001Hello everybody. Welcome to your March 26.25 voting meeting. Rise for the pledge of allegiance. [Music] 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. Mr. Bane, Mrs. Bainy Shaw here. Dr. Bary here. Mrs. Bush here. Mr. Jeff, Mrs. Lamb Mr. Manarch here, Mr. Vancus here. And Mr. Wood here. Do we have any visitor comments? Thank you. We did have an executive session for personnel, student issues, negotiations. Can I get a motion to approve the February 26, 2025 voting meeting minutes as presented? Motion. Second. I get a motion to approve 12 2025 committee meeting minutes as presented. So move second. We have a consent. All right. Tonight we have some administrative reports. Uh first
002up tonight uh we did our secondary at our work session um there two weeks ago. tonight's elementary. You would want to give your updates tonight. I'll go first Mills Elementary. I'm going to give two updates. I'm going to start with in February, our fifth graders participated in a math 24 challenge. So, I thought this was kind of cool. Um, first of all, the fifth graders participate within the building and the top four go to State College and compete against other schools. Um, so the four winners from Oola Mills Elementary were two sets of twins. So I thought that was pretty neat. We had um Madison and Mason Zendeck and Lily and Lincoln Packer. So I thought it was kind of unique that two sets of twins won. Um Lily Packer came in second. So I
003thought that was kind of cool, too. So we had a second place winner. So we were proud of her for that. Um and then in fourth grade the um we had a group of enrichment students that did a biographical interactive wax museum. Um we've been doing this for years. My son who's a freshman in college did that when he was in elementary school. So this is a tradition that's been going on for years and years. Um it was in last board minutes. We have some pictures, but this is actually Levi in the photo here. He did um Pio's own John Condo when he did his, but they do it for the whole elementary school. FA the students walk through, they give their presentation um and then families come through as well. So, it's kind of
004cool. They do historical. Um we had a mix of Albert Einstein, sports, um they kind of do whoever their hero is or anyone they want to present, but they learn facts and I'll say it sticks with them because my sons can still spout off Abraham Lincoln facts to this day. So, it's a cool tradition. I'm glad we've kept it up over the years. So, that's what's going on at Good. Thank you. All right. Good evening, everybody. Um, share a couple things at PE. So, first of all, March 3rd through March 7th was Read Across America Week. We had a lot of guests into our school uh to read the kids throughout the week. Dr. Petushnik was there uh to end the week with all the students with a a full assembly. Um, we had Penn
005State softball players there. We had some Mount Lady Mounty softball players. The Mounty mentors came and read. We had state police come in and read to the kids as well. So, it was a lot of fun, a lot of activities throughout the week. Um, another thing we're doing, we have partnered with the Penn State outreach STEM program. So, we had on March 11th, we had our first STEM night. Uh, we had about 30 students there. We have about over 50 kids signed up for this program. About 30 students there. uh they talked about buoyancy and they had to uh make some aluminum foiled boats and see how many marbles can uh be put in the boat to see how buoyant the the boat will be. Uh next month we they're going to be making slime
006kits and then in May they're going to be working on electromagnetics. So that was something good to reach out to Penn State and get them involved with. And just the last thing, this is a community thing. Um I don't know if you've seen in the paper today or or even in the news. Um, you know, we had our second grade student that I've been updating the board with, uh, since January. So, tomorrow night, uh, his classmates put together a movie night. So, tomorrow night, uh, it started with just being at PE, but we had a lot of interest, so we're going to have it here at the auditorium at the middle school tomorrow night. The movie starts at 8:00. The kids put this all together themselves working with the teacher and myself. Um, or they're
007charging admission, but all the the proceeds go back to the family. um today, this evening on the news, they came today to talk to the kids about that. So, it was just great opportunity to allow the kids that came up with this idea on their own to try to support their classmates. So, I just wanted to share that and I know the family really appreciates all the support that the board's shown them as well throughout this process. Thank you. Hey, also have up uh tonight Dr. Ree. Um up for approval tonight's our comprehensive plan. I've asked her just to highlight a couple aspects of our comprehensive plan that'll be on the on for approval today. So, uh the comprehensive the planning process is a three-year cycle. Um and ours is up this year. So, this
008plan will take us from 2025 to 2028. Um and it really is a team effort. So, if I miss anything, uh feel free to share. Um but it's planning for continuous improvement and looking at where we are and where we want to be uh down the road. but involves our leadership, our teaching and learning and that's where the comprehensive piece comes in. Um but this process really started back in July um when I reached out to the IU just to get some guidance of hey we need to get this done uh and come up with a plan. Um so that was very helpful for me and our team to really uh we kind of had to think with the end in mind. So our end goal was March 31st 2025 and it's due. Okay. So,
