures motion to approve authorized signatures for deposits and withdrawals from the district's accounts. Uh we have approval for the act 55 annual safety and security report that Mr. plan provided last uh the last meeting in exact session. We have approval for uh uh Mrs. Lucashis for our board secretary for a four-year term. We have uh motion to approve for uh school psychology internship for Melinda Stoddard. Uh special education consulting motion to approve agreement between PO and Andrew Klein for special education consulting services. We have approval for extended school year for the positions uh for
035the professional positions. Number 11 is for the pair of professional positions for extended school year. We have approval uh for Kim Torres uh at the high school for uh an 83% increase. Then we have some hires. As we all know, we have some special education openings. Um, so we have a motion to hire Tene Miller as a special education teacher, uh, based out of Seal Mills Elementary. Uh, we have hire McKenna Britain as a special education teacher based out of Psburg Elementary. We have a motion to hire Brenle Nielnick as a 5.75 special education instructional assistant autistic support and that's going to require safe crisis management certification. Motion to hire uh Lydia Taylor as a districtwide custodian based out of Oil Mills. Item 17. Um motion to hire Sher Thomas as a 5-hour districtwide custodian
036based out of the high school. Number 18, motion to hire Jerry Shaw as a 5-hour districtwide custodian based out of the high school. 19. Sean uh motion to hire Shawn Burns as a five-hour district-wide custodian uh based out of the high school. Item 20, motion to transfer Charlene Hubler from an 8-hour districtwide custodian at the high school to an 8-hour district-wide custodian uh based out of the middle school. Item 22, we have a motion to accept the resignation of Fran Matier as maintenance class 2 position at uh based out of the high school effective August 31st. We have a motion to approve cooperative sponsorship agreement between uh the school district and West Branch uh school district for junior high and high school boys soccer. Item 24, motion to approve an agreement for cooperative sponsorship between
037PO and West Branch for junior high girls soccer grades seven and eight as presented. Item 25 is a motion to or motion to approve a a yard sale based out of the middle school on August 6th uh and August 7th. Benefits will go back to the building accounts. Item 26, a motion to approve the act 93 certified agreement for certified administrators. That is for one year. Item 27 is a motion to approve the agreement for the non-certified administrators. The length of that term is for one year. Item 28 is a motion to approve the agreement for the director of finance. Uh that'll be a five-year term. And item 29 is motion to approve an agreement for the director of human services and that'll be a five-year agreement. So those are all 29 items out of
038uh that are on the agenda. Any questions on that? Any items? I entertain a motion to approve the addendum 1 through 29. Motion. Have a motion. A second. Second. Have a second. Roll call, please. Mrs. Lamb. Yes. Mr. Manaric. Mr. Vancas. Yes. Mrs. Vasneski. Yes. Mr. Wood. Yes. Mrs. Vain Shaw. Yes. Dr. Bulary. Yes. Mrs. Bush. Yes. And Mr. Jeffers? Yes. Motion carried. Anything else to come before the board? Motion to adjourn. Motion second. Second. In favor.