009what do we need to do to get there? So, we planned out meetings um to make sure we met our goals along the way. So, within the comprehensive plan, there's various parts. Um the first part is the getting ready for it and that involves looking at our school profile where we are coming up with a steer committee that was involved with our admin team, community members, board members, business, parents, um and getting a whole group together of who want to be a part of that. And that was that's kind of our our steering committee that that we met with along the way. And then kind of behind the scenes, we also had our admin steering team. So we kind of knew where we needed to go from our end. And then we took that information
010to the meetings with the big steering committee. Um so the the ready part was also really looking at our vision and mission of our school. We look at what the state's vision and mission was and what our old vision and mission were and what we developed as a team or committee our new vision and this is kind of like big picture of where we want to go but we want to empower our learners today for them to become impactful citizens tomorrow. Um so that was really key to get everybody on board with believing in that m vision of where we wanted to go for the future. Um the next part was the set of it and the set really involved looking at our data. It's all about data, our future ready index, where we are
011on over testing, what the state says, what we say on our benchmarks, what our teachers say, but really digging into that data to find out our strengths and our areas of need, our challenges. Um so within the set we really worked as a team behind the scenes to dig in that data and then we presented to our committee of hey here's what our strengths are as a district. So we have many strengths but we picked we focused on two that were really key for us and that was that as a district we have a consistent K to2 guidance plan that's implemented through all of our four buildings. So, we thought that was key. And also, our title one program is very beneficial to in both elementary schools to help support our reading needs of our
012students. Our biggest challenges um that we found as a district were attendance. And these are things that like we've always talked about like, oh, this is like here is black and white on paper. These are our challenges. Attendance at the middle school and high school. We didn't meet our attendance goals. and we've really seen that especially since COVID and it's gonna I think continue to be an area of focus but that's a challenge um identifying curricular instructional math practices that would help our improve our student growth and proficiency and math math is definitely an area of need for our district and then also establishing and maintaining a focused system for continuous improvement like making sure everybody knows our vision and mission and getting everybody on that same page of okay what are we doing today
013we're doing this because it supports our vision Um so those were our biggest challenges and the next step so after we did this as you see this is really fun process. So to get to that was like uh multiple meetings with our steering committee and admin but all right so the next part was the go this is like hey this is our needs here's our strengths and now what are we going to do with this information and this is us coming up with goals and doing an action plan like okay how are we going to reach these goals in the next three years. Um so the first tool that we came up with really was focusing on the regular attendance. Um and a plan would be this check and connect. So within the high school
014and middle school check and connects a program where kind of kids we do our advisory kids have that person they have their advisory teacher and they have that person they have throughout their time with the school. So checking and connecting with students. So that we're hoping that that's going to help. Uh the second goal came from the math instruction or math proficiency and need of improving that. So focusing on continuous improvement instruction. So we're really going to look at uh implementing some after school based programs to support our students who are really struggling with math and to really narrow down what those areas of needs are focused on. Maybe create different groups and different nights to make sure we can uh help give them the supports they need to be successful. Uh the third goal
015that we've came up with really is we want anyone you talk to in our community, a board member, a student, a teacher, like hey, what's our vision? We really want everyone to know like this is our purpose. This is what we're doing. So the third goal really came from empowering leadership uh within our whole district and focusing on our vision mission and vision um and how we're going to do that. our action plan will be implementing high level high leverage practices thanks to Elaine right so uh each semester within the next three years as a team we we have picked them out so we're going to be providing our teachers with PD on high lever practices and it can be simple stuff like making connections with students okay how are you doing that how are
016you building those relationships and then as a team coming up with walkthrough like when we come through walking through your room this is what we're looking for and then providing feedback and profession development to our teachers. Um, but to really focus on our leadership and instruction. So, in a nutshell, so those are our big goals and now we're ready to turn it in March 31st. We uh had it had to have it 28 days in public review and we did that and now we're ready to go. But the thing is it's kind of a breeding document, living document. You can always like if something's not right, we can always go back and make adjustments as needed based on our needs. Just want to commend Dr. Duce and the rest of the admin team for putting
017that together. That was a six-month process and Kelly did an excellent job. Yes, I appreciate team effort is awesome. Thank you. All right. Uh, next let's go a little federal revenues. Mr. Mark. This is going to be an overview. Right now, we last uh last meeting we went over state revenue. Um in this meeting, we're going to go over our local and our federal revenues. Next slide. So, go back. So for our local revenues um our actual for 25 2324 was $13.2 million. We had budgeted for 24.5 13.3. We're projecting right now to come in at 13.54 and when we initially look at 2526 the number that we're looking at a little under 13.4 million. Next slide. So the act one index for 2526 this is the maximum amount that you're allowed to um raise
018your taxes any type of tax but particularly we focus on real estate tax for the 2526 year it's set every year by PE this year it's 5.8 I think last year it was close to seven um the year before in prior years it's usually been less than that and everything probably on average right around about 2 and a half to 3%. Um a 5.8% 8% increase in real estate taxes, which if you went that full amount, it would generate an additional $550 to about $600,000 in local revenue. Next slide. Federal revenues. So, our actual federal revenues for 2324 were 2.1 million. We budgeted uh 895 for 2425. We're projecting to be close into that amount. And then our initial amount for 2526 is $748,000. This just gives an overview. Um again back to 2021 like
019showing the actual local amounts and seeing how they've grown. So again 2021 we were getting about $12 million in local sources 12.2 and 2122 up to 12.9 and 2223.2 23.5 and again the initial amount here for 2526 is showing a decrease again on the federal sources again and I wanted to highlight that obviously we had the esser funds that came through um postcoid so um you can see in 2021 1.5 million 2122 3.8 22 23 2.4 4 23 24 2.1 projecting 865 for 2425 and then the initial was 748,000. This gives a breakdown of what makes up the local revenue. Lion share of the local revenue is going to come from your real estate taxes. We get 10.2 million. We have delinquency on l taxes levy. So these are people if they don't pay their
020taxes to the tax collector on time, they go to tax claim. And so on average we collect about $600,000 there. The um earned income tax and real estate transfer tax is the next largest amount 1 point right around 1.7 million. We did have an increase in the payment about 748 grand. But the federal revenue again there's a lot of stuff obviously in the news and so we don't know how that will impact right now. We have those funds in there. Again those the title funds pay for positions. They pay for different materials. um community engagements. There's a lot of different things there. And then obviously it's not part of the general fund, but the federal piece also pays for all of our um the funding that we get for the cafeteria and for the for
021the uh lunches and for breakfast. 2425 real estate tax rate. So center county um at the end of 2425 was 16.57. Clearfield County was 135.94. As um we all know, Clearfield County Commissioners changed ratio from 25 to 50% on the assessed value of real estate. So basically the um the Clearfield County Commissioners were to a point where they couldn't raise the taxes anymore because they were at a high the mill rate they were at, they could not go any higher. So by changing that predetermined ratio from 25 to 50, the assessed value rates doubled. So what will happen with us to rebalance that back out, we'll basically cut it in half. So you see there the center county would be 60.57 and clearfield county now moving forward be 68.02 because again the assessed values that
022we got from them were doubled what they normally were. So to get the same amount you just take it times 68.02 percentage of total revenue again just highlighting this um 35% of our revenue comes from local 2% from federal 63 from the state. So again, as I highlighted last meeting, we're very state dependent. Um, and again, our ability to generate local revenues basically based on that index or if you're having growth. If we had more commercial properties coming in or more developments coming in, you'd have more assessed value coming in or if you have more jobs coming into the area, your earn income tax portions could go up. So, um, that's that's minimal at times. So again, 35% for local, 63 for state. So again, we're pretty dependent on how that state budget comes through.
023So that is an overview of all that. The next meeting I'm going to go over um basically your salaries, our benefits, and our personal professional and uh professional services and everything. Kind of highlight that. And then the meeting after that, address the expenses. and then we'll start to put the together all the budget information and go from there kind of get a recap and and hopefully we'll have a better idea of where the revenues are going to be at um from a state level as we go through each meeting. Any questions? We can do C through A, right? Um, we're going to take the agenda item C through K as a consent. Roll call. Mr. Bainy. Mrs. By Shaw. Yes. Dr. Beri. Yes. Mrs. Bush. Yes. Mr. Jeff. Yes. Mrs. Lamb. Mr. Bernardic. Yes. Mr.
024Vanis. Yes. And Mr. Wood. Motion. Can you read them? I was just going to say I'll go down through if you want me to. I can highlight them. Um uh so if we get down the addendum has a few items on here since the last meeting. We have a 5.75 hour special education instructional assistant resignation. We're going to post that same position. Item two. Item three is to hire 4.5 hour kitchen helper. Four is a transfer. Five is a uh to post the 4.5 hour kitchen helper. Number six is in resignation of the district-wide custodian. Seven is to post a five-hour district-wide custodian position. Eight is Fullington bus drivers. Nine, position volunteers for 2425 school year. Just an update. Number 10, student teacher approval. 11's homebound instructors. 12 is going to be the comprehensive plan
025that Dr. Ree uh presented about. 13's going to be a school uh school provider agreement for service nursing services. 14's going to be physician services agreement. 15's going to be an athletic trainer physician supervision agreement. 16 is an athletic trainer services agreement termination letter. Then we have 17 is approved for Trapanni Communications. 18 is uh foreign exchange student approval of two foreign exchange students. uh 19s with uh regret here for a resignation of Timothy Baney board as a board member and board president. Uh that will be effective Saturday. Um 20 is to advertise for the school board seat that Mr. Bainy held. And then um 21 we're going to make a change to if it's already with the board. Um right now we have check signatures for Mnt and FNB banks. and really just a
026catchall for us to be able to switch signatures. Anything that Mr. Bainy signature on that we will be able to get the business office the next board president's signatures. Um so as as opposed to saying Mnt and FNB banks, what did we want to talk about? Just all banks, any bank that we have or investment firm that we have stuff with that he's on and everything. And it'd be the same thing for the removing him from any, you know, checked signature on there. any bank or investment firm that we have. Does anyone need clarification on that? Is everyone all right with the change there? All right. Do you have for minutes? All right. Then there's uh so we're going to probably go 1 through 18 if it's all right with our vice president here. Um
027and then we're going to have possible election of officers and then 23 removal of Tim Baneius's uh check signature for Mnt basically as worded by Mr. Martin for all all banking investment signatures. Um up to you motion to approve items one through 18 of the agenda. Move second. Mr. Bainy Mrs. Bainy Shaw. Yes. Dr. Blumary. Yes. Mrs. Bush. Yes. Mr. Jeff. Yes. Mrs. Lamb. Mr. Manaric. Yes. Mr. Mr. Vankus. Yes. And Mr. Wood. Yes. Motion carried. 1920. Thank you. Okay. Motion to approve the addendum items 19 and 20. Motion. Second. I would just like to say before you go, um, for my first 14 months here, I just want to say, uh, Mr. Mr. Benny's not here tonight. Um, as from myself coming into Philosula, I couldn't ask for a better president. Um, Mr. Benny
028was there anytime we needed to talk, whether it was during the day, during the evening, whether it was during the weekends. Um, and he spent a lot of time making sure that the needs were met uh, from the students to the faculty, staff, to the administration, to our board. And I couldn't say enough good things about Mr. Bainy and how much I appreciate him during my first 14 months there. So, Amen. No, we already did. I believe, right? Yes. Mr. Bainy. Whoops. Mrs. Bainy Shaw. Yes. Dr. Bary. Yes. Mrs. Bush. Yes. Mr. Jeff. Yes. Mrs. Lamb. Mr. Manic. Yes. Mr. Vanus. Yes. And Mr. Wood. Yes. Motion carries. We still have two on the back. We still got three. We have 21, 22, and 23. Can we do 21, 23 together? Yep. Okay. Motion for
02921 and 23. That's both the ones related to the check signature and the pay on the checks. Motion. Second. Mr. Bainy. Mrs. Bainy Shaw. Yes, Dr. Bary. Yes, Mrs. Bush. Yes, Mr. Jeff. Yes, Mrs. Lamb. Mr. Manarchic. Yes, Mr. Vancis. Yes. And Mr. Wood. Yes. Motion carried. [Music] So, Mr. Mayor, if you be able to chime in. What we have tonight is Mr. Benny's position. really what it boils down to uh and I just have to explain and I did share it with the superintendent that PSBA modified its policy as it relates to election of board officers. So back in the day under your 2007 policy it used to say board officers serve at the pleasure of the board. Then at Jim Thorp school district there was a board president election. Uh the board like
030I I don't know about this isn't working. And then like two meetings later like you're no longer the board president. And he took it to federal court and federal court said ah he has a property right. You just can't put him in like in December and then January just like vote him out. So that prompted PSBA to uh change the policy and say board officers have like the same property rights as superintendants to their positions. Where I'm going with this is it's not really possible to wait till you fill the board like turn around and vote tonight and say this is new board president. Then you have your ninth seated member then say we're going to do it again. like you either let it ride where vice president rises to the level of president or
031you'd say no we want a president and we have a vice president and if that's the case whoever gets elected tonight was going to be here till reorganization week first week of December so you can decide to do it tonight or you can wait to do it some other time but it's the pleasure of the board the only thing I I would say is if you're, you know, you have a placeholder here, so it's not like you're just flat out of nowhere. You didn't have 24 hours notice to the public. Uh, somebody could operate argue that this is an important motion because you don't have a board technically won't have a board president come Sunday if I believe that's the date. So, you guys can talk amongst yourself and decide which way you want to
032go with. I just want to roll Sean right up to to V to the vacated position of president. You have to have discussion and decide what you're going to do and you it's just like anything else. It's a thing and you say and then we would vote on vice president. Is that correct? If I'm I'm not suggesting any particular way. I'm just saying you have to decide which way you guys want want to work it. So you are one voice of how many you have here? to seven. You are one of seven tonight. Would be your preference to remain um president or would you prefer we hold an election? I would prefer to stay where I'm at. If somebody else is interested in the presidency just because I don't have the time commitment attended to
033be honest like I have a 12-hour a day job. I'm lucky I made it here for the meeting let alone meet the condition at this point. I'd be willing to make a motion to elect Dick Wood as serving district's newly appointed school board president going forward until December. I think I'd make Linda Bush. Yeah, I agree. All right. So, you got nomination for Mr. Wood. You got a a motion and a second for Linda Bush. Linda Bush stays as the vice president. Are we able to do keep the vice presidency as it is or do we have to make it? No. somebody. It's I mean, if she's going to stay and you guys don't object to it, you know, you could just then at the end say make a motion that she remains board vice
034president. I mean, her term isn't up. She's just there. She didn't elevate. So, you're just there. The only way that you First off, uh you can't have secret ballot elections. But I will tell you this in reorganization. We do have some districts. I don't know what you guys do. I wasn't here at reorganization. You can take an index card and you can say I want this person that person, but you have to sign your name. Then it goes down to the board secretary and she says so and so says one vote for this by Todd, one vote by, you know, so and so by Dr. Now, you know what I mean? You can do it that or since you have seven here, you have two nominations. Correct. Correct. Okay. You could just do a roll
035call vote and who vote your conscience and the first person to get four is the winner. Is there a preference amongst four members to do index card votes or I guess public? Let's just go around the room and do roll call and get it over with. Is there a preference? If you guys come to a consensus and you don't really have to vote on it unless somebody says damn it, excuse me. I want to vote on, you know, which way we do. But if there's a board consensus to go one way or the other, that that's fine. Speaking publicly would be my preference. Unless there's somebody objecting a different way, the minutes will reflect that it's the consensus of the board to go with roll call vote. Do we go with who we said first?
036That's fine. That was the first person. So, Mr. Um, but everybody's going to put, just so you know, when you say somebody's name, they're going to pick one of the two. Is that the way that the most sense? Yeah. So, you don't have vote after vote, right? So, when you call the name, they're going to they're going to take their preference of which candidate. And you are allowed to vote for yourself, by the way. It's not a conflict of interest. You don't have to fill out a form. Okay. So, I I guess we need Do do the two people that were elected want the position? They they have to want it as well. That's correct. But I expressed that I don't particularly want it because I don't have the time. So, they need to express,
037you know, if if they want the opportunity. I I believe that's fair. I mean, somebody could have said in the beginning, I find the nomination to be president. I mean, did you say yes? Fine. What's that? Do you want the position? I will try it. Okay. If I'm elected. Okay. I like personnel though. That's my forte. Yes. points to every committee if she Okay. So, Mr. Bainy, Mrs. Bainy Shaw, I think, Dr. Bary, Linda, Mrs. Bush, myself, Mr. Jeff, Linda, Mrs. Lamb, Mr. Manarchic, Mr. Roy, Mr. Mr. Vegas, Mr. Wood, and Mr. Wood, Mr. Wood. Okay, we have one, two, three, four, Mr. Wood, and we have three Linda, Mrs. Bush. So, it's Mr. Wood. Congratulations. Thank you. So, do we have to do anything else as far as that goes? just to confirm that
038uh you know that nobody wants to do another election of officers and let you in a position if that's the consensus that's fine because your your position wasn't open so you serve it. Okay. Motion to for myself to maintain as the vice president. You I'm just telling if the board says we're letting it go. You don't even need to vote on it. Okay. Is the board okay with that? Yes. Yeah, there it is. Absolutely. This doesn't have to be that technical. I know they give you this Robert rules of order and there's some experts at that they are offus obuscation experts when they give you Robert's rules. It shouldn't be what do you want to do and if it's within the realms of Garfield Jones and Robert's rules that's the way he conducted that's how
039I have for 37 years. So anyways, congratulations staying in the same place. Staying warm up. I like that idea. So can we do a motion to adjourn? We are ready. Motion to adjourn. Second. Good night. [Music] So